Was Annie really Okay?
“Our eyeballs had no issue being injected with shots of adrenaline when listening to this song—Michael knew exactly what was up and he slow cooked the s**t out of this piece.”
Wow… It has been a long time since I last wrote something here. Almost a year ago. How can that be?
It must be this irrational fear of writing that I don’t really get. I have a bunch of half-baked ideas sitting in the drafts oven, never quite pre-heated. The fear of judgment seems to be a bit inevitable and I tried to reason with this feeling by asking a question: Who am I trying to impress and why I am worried? Who really cares, just write. These are ideas, and sharing them with the world is what I aim for. And it didn’t seem fair to me to block myself from writing what I think is something that is enjoyable or interesting. Granted, the content goes through cycles of drafting, writing, and deleting, over months on end. But eventually, I write and publish with no goal other than to improve my storytelling and humor and with the hope, but not expectation, that you would be enjoying them.
The challenging part is that I tend to keep the drafts to myself, making it difficult to proofread and get opinions. On the upside, everything remains genuine. And I like to keep it that way.
So, what I am hoping is to steer away from staying too long without writing. I aim to be consistent, to keep writing and writing until I bleed, just like the saying goes: “Don’t just be 'a writer.' Be writing."
Alright, now back to the topic of today’s post: What is up with “Annie”?… Let us start from the beginning.
Its the 1980s. A lot is happening. The world is going banana-city with those shoulder pads. Whole Foods was founded right at the gates of the 1980s. Back then, Whole Foods didn’t require you to sell your kidney and apply for loan to buy 3 tomatoes and an organic Febreze. They were simpler times. Just simple. Words like “cool”, “bite me” started to emerge and “Yo Mama” Classics like “Yo mama's cooking is so nasty, the house flies got together to fix the hole in the window screen.” would definitely make Courtney from accounting fall in love with you, you get married, and have a triplets one of them named Chad that hates chickpeas. “Predator” and “Princess Bride” started to be a pop cult movement like no other. things were different. No one knew what was going on, but people were cooking lots of good bangers and everyone was enjoying it.
Shoulder Pads trivia
Shoulder pads were invented during the Cold War to intimidate the enemy to enhance the soldiers build but it didn’t work out because many were not able to walk through the trenches so governments released them to the public.
Did you know?
There were no recorded incidents of shoulder checking anytime on or before December 31st 1979. When the shoulder pads were introduced, there were many incidents of shoulder-checking related injuries but the hospitals couldn’t keep up so they labeled all shoulder-checking related deaths as malaria to get more research funding.
But as everyone were making sense of their lives with all the lemons they had, and regaining conscious whatever happened in the 1970s, Michael Jackson was cramped up in a studio in West Hollywood experimenting a song with an intro of 16-bit drum beats and exploring what would a gangster mixed with pop music would sound like. He initially thought would be a good B-sider on his Bad Album but all of that is about to change soon.
“Smooth Criminal” is the name of the song but it wasn’t the first name to originate from the brains of Jackson 5’s most famous member. The earlier version of this song was called “Al Capone” which make sense since year 1987 was the year of violent and mobster movies like Untouchables, Running Man, Beverly Hills Cop, you name it. The world was also having a long testosteronal hangover from the Godfather I & II aftershock making everyone think they got it together like the Corleone in their heyday. So it would make sense for M.J and maverick producer, Quincy Jones, to “explore the hard core” to bring in the audience. However, “Al Capone” didn’t catch Jackson’s nitpickiness. Putting the name of the notorious Chicago mobster was too obvious and too cliche.
Jackson had unmatched levels of attention to detail that are beyond tablets, but he knew how to keep people entertained. So he took the “Al Capone” track draft, dialed the key down a notch from B-Major lyric-heavy song into an A-minor with beat-synth focused and renamed it “Smooth Criminal.” You can never make a violent song using any major keys. He transformed it into more hard-edged sound with a pinch R&B baseline and hard rock.
