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“Tabloid Junkie”

Date assessed by the facts that “after the Christmas break” (Mike Smallcombe), Jimmy Jam said that “Michael had a concept for [the song] already and wrote the melody and the lyrics, and we brought in the completed track and did all the blurbs that feature on it,” and it would have been completed before March 27, when album mastering was completed.

Jimmy Jam, producer, “Entertainment Weekly” (June 23, 1995) (archived)

The title of ”Tabloid Junkie,” a song from HIStory: Past, Present and Future Book I, leaves little doubt as to what it’s about. ”We were gonna call it ‘Tabloid Jungle,’ because we felt like the tabloids were the hunters and Michael the prey,” says Jimmy Jam, 36, who, with his full-time partner Terry Lewis, co-wrote and produced that track, plus two others, on HIStory. ”He’s the biggest prize in the jungle, and the media’s on this mission to capture him.”

Mike Smallcombe, Making Michael

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis figured their work was complete after ‘Scream’, but Michael enquired about another of the music tracks the pair had initially proposed back in October. “We were originally brought in just for the Janet duet, but Michael really liked another of the tracks that we played for him in New York,” Jam said. “He said it sounded similar to Janet’s song ‘The Knowledge’, which he loved.”

The track in question became the foundation for ‘Tabloid Junkie’. “The song was really simple, Michael had a concept for it already and wrote the melody and the lyrics, and we brought in the completed track and did all the blurbs that feature on it,” Jam said. The song was initially going to be called ‘Tabloid Jungle’. “We felt like the tabloids were the hunters and Michael the prey, he’s the biggest prize in the jungle, and the media’s on this mission to capture him,” Jam explained.

Ryan Arnold, assistant audio engineer, Reddit AMA (April 25, 2019) (archived)

[“Tabloid Junkie”] was a song he recorded just after the Bad album. I don't know the exact year, but the version we heard initially was completely different. Jam and Lewis collaborated to change the song pretty drastically. It was a lot less harmonic and textured than what went on the final album. I believe there were around 70 something tracks by the end of it, with a couple disregarded and the tape thrown away by the end of it.

…”Tabloid Junkie” was originally called “Tabloid Jungle” and sounded mostly complete, just very dated and a slightly different lyrical focus.