Dangerous

Released: November 26, 1991

Recorded: June 1989 through October 1991

Length: 77:03

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Album Details

Track Listing

Album Singles

Album Summary

Dangerous is the eighth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Michael Jackson. It was released by Epic Records on November 26, 1991, more than four years after Jackson's previous album, Bad (1987). Co-produced by Jackson, Bill Bottrell, Teddy Riley, and Bruce Swedien, the album was Jackson's first since Forever, Michael (1975) without longtime collaborator Quincy Jones. Guest appearances include Heavy D, Princess Stéphanie of Monaco, Slash and Wreckx-n-Effect. The album incorporates R&B, pop and new jack swing, a growing genre at the time. Elements of industrial, funk, hip hop, electronic, gospel, classical and rock are also present. Twelve of the album's fourteen songs were written or co-written by Jackson, discussing topics like racism, poverty, romance, self-improvement, and the welfare of children and the world.

Dangerous is considered an artistic change for Jackson, with his music focusing on more socially conscious material, and including a broader range of sounds and styles. It features catchy pop hooks and choruses while also introducing underground sounds to a mainstream audience. The album's tone is noted by critics as gritty and urban, with sounds including synthetic basslines, scratching, and drum machine percussion, as well as unconventional sounds like honking vehicle horns, sliding chains, swinging gates, breaking glass, and clanking metal. Jackson also incorporates beatboxing, scat singing, and finger snapping throughout the album.

Dangerous debuted at number one on the US Billboard Top Pop Albums chart and in thirteen other countries, selling 5 million copies worldwide in its first week and went on to be the best-selling album worldwide of 1992. Nine singles premiered between November 1991 and December 1993, including one exclusively released outside North America (Give In To Me). The album produced four singles that reached the top ten of the US Billboard Hot 100: Remember The Time, In The Closet, Will You Be There and the number-one single Black Or White. The Dangerous World Tour grossed $100 million (equivalent to $177 million in 2019), making it one of the highest-grossing tours of the 1990s.

Dangerous is one of the best-selling albums of all time, having sold over 32 million copies worldwide, and was certified 8× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in August 2018. Dangerous received worldwide appraisal, and it influenced contemporary pop and R&B artists. It has been included in several publications' lists of the greatest albums of all time. At the 1993 Grammy Awards, it received four Grammy Award nominations, winning Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, while Jackson was awarded the Grammy Legend Award. Jackson won three American Music Awards at the 1993 American Music Awards, including the inaugural International Artist Award. Jackson also received Billboard Music Awards for Best Worldwide Album and Best Worldwide Single for Black Or White.

Album Editions

Original

Released 1991

Music

Collector's Edition

Released 1991

Music

Edition Notes: This Collector's Edition featured a gold CD housed in a pop-up 3D book-style package measuring about 10x10 inches.

Original - Promo

My Dinner With Michael

Released 1991

Music

Edition Notes: MTV's Most Wanted hosted a daily contest where the host asked trivia questions. A specific caller number wins tickets to attend a dinner party with Michael Jackson on the In The Closet short film set. The callers who answered correctly but was not the specific caller number, won a commemorative Dangerous CD with a "My Dinner With Michael" foil label branded on front of the jewel case.

Collector's Edition

Released 1993

Music - CD1

Music - CD2

Edition Notes: This Collector's Edition featured two discs and was exclusively released in Australia.

Special Edition

Released 2001

Music

Edition Notes: This Special Edition featured a new booklet and slipcover.

Short Films

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Back Or White

Long Version

Short Version

Racist Graffiti Version

The accompanying music video for Black Or White was directed by John Landis, who previously directed the Thriller music video (1983). It was filmed from late September to early October 1991. It was choreographed by Jackson and Vincent Paterson. It contains a Dolby Surround sound mix.

