Billie Jean - Live Performances

Live Performances

Billie Jean always remained a staple of Jackson's tour concerts and had been performed from the Victory Tour of 1984 to his last 30th Anniversary concerts in Madison Square Garden in 2001. After the ending chorus, the drum solo is always extended for a period of time as Jackson dances under one spotlight. The song almost always ends with Jackson singing "Billie Jean is not my lover" and throwing his hat towards the audience. Exceptions are some of the concerts in the Victory Tour, where he held his hat up and threw it afterwards. Since the Victory Tour, the performance has evolved in terms of dance moves and overall song length.

• Victory Tour - Performance around six minutes in length; only about thirty seconds is the spotlight dance ending.
• Bad tour - Flashing lights and sounds transition Beat It to Billie Jean. The first leg and second leg performances are considerably different as Jackson did more dance moves in the second leg and the ending was therefore longer in the second leg, around seven minutes in length. One such dance move was Jackson hopping and pointing to the beat, with the background singers yelling "ho!", which appears in most subsequent tour performances as well.
• In the Dangerous Tour, an illusion was made for Jackson to appear on the upper floor the moment "Thriller" ended through the use of a masked dancer posing as Jackson who he had switched with in the middle of the song. Jackson performed the song at a slightly slower speed than the Victory and Bad tours, but still faster than the studio version. The choreography was very similar to the second leg of the Bad tour with a few more dance moves. The first and second leg performances were about seven minutes in length while the 1993 leg was typically over 8 minutes. In the 1993 leg Jackson often did not pose on his toes after the first moonwalk.
• 1993 Super Bowl - Jackson performed a part of Billie Jean consisting of only the first refrain, second chorus and instrumental bridge where he did the moonwalk before ending with a pose.
• 1995 MTV Awards - Shortened version performed as part of a medley during the 1995 MTV Awards. Preceding "Billie Jean", a megamix of Jackson's other songs was performed, followed by a guitar improvisation by Slash. Jackson's enlarged shadow then appears behind a lit curtain. The song consisted of the second chorus, instrumental bridge and a drum ending with the bassline and drums from "Why You Wanna Trip On Me". The same medley was performed during the 1999 Michael Jackson & Friends concerts with live instrumentation but is still lipsynced except for the last line. Here, Slash appears to be "out of control" on his guitar as stage crew try to "stop" him before Billie Jean starts.
• Royal Brunei Concert 1996 - Slower tempo than studio version, with similar instrumentation to the HIStory Tour. Unlike the HIStory Tour it was sung live and the snare from "Why You Wanna Trip On Me" is played throughout the spotlight ending along with the drum.
• HIStory Tour/Madison Square Garden - Performances of the song itself was usually eight minutes with some up to nine minutes as well as a two-minute intro. Jackson walks on stage with a briefcase before he opens it to dress up for the song. The first half of the song was always lipsynced until after the moonwalk, where Jackson starts to sing live. The chorus is played back until Jackson signals for the end dance to start. The spotlight dance briefly samples a snare from "Why You Wanna Trip On Me" only in the beginning of the song as Jackson grabs his crotch. In most of the HIStory Tour concerts as well as the second Madison Square Garden concert, Jackson also beatboxes prior to throwing his hat. During the concerts in Auckland in 1996, the chorus was also sung/played-back while Jackson beatboxed.
• Madison Square Garden - Very similar to the HIStory Tour in instrumentation and vocal mixing, but some verses before the moonwalk are sung live and switches back and forth with playback. First performance was over 8 minutes in length and was more improvised at the end with robotic dance moves. To some fans, Jackson appeared more disoriented in the first concert as he only did one short moonwalk and improvised the ending. The second concert was 7 minutes and featured a shorter end dance routine that had a moonwalk. The broadcast combines both versions into a 6-minute mix and dubs any verses sung live before the moonwalk with the studio a cappella. To explain Jackson's disoriented appearance, David Gest claimed in his film Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon that Jackson was on drugs during the concerts. However, Jackson himself stated that he did not rehearse for the first concert.
• This Is It - One of these rehearsals was filmed completely and shown in the film This Is It. Here, the song is approximately six minutes in length and Jackson does not moonwalk during the bridge but does in the end chorus. Although it is known Jackson sang at least some parts live, the much of the vocals were dubbed from an early demo of Billie Jean in the final production.