Jackson came up with this song while he was staying in Moscow during his Dangerous tour. He looked outside his hotel room and saw the crowds of fans who were enthralled with him, yet didn't know him in any meaningful sense of the word. He recalled a sea of faces of fans chanting and screaming, yet he felt all alone, as if he were the last person on the planet. That and the cold, bleak urban Moscow setting came together and inspired this song.
This was the last song by Jackson to make an impact on the charts. The lyrics tell a great deal about his life and state of mind at the time, but his career was slipping by the time this song came out, and it has since been overshadowed by his legal problems.
In November of 2009, Brad Buxer, A fellow music producer, had announced in the French Magazine Black and White that the 1993 video game Sonic The Hedgehog 3 nearly featured a soundtrack made by Jackson. Michael was displeased with the video game system's sound quality, and Buxer said that "He did not want to be associated with a product that devalued his music" and had his name removed from the final product. It was confirmed by Buxer within the magazine that he and Michael had worked on chords for the video game's end soundtrack, which sounds suspiciously similar to "Stranger in Moscow."
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