Along with Jackson, the video features Macaulay Culkin, Tess Harper, and George Wendt pictured as a family unit in the opening scene, which the Los Angeles Times criticized as "almost exactly a replay" of the 1984 Twisted Sister video for We're Not Gonna Take It. The dance scene with the Native Americans shown in the video was filmed at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park in Agua Dulce, California. The Native American dancers were organized by Jackson's schoolfriend Joanelle Romero, founder of the Red Nation International Film Festival, featuring her daughter Sage as child dancer. The Native American dancers used their own traditional wardrobe and became the first Native Americans in a non-Native American music video. The production enabled Romero to become an established producer. The scene where Michael Jackson and a dancer appear on the freeway was filmed at 11779 Sheldon Street in Sun Valley, Los Angeles. The visual effects used to morph faces into one another had previously been used only in films such as Willow and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The morphing visual effects were created by Pacific Data Images.

The video premiered simultaneously in 27 countries, with an audience of 500 million viewers, the most ever for a music video. It premiered on MTV, BET, VH1, and Fox (giving them their highest Nielsen ratings ever at the time) as well as the BBC's Top Of The Pops in the UK on November 14, 1991.

The video begins with a boy (Macaulay Culkin) dancing to rock music in his bedroom. His father (George Wendt) yells at him to stop. The boy retaliates by playing an electric guitar loudly enough to fire his father into space, to finally landing in Africa.

Jackson performs Black Or White with dancers from different cultures, including African Zulu hunters, traditional Thai dancers, Plains Native Americans, a Sri Lankan Tamil Odissi dancer  and Hopak dancers. Jackson walks defiantly through visual collages of fire declaring "I ain't scared of no sheets; I ain't scared of nobody", referring to KKK torch ceremonies. Culkin and other children (including Michael's niece Brandi; Wade Robson; and Mark Pugh and David Shelton of Another Bad Creation) perform the rap sequence. The group states, "I'm not gonna spend my life being a color." Jackson performs atop the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by other world landmarks. At the end of the video, people of different ethnicities and nationalities dance and morph into one another. A young Tyra Banks can be seen in this sequence.

In the extended version of the music video, after the song, a black panther walks out of the studio into an urban street and transforms into Jackson, who dances furiously and destroys a glass beer bottle, a building window, and a parked car. He tears off his shirt and screams with grand drama as a hotel neon sign falls. After his damage and rampage, he re-emerges as a panther. Finally, Bart Simpson from The Simpsons jams to the song while watching it on the TV. Homer yells at him to "Turn off that noise!" Bart replies, "Chill out, Homeboy." Then, Homer angrily turns the TV off. The static then cuts to a close-up of Jackson with the tagline "prejudice is ignorance".

Jackson was sharply criticized for the final scene, especially by Entertainment Weekly which ran a featured article titled "Michael Jackson's Video Nightmare". Jackson asked his fans for forgiveness, saying that the violent and suggestive behavior had been a dance-style interpretation of the animalistic instincts of a panther. Jackson ordered the removal of the video's final scenes from subsequent broadcast. In 2001, Jackson re-issued the video with the final scenes restored in a digitally altered form: the glass windows smashed are now marred with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti displaying epithets like "Nigger" and "Wetbacks", as well as a message reading "Hitler Lives" and a storefront door spray-painted with "KKK Rules", referring to the Ku Klux Klan. These alterations gave a new reasoning to Jackson's destruction of property.

Remember The Time

The accompanying music video for Remember The Time was filmed in January 1992 at the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot. Prior to the release of the video, Jackson's record label promoted it by releasing clips, as well as releasing behind the scenes clips of making the video. The nine-minute video was promoted as a short film. It premiered on ABC, NBC, Fox, BET, and MTV on February 2, 1992. After the video premiered on MTV, the channel aired a "rockumentary" titled More Dangerous Than Ever which included glimpses of the making of the video. Jackson's record label would not release the video's budget figures. Directed by John Singleton and choreographed by Fatima Robinson, the video was an elaborate production and became one of Jackson's longest videos at over nine minutes. It was set in ancient Egypt and featured groundbreaking visual effects and appearances by Eddie Murphy, Iman, The Pharcyde, Magic Johnson, Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr. and Wylie Draper, who portrayed Jackson as an adult in the made-for-TV movie The Jacksons: An American Dream and died shortly after appearing in this video.

