Michael Jackson‘s “They Don’t Care About Us” music video has hit a serious milestone by surpassing one billion views on YouTube.
The defiant protest anthem was initially launched in 1996 as a single off the King of Pop’s ninth studio album, HIStory: Previous, Current and Future, Ebook I from the yr prior. On the observe, the celebrity memorably declares, “Skinhead, useless head/ All people’s gone unhealthy/ State of affairs aggravation/ All people, allegation/ Within the suite, on the information/ All people, pet food/ Bang bang, shot useless/ All people’s gone mad/ All I wanna say is that they don’t actually care about us/ All I wanna say is that they don’t actually care about us.”
Filmed on location in Brazil, the accompanying visible was one in every of two directed by Spike Lee for the music, and options Jackson marching by the streets with a large drum line of Brazilian children and youngsters. (The second clip was filmed in a jail, interposed with footage of the Ku Klux Klan, the Rodney King beating, the Chinese language protests in Tiananmen Sq. and extra to highlight human rights abuses all over the world.) The making of the video was rife with controversy, because the Brazilian authorities tried to ban Jackson from filming in each Rio de Janeiro and the Historic Heart of the town of Salvador, generally known as the Pelourinho.
Following earlier singles such because the Janet Jackson collab “Scream,” “Childhood” and No. 1 hit “You Are Not Alone,” “They Don’t Care About Us” solely peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard Sizzling 100, however sparked renewed curiosity many years later when it was used through the Black Lives Matter protests of 2014, 2015 and 2020.
Considerably surprisingly, the music video is the late legend’s second to hitch the elite membership on YouTube, following the enduring visible for the Thriller-era No. 1 smash “Billie Jean.”
Rewatch Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us” under.
