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"Leave Me Alone"

Date range (Westlake Sessions for the “Bad” album) confirmed in Mike Smallcombe’s “Making Michael” (“In August 1986, after more than two years of on-off work, Michael was ready to join forces with the A-Team again, as he felt he had enough material to present to Quincy… In November 1986, Michael flew to New York to film a video for ‘Bad’. It was the first time he filmed a video while an album was still in production, keeping him out of the studio for many weeks… With the ‘Bad’ video complete and the Christmas break over, Michael and the A-Team resumed recording at Westlake in early January 1987… Final mixes were completed on July 9, and the next day Bruce Swedien took the tapes to Bernie Grundman’s for mastering.

Michael Jackson, “Moonwalk” autobiography (February 1, 1988)

I worked hard on the song, stacking vocals on top of each other like layers of clouds. I’m sending a simple message here: “Leave me alone.” The song is about a relationship between a guy and a girl. But what I’m really saying to people who are bothering me is: “Leave me alone.”