“Leave Me Alone” was a Michael Jackson song made in response to multiple false and negative rumors that appeared in the media and tabloids about him, occuring more frequently following the titanic success of his Thriller album.

This photograph was leaked to the media of him lying in a hyperbaric chamber at a hospital he visited, taken by an unknown person. Stories claimed that he slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to slow the aging process on his body. Jackson later explained that he was testing out the machine out of curiosity and wasn’t in there for any lengthy amount of time.

Jackson’s purchase of a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles caused the media to label it as evidence of Jackson’s increasing detachment from reality.

Another frequent claim from the media was about Jackson’s plastic surgery, specifically his nose, which he admitted to having repaired. These stories only intensified after Jackson’s appearance following the 1984 Pepsi commercial incident that left him almost completely covered in 3rd-degree burns and with no hair. It was also “reported” that Jackson had offered to buy the bones of Joseph “The Elephant Man” Merrick; Jackson stated that the story was “a complete lie”. These stories inspired the nickname “Wacko Jacko”, which Jackson acquired the following year and would come to despise.

“Leave Me Alone” was made to act as a B-Side and was included as a bonus track on original CD and cassette issuings of Bad, but not on the vinyl edition until subsequent reissues. “Leave Me Alone” ended up as its 8th single, released in February 1989 in every region except the United States. “Leave Me Alone” charted in the Top 40 in 18 countries, and recharted again in 2006, reaching #1 in Spain.

The animated short film, which took 9 months to produce, made fun of many of these tabloid rumors and won six VMA nominations and a 1990 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.