As the song starts with a startling heartbeat and the synth beat fades into our ears, Jackson begins his story with a crime in-progress. He doesn’t take his sweet time to build up to the crime; instead, he starts with the criminal, moments of becoming smooth, and bloodstains pouring from the murderer's boots. He turns the tables on the usual murder mystery, shifting the focus from exploring who committed the crime to asking if the victim is okay.
“Annie, are you ok?…
“Annie, are you ok?…”
”Are you ok, Annie?”
And this, my friends, sets the premise of today’s blog.
When I was 9 years old…
I had Smooth Criminal on a VHS, trust me when I say it was a masterpiece to watch. It still is!
However, like many songs, since we didn’t have access to any lyrics in early 1990’s Iraq, I thought that he was saying something like “annonowowchi” or “aynonowootchi” and lived with it for years and years and my mind never ventured into the skill of critical thinking to ask “WTF does aynonowootchi even mean?.”
Never did I realize he was saying “Annie, are you ok?” until I read it somewhere on a CD sleeve years later or online in 2010. That discovery made me think, “Damn it Mike, that was smooth you brilliant son of a b****.”
But then the question persists and kept haunting my mind up until this moment: Who really was Annie and was she really ok?
Well…to everyone’s surprise, “Annie” was inspired by the CPR doll used for resuscitation called Resuscitate Anne or Resusci Anne/Annie. Online communities seems to be speculating that Michael attended a CPR First Aid training and the common saying, at that time, was the trainer pumping the chest of the doll to demonstrate how to do resuscitation of an unconscious individual and then ask “Annie, are you ok?” in an attempt to trigger the senses of the victim for a response.
A mold of what is named “Resusci Annie” doll used as a standard object to conduct a CPR training.
A training in-session conducted on Anne or Resuscitation Annie full mold as part of CRP training - note the title on the doll’s sleeve. (source: laerdal.com)
As an avid music listener, I have always admired the ways musicians wanted to tickle our minds with their trickery used in their songs, and let the listeners decode those to what feels right for them. I took an opportunity of this mindset to decode this song as if I am being tricked in order to “un-trick” myself.
For starters, lets establish some points: “Annie’s” presence in this song is really non-existent. We are in full confidence, and mercy, of the narrator’s storytelling. He tells us “she was struck”, we believe him. So don’t expect me to give you wild theories if they are not mentioned in the song. I can’t make you Lasagna Bolognese if you just given me an onion, a chicken’s leg, a bat’s earwax, and a screw driver. I will work with what I have from reading the lyrics.
Moreover, once I was aware of “Annie’s” doll origin and now a doll is now part of the reference, I came to realize that we never hear or notice the narration of “Annie” anywhere in the song. Michael spoke of how she was attacked as if she is lifeless, without a mouth, just like the “Resusci Annie” doll. Additionally, Michael never got a response from Annie when asked her “Annie, are you Ok?.”
These evidence establish some theories I thought about on this hot weekend afternoon:
The Theories
First Theory: “Annie” Tricked the Attacker
The narrator, MJ, sets the scene with the criminal, pre-smooth, entering through the window with his already-bloodied shoes hinting that a previous crime has been committed, unrelated to the one about to happen. This effectively builds the character of the villain and most likely a serial killer. The phrase “came into the window” alone gives us the sense a criminal act, as trespassing, and the bloodied shoes suggest darker intentions and anticipation of what is yet to come. The criminal was after “Annie.”
However, we get a hint of “Annie”’s character as it showed was a survivalist and resourceful to escape the criminal. She attempted to elude the criminal because “She ran underneath the table” but “she was unable” and then ran into the bedroom and then suddenly “She was struck down.” Now granted MJ painted a picture from opening the window all the way to the chase to the bedroom in great detail however, there was a distortion of events. “So she ran into the bedroom.” and didn’t say “ran towards the bedroom” and jumped right into her being struck. There was a gap of when “Annie” arrived to the room and the moment she was struck. Alot can happen in between.
