Alien Ant Farm, featuring Michael Jackson: "Smooth Criminal"

[Spider2024]

[wildojinx]

On a related note, did MJ ever make any comment on the AAF cover?

[Fade is a CodyCryBaby]

I mark for MJ and especially Alien Ant Farm.

[Shark]

I legitimately hated Alien Ant Farm's cover of that song. I wasn't a MJ fan or anything, that song was just EVERYWHERE after it came out. In commercials, in movies, all over MTV, in shows. Every time I heard that damn opening riff, I muted my TV and wanted to rip my ears off.

[Koda, Master Crunchyroller]

Feb 6, 2021 22:18:54 GMT -5 wildojinx said:

On a related note, did MJ ever make any comment on the AAF cover?

He was a big fan of the song itself apparently. He did originally take issue with some things in the music video, namely the kid dancing Michael’s moves wearing a face mask if I recall.

[y4j1981]

Feb 6, 2021 22:18:54 GMT -5 wildojinx said:

On a related note, did MJ ever make any comment on the AAF cover?

melmagazine.com/en-us/story/alien-ant-farm-smooth-criminal-history

I never could find out if Michael Jackson had, in fact, heard Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal,” and if he’d liked it. For his part, Mitchell always believed the King of Pop dug their cover. “I would be amazed if Michael Jackson just heard the song, even if he said he didn’t like it,” he said in May 2001, right as the band was getting ready to blow up. “But we heard through the grapevine that he really dug it. My first concert was Michael Jackson at Dodger Stadium when I was like 10 years old. I was a huge fanatic, and I never stopped being a fan.”

Baumgardner, too, is pretty sure that’s the truth. “You know, I’m sure he did,” he tells me. “Because he certainly cashed the publishing checks.”

To heighten the MJ verisimilitude, Klasfeld had Edner wear one of Jackson’s trademark surgical masks while dancing — which initially made executives nervous. “We submitted the video,” Klasfeld recalls, “and then, at some point, it came back to us that Michael Jackson loved the video, but we had to reshoot it without the mask.” So, Klasfeld brought Edner back and shot his sequence over again, sans mask. In the official Alien Ant Farm “Smooth Criminal” video, Edner is wearing the mask, although footage of the mask-less Edner still exists on the internet.

So what really happened? Klasfeld has no idea. “I heard that Michael Jackson really loved the video,” he tells me. “I don’t know what’s true there.” Meanwhile, according to Mitchell, “[Jackson] was kind of bummed when we sent the video over first, because the little kid is wearing the mask. He said he really liked the video and the song but he didn’t like that the kid was wearing the mask. So we reshot the video without the mask, and then he came back and said he liked it with the mask.”

[James Fabiano]

Wasn't this always heard in the end credits of Tough Enough?

[Hypnosis]

Feb 7, 2021 11:40:38 GMT -5 James Fabiano said:

Wasn't this always heard in the end credits of Tough Enough?

Maybe.  I did remember AAF's version of "Smooth Criminal" always playing right before Heat came on in 2000.

[Hypnosis]

Feb 6, 2021 23:01:07 GMT -5 Shark said:

I legitimately hated Alien Ant Farm's cover of that song. I wasn't a MJ fan or anything, that song was just EVERYWHERE after it came out. In commercials, in movies, all over MTV, in shows. Every time I heard that damn opening riff, I muted my TV and wanted to rip my ears off.

Mainstream songs being played in just about every form of media (wrestling, movie, and video game commercials, etc.) does get annoying after a while.

[GuyOfOwnage]

Yeah, cards on the table, I heard the AAF version before MJ's. I was only 13 at the time so I can at least claim ignorance. I preferred MJ's vocals but also preferred the heavier, more rock-like instrumentation in the AAF version. So to me, this is kind of the best of both worlds.

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

Compared to a lot of the other "ironic" covers of that era, this one actually wasn't too bad.

[A Platypus Rave]

Feb 7, 2021 17:12:15 GMT -5 Citizen Snips Has Left said:

Compared to a lot of the other "ironic" covers of that era, this one actually wasn't too bad.

from my understanding AAF really didn't want this to be a single too... the record company kinda forced them.

like it was a secret track on the album or something originally and it was just their like encore thing as a joke because their guitarist could do the WOO!