Song of the Day 7/30: Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, “The Girl Is Mine”
Donald Trump’s latest excuse-cum-confession in L’Affaire D’Epstein demonstrates the depths of not just his depravity but his narcissism as well. Confronted with the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s procurer, recruited 15-year-old victim Virginia Gioffre from a job in the spa at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said Epstein “stole” his underage employee.
Two almost-billionaires arguing over ownership of a girl? The pop music archive has just the number for that. Michael Jackson wrote the tune after collaborating with Paul McCartney on a McCartney song that wasn’t released until a couple of years later, and it’s considered one of the low points of Jackson’s career, right next to his love song to a rat, “Ben.”
For some reason “The Girl Is Mine” was the first single released from Jackson’s “Thriller,” and it certainly didn’t foretell that LP becoming the best-selling album of all time. Critics savaged it, as McCartney was seen at the time as an over-the-hill purveyor of MOR schlock, which is what happens when you release a wimpy defense of writing sappy love songs called “Silly Love Songs.” Record-buyers didn’t care; it peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 in 1982. The passage has time has, if anything, made it more cringeworthy.