Jackson appears in the video as a hooded wizard who enters an Egyptian palace and attempts to entertain the Pharaoh's bored Queen (Iman). Two other entertainers had previously failed, and she has sent them to be executed. The Queen sees that this wizard is different — instead of juggling or eating fire, he walks up the steps to her throne and sings to her, asking her if she "remembers the time" they were together. The Pharaoh (Murphy) hardly appreciates this move and summons his guards. The wizard hides from the searching guards, secretly met the Queen and they kissed passionately. Then Jackson begins elaborate, Egyptian-style choreography with the Pharaoh's servants. When the guards find him, Jackson turns into golden sand. This video features a physically complicated dance routine that became the centerpiece of other videos from the Dangerous album.

The music video was generally well received by music critics. Ira Robbins of Entertainment Weekly described the Remember The Time video as being a "gorgeous ancient Egyptian extravaganza". The music video appeared on the video albums: Dangerous – The Short Films, Video Greatest Hits – HIStory and Michael Jackson's Vision. The music video, along with other videos from Dangerous, was frequently shown on MTV.

In The Closet

The accompanying sepia colored music video for In The Closet was directed by Herb Ritts and features Jackson performing sensual dance routines with supermodel Naomi Campbell. The spoken vocals by Princess Stéphanie of Monaco were re-recorded by Campbell for the video. The short film was shot in late March 1992 in Salton Sea, California and premiered on April 23, 1992. The video was later published by VEVO on YouTube in 2010, and had generated more than 73 million views as of January 2023.

Jam

The accompanying music video for Jam takes place within an abandoned indoor basketball court, where Michael Jackson teaches basketball legend Michael Jordan how to dance, and in return, Jordan teaches Jackson how to play basketball. Special effects have Jackson throwing a basketball through a window and scoring in the hoop in the opposite room, as well as Jackson scoring by tossing the ball behind him and kicking the ball into the hoop with his heel. The extended versions of the video include Jackson teaching Jordan how to do the physically complicated moonwalk dance technique. The rap groups Kris Kross and Naughty by Nature made a cameo appearance, as does Heavy D, who performs a rap during the bridge.

The video was included on Dangerous – The Short Films and Michael Jackson's Vision. The music video was directed by David Kellogg and was filmed on April 20, 1992, in Chicago, Illinois. The music video premiered on FOX on June 19, 1992, at 9:30PM EST.

Who Is It

Short Film Version

Compilation Version

Directed by David Fincher, the accompanying music video for Who Is It was released in 1992. The music video was filmed in Los Angeles, California and the helicopter scene in the video was filmed at the Neverland Ranch.

It begins with Jackson in what seems to be a hotel, singing about his girlfriend portrayed by English model Yasmin Le Bon. He is distressed because he found a silver card with the name "Alex" on it. It implies that his girlfriend is cheating on him with someone else. As the story in the video unfolds, the girl takes on different identities such as "Eve," "Diana," etc. for her job as a high class call girl; "Alex" just happens to be one of them. The video alternates scenes from where Jackson is singing about his pain, to where the girl is being changed into her different identities and taking care of her jobs (mostly meeting with other men and even some women, and sleeping with them). Towards the end of the video, Jackson has packed up his bags to leave town, because of his distress. A helicopter comes to pick him up from his house. The girl comes to Jackson's house and she asks his assistant (who knows the situation and aided Jackson in his departure) to let her in. It is likely she quit the job for him and wants to stay. The assistant shakes his head, implying that he left. When she asks why, he drops a flutter of silver nameplates (including the one that said "Alex") from a slot in the door. After that scene, Jackson is seen sleeping and smoke floats out the side of the screen. Having lost her love and without any alternative, the girl turns to her profession as a call girl again. Her employer (portrayed by actress Lois Chiles) slaps her in the face and the video ends as the girl is seen being prepared for a new identity.

This version did not initially air in the USA but was included on the video albums: Dangerous: The Short Films and Michael Jackson's Vision. Another version of the video features footage from past music videos and live performances. This is the version that first aired in the USA.

