Beat It

On a February evening in 1983, Epic Records sent a single to radio stations that would change pop music's relationship with rock. Michael Jackson's "Beat It" fused a hard-rock riff with a dancefloor groove, anchored by a guitar solo Eddie Van Halen recorded in two hours for free. Quincy Jones had pushed Jackson to include a rock track on Thriller, and Jackson studied "My Sharona" by The Knack for inspiration. He wanted something that would hit both schoolyards and college dorms.

Recorded at Westlake Studios in Los Angeles, the song runs 4 minutes and 18 seconds. Jackson wrote the lyrics about refusing gang violence, a message that gained extra weight when director Bob Giraldi cast actual Crips and Bloods members in the music video. The video cost $150,000, paid out of Jackson's own pocket after Epic refused to finance it. Premiered on MTV on March 31, 1983, it became a cultural landmark, helping break the network's racial barriers and turning a choreographed gang fight into one of the most imitated sequences in pop culture.

"Beat It" hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there three weeks. It also topped the Hot Black Singles chart and reached number one in Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Worldwide sales exceeded 10 million copies. At the 1984 Grammys, it won Record of the Year and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, plus two American Music Awards. Rolling Stone ranked it number 337 on its 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, later moving it to number 185 in 2021. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it in their 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Fall Out Boy covered the song in 2008 with John Mayer on guitar, taking it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, a rare feat for a cover. [edit]