Curio Corner #3: Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal prototype

For many of our readers, Michael Jackson’s menacing, popping Smooth Criminal was irreversibly ruined by Alien Ant Farm nu-metal rendition of the track. For others, Alien Art Farm’s chart-topper is the only version of the song that exists.

And while Jackson’s Thriller is routinely trotted out as his masterwork – as the highest selling record of all time, this is hard to argue against – it was in the first half of 1987, during the sessions for Bad, that Jackson really flourished creatively, penning nine of the eleven tracks that would feature on the album (as opposed to his four songwriting contributions on Thriller), co-producing the album, and exercising complete creative control over the process.

Jackson was known to be a perfectionist in the studio, and in his career generally: while the entire universe was ranting about his groundbreaking Motown 25 performance, during which he unleashed the moonwalker for the first time, he was in a hotel room beating himself up for not standing ’en pointe’ for long enough during a lesser section of the routine (he probably didn’t use the term ’en pointe’). The existence of Smooth Criminal prototype Al Capone is perhaps the best example of Jackson’s meticulous nature at play. The track itself rivals anything on the entire Bad album, and shares numerous features with Smooth Criminal: the collar-popping bass line which drives the track; the lyrical paranoia (an oft-overlooked Jackson trademark); a trippy bridge section; Jackson’s stabbing vocal staccato, and a killer falsetto chorus to tie everything together. It’s basically the same song stylistically and structurally, but Al Capone is remarkably fully-formed for a track that only saw the light of day last year, buried on the bonus disc that came with the Bad 25 repackaging.

It may have ultimately morphed into Smooth Criminal, but Al Capone is still very much its own beast. Plus it’s named Al Capone, which, when coupled with the fedora that premiered around this time, shows Jackson might have been going through a bit of a gangster phase in early ’87. All child stars have them.