Heal The World

The accompanying music video for the song was directed by Joe Pytka and features children living in countries suffering from unrest, especially Burundi. The version of the video included on Dangerous: The Short Films and Michael Jackson's Vision contains an introductory video that features a speech from Jackson taken from the special spoken word version of the track. This version was not included on Video Greatest Hits – HIStory featuring the music video. Jackson performed the song in the Super Bowl XXVII halftime show with a 35,000 person flash card performance.

Give In To Me

The music video for Give In To Me features Jackson performing the song on stage at an indoor rock concert with ex Living Colour bassist Muzz Skillings, Guns N' Roses guitarists Slash and Gilby Clarke, as well as the band's touring keyboardist Teddy Andreadis and legendary session drummer Tony Thompson. Loud explosions are later heard with visuals of stylized electrical arcs and Jackson dancing as they run down his body. The last scene shows one electrical arc running down Jackson's body, an unintentional effect that was left in. The video is featured on the video albums: Dangerous - The Short Films and Michael Jackson's Vision.

It was shot on June 25, 1992, in Munich, Germany, just two days before the opening concert of the Dangerous World Tour. The pyrotechnics appearing on the video are computer-generated and were added later on. It was published on YouTube in October 2009. The video has amassed over 145 million views as of March 2023.

Will You Be There

Original Version

MTV 10th Anniversary Version

Vincent Paterson, mostly know as a choreographer for Michael Jackson and is most notable as one of the knife-fight dancers in the Beat It short film, directed two music videos for Will You Be There. The official video included Jackson performing the song during various stops of the Dangerous World Tour while scenes from the movie Free Willy centering around the friendship of Jesse and Willy are shown. The original VHS copies of Free Willy included the music video prior to the film. The second video from Dangerous: The Short Films contained the full length of MTV's 10th Anniversary special performance intercut with the Dangerous World Tour footage and footage of the fans.

Gone Too Soon

Original Version

Alternate Version

Gone Too Soon was promoted with a short music video directed by Bill DiCicco. The footage in the music video featured scenes of Michael Jackson and Ryan White together, as well as brief coverage from White's funeral. Home movies, donated by White's mother Jeanne, were also shown in the short film. At the time of its creation, Jeanne White revealed that the video for Gone Too Soon would demonstrate how much Jackson cared for her ill son. The music video was later featured on Jackson's 1993 VHS Dangerous - The Short Films. An alternate video was released a few months after Michael's death, and was later released on Michael Jackson's Vision.

The song was further promoted with a live performance of Gone Too Soon at President-elect Bill Clinton's inauguration celebration, An American Reunion: The 52nd Presidential Inaugural Gala. The pop star dedicated his performance to White, and used the occasion to plead with the incoming president for funding toward AIDS-related research.

Podcast Episodes

Michael Jackson: 1988 - 1993

John Cameron's Musicology

Using archival interviews and never-before-heard music, this podcast episode focuses on the carrer of Michael Jackson between 1988 and 1993. From the unreleased greatest hits album, Decade, to its eventual blockbuster album, Dangerous. And we take a peek into the early sessions of History: Past, Present and Future, Book I.

Related Videos

Dangerous Album — Teaser 

An advertisement by iconic filmmaker David Lynch for the Dangerous album.

Dangerous — Commercial 

Originally a commercial for Pepsi, the project was abandoned with all Pepsi branding removed. Later published on the Dangerous: Short Films home media release.

Dangerous: Live in Bucharest — Concert 

A special airing exclusively for HBO, later released on DVD.

Dangerous: 30th Anniversary — Documentary 

A supurbly produced fan-made documentary celebrating 30 years since the release of Dangerous.

Bill Clinton's Presidential Inauguration — Performance 

Michael Jackson sings Gone Too Soon and Heal The World.

Dangerous Album Cover Imagery — Documentary

A detailed look and analysis of the iconic Dangerous album cover.

MTV Weekend at Neverland — TV Special 

The Who Is It music video contest entrants and winner announcement during MTV's Weekend at Neverland.

Michael & Ryan Hanging OutHome Video

Footage from a home video recording of Michael Jackson and Ryan White visiting in 1989.

Michael & Ryan Talking On The Telephone — Audio Recording 

A telephone conversation between Michael Jackson and Ryan White in 1989.