Because of this detail gap that MJ perhaps deliberately skipped, The theory is that “Annie” has anticipated she might be targeted and has prepared a doll that is either standing or laying on her bed, the doll was “Resusci Annie.” So the “Annie” ran into the bedroom, and hid quickly and successfully. The attacker filled with haste, rage, and predetermination ran towards the bedroom and found a person-shaped entity, Resusci Annie, and struck it once or more without checking he completed his plan.
The woman, now established is no longer named Annie or it might be and we will never know, actually survived the attack and the “Smooth Criminal” is a sarcastic take on the criminal as him being a loser and “oh you’re so sMOoOooOtH” and too smooth that he killed a doll and her name was “Annie.”
MJ didn’t have any interest to reveal the surviving woman’s name, and focused on the doll, Annie, to tell us how the term “Smooth Criminal” came into fruition. That is why I put double quotation on every Annie in this theory, because it has not been established yet.
Second Theory: The Narrator is the Attacker
Now granted we can confidently say that there was indeed an Annie at the start of the song. And with this fact being our base of analysis, as the narration progresses, however, the exchange of “Annie, Are You Ok?” becomes more unconventional and more inappropriate for the events unfolding. Additionally, the narrator shifts from a third-person perspective to becoming a character directly involved in the scene by asking direct questions. below is a sample:
Being a narrator in segments from the intro
As he comes into the window….
He came into her apartment
He left the bloodstains on the carpet
She ran underneath the table
He could see she was unable
Morphing into a member of the crime scene
Annie, are you Ok?
So, Annie are you ok, are you ok annie?
Will you tell us that you’re ok?
There’s a sign in the window that he struck you
He came into your apartment
The details in narration and then those barrage of questions and enforcing details into the victim that is fighting for life seem a little odd.
What stands out is the plot is among all those unfortunate events that someone telling the victim:
You’ve been hit by
You’ve been hit by
A smooth criminal.
On a serial killer mind, this conveys a sense of pride, as if the killer views the act as a success or trophy. As Annie, in agony, lies in a pool of blood, the narrator, now revealed as the criminal, stands over her, declaring that she was struck by him, the smooth criminal.
But then the lyrics take an unexpected turn revealing a big plot twist: Annie survives
Mouth to mouth
Resuscitation
Sounding heartbeats, intimidation
This segment is placed at the very end of the dramatic saga of the crime. It conveys that medical personnel were present to help the injured Annie. The “Smooth Criminal’s” moments of glory and overconfidence do not last long, since now Annie is resuscitated, and her resurrected heartbeat is now intimidating the “Smooth Criminal.”
So in both theories; “Annie” and Annie were Okay, after all
or she might have died and I am not letting it go.
Final thoughts
Regardless of your conviction on the above theories or your opinion on Michael Jackson overall, this exercise was a fun. It allowed me to decode art and revisit a cherished memory and with those two together to write my thoughts better. Remember that “Smooth Criminal” is, to me, one of the greatest songs ever written, not only for its musical brilliance but also for its historical and nostalgic significance. Michael Jackson was, for many, an escape into Western art and creativity. A little-known fact is that during the 1990s in Iraq, when sanctions were at their highest and the people were suffering from the plight of war, lack of food, and medicine, his music soared, providing much-needed entertainment. In fact, there were local social gatherings and clubs that held Michael Jackson look-alike and dance competitions. Iraqis or anyone present during that era will now what I am talking about. Advertisements on national TV were advertising chocolate and anti car theft devices and the songs of these commercials were in the tunes of Michael’s songs but the lyrics were Arabic. Despite the hardships, people found joy, and these moments are cherished memories for me and all who experienced them. And with this post, I am here to allow them re-live it and own it.
Thank you for joining me in this Sunday morning read and if you are curious give this song a listen here