How Tyra Banks Messed Up in Michael Jackson’s Famous Music Video
Michael Jackson became iconic for creating powerful visuals for his hit singles. Aside from the likes of “Thriller” and “Remember The Time,” one of his most famous music videos is “Black or White.” The video features dozens of people singing along to the track, one of which is Tyra Banks. The America’s Next Top Model creator messed up her cameo by forgetting a key element of the choreography.
Tyra Banks appears in Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video and messes up mark
Before becoming one of the most famous supermodels in the world, one of Banks’ first gigs was in Jackson’s music video for “Black or White.” Little did she know the job would be a lot harder than she imagined, though her appearance in the visual was brief. In a 2019 interview with Access Live, Banks explained how her being overly confident backfired. She said:
I remember all of us in a room, and I was 17 years old, I hadn’t even had my big push in Europe yet. I was just a local high school girl that was a model and I got cast for this. They put us all in a room and they were like, ‘OK, here are the dance moves, this is what you have to do.’ I’m in there for about two minutes and I’m like, ‘I got soul, I got this’ so I walked out. Very cocky, I walked out like ‘I got this.’ Then I get on set and I think the director was John Landis, which is like a legendary director. And they’re like ‘OK’ and they turn up the music and I forget the move….and they kept it. So I got rewarded for my bad behavior.”
Where the concept of the music video came from
The video for the single was considered to be an ambitious undertaking for its time. Known for pushing the boundaries with visuals, Jackson took it as another means to produce a short film to drive home his message.
An extended prologue stars Home Alone standout Macaulay Culkin as a boy whose father (George Wendt) becomes angry with him for playing loud music past his bedtime. Culkin gets revenge by plugging a guitar into a large speaker in his bedroom, blasting his father’s voice out of the house and across the world.
The main visual embodies the song’s lyrics for racial and cultural unity. Jackson is seen on the plains of Africa, the Vasquez Rocks in California, and outside traditional Russian architecture singing and dancing with people of different cultures and backgrounds. Throughout the video, individuals of different races morph into one another and lip-synch the song pressed against a simple background.
“I wanted to do a dance number where I could just let out my frustration about injustice and prejudice and racism and bigotry,” Jackson told MTV in 1999, per his website. “Within the dance I became upset and I let go…At the time, people were concerned with the violent content of the piece, but it’s easy to look at.”
The song was a political statement and performed well commercially
“Black or White” was released in 1991 as the first single from the icon’s eighth studio album, Dangerous. The song features a fusion of pop-rock, dance, and hip hop during Jackson’s time on Epic Records.
It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 within a few weeks, making it the fastest US chart-topper since the Beatles’ “Get Back.” It stayed at the top of the charts for seven weeks.
Eventually, it was certified three times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It also topped the charts in 20 countries, including the UK, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Turkey, Zimbabwe, and Australia.
