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Michael Jackson · S8 E4
The Announcement
This Is It — 50 nights at the O2 Arena, London
March 5, 2009. Michael Jackson steps onto a stage at London's O2 Arena, grabs the microphone, and tells the world he is coming back.
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', Michael Jackson, live in Yokohama (1987). The opening track of Thriller performed live on the Bad World Tour. This was the planned opening number of the This Is It concert series. Twenty-two years after this performance, Michael is about to use the same song to open the biggest comeback in music history.
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', Michael Jackson (1983)
The opening track of Thriller was built on a stacked Afrobeat-influenced rhythm, with layered percussion, a driving bass synth, and the famous chant borrowed from Cameroonian artist Manu Dibango's 1972 hit "Soul Makossa." Michael conceived the entire arrangement vocally, singing every instrumental part into a tape recorder before the studio musicians recreated it. Dibango later sued and settled out of court over the interpolation. Listen for how the energy never drops across nearly six minutes, the song structured as a sustained escalation with no release valve.
Sources
Thriller album credits, Epic Records, 1982
Manu Dibango vs. Michael Jackson, copyright settlement reporting
The Deal
AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips approaches Michael with a proposal: a residency at London's O2 Arena. Michael is nearly $500 million in debt. The deal offers him a way out, but the terms are aggressive: AEG covers all production costs upfront, with the money recouped from Michael's share of ticket revenue before he sees a dollar.
Sources
Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson, Randall Sullivan, 2012
AEG Live / Conrad Murray trial testimony, Los Angeles Superior Court, 2013
“This is it. I just want to say, these will be my final show performances in London. This is it. When I say 'this is it,' it really means this is it.”
— Michael Jackson
TAP TO REVEAL: How did 10 shows become 50?
The O2 Arena, Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX
The 20,000-seat venue where Michael planned to perform 50 consecutive sold-out shows, a residency no artist had ever attempted at a single arena of this size.
This Is It by the Numbers
This Is It, Michael Jackson (2009)
A ballad Michael originally wrote as a demo with Paul Anka around 1983, rediscovered and released as a single after his death. The song was never meant to be a statement about mortality, but its title carries a weight Michael could not have predicted. A song called 'This Is It' for a show called 'This Is It,' released only after the man who named both was gone.
This Is It, Michael Jackson (2009)
The lyrics are a love song, simple and direct: Michael sings about finally finding what he has been searching for. Paul Anka co-wrote the original demo, which led to a legal dispute over credits that was settled with Anka receiving co-writing credit. Stripped of context, it is a tender ballad about arrival and certainty. With context, every line sounds like a farewell.
How many concerts did Michael Jackson originally agree to perform at the O2 Arena?
The setlist is locked, the stage design is underway, and Michael begins rehearsing at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. But behind the spectacle, something is going wrong with the man at the center of it.
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