"Smooth Criminal" is the seventh single from Michael Jackson's 1987 Bad album. The song contains a fast-paced beat intertwined with Jackson's lyrics about a woman named Annie, who has been attacked in her apartment by a "smooth" assailant. It was released as a single on October 21, 1988 and peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. It was re-released on April 10, 2006 as a part of the Visionary: The Video Singles box-set. The re-released Visionary single charted at number 19 in the UK. The piece is one of Jackson's signature songs, and has appeared on numerous greatest hits albums, including Number Ones, The Essential Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection, King of Pop, This Is It, and Immortal (for the New version of song).
The song also serves as the theme song to Jackson's 1988 film Moonwalker. The single has sold over 7.5 million copies.
Read more about Smooth Criminal: Background and Composition, Music Video and Live Performances, Film Adaptation, Personnel, Chart Performance, Track Listing, Music Video, Other Cover Versions, Appearances in Other Media
Famous quotes containing the words smooth and/or criminal:
“We are born with luck
which is to say with gold in our mouth.
As new and smooth as a grape,
as pure as a pond in Alaska,
as good as the stem of a green bean
we are born and that ought to be enough....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)