Music and Critical Reception
Stranger in Moscow has a tempo of 66 beats per minute, making it one of Jackson's slowest songs. The song was critically acclaimed by critics and music producers. James Hunter of Rolling Stone commented " angry, miserable, tortured, inflammatory, furious about what he calls, in 'Stranger in Moscow', a 'swift and sudden fall from grace'...HIStory feels like the work of someone with a bad case of Thriller nostalgia. Occasionally this backward focus works to Jackson's advantage: On 'Stranger in Moscow' he remembers the synth-pop '80s while constructing wracked claims of danger and loneliness that rival any Seattle rocker's pain."
Jon Pareles of The New York Times stated, "The ballads are lavishly melodic. 'Stranger In Moscow', with odd lyrics like 'Stalin's tomb won't let me be,' has a gorgeous chorus for the repeated question "How does it feel?". Fred Shuster of the Daily News of Los Angeles described it as, "a lush, gorgeous minor-key ballad with one of the album's catchiest choruses"
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic noted of HIStory, "Jackson produces some well-crafted pop that ranks with his best material...'Stranger in Moscow' is one of his most haunting ballads. Longtime collaborator Bruce Swedien, has described "Stranger in Moscow" as one of the best songs Jackson had ever done. Patrick Macdonald of The Seattle Times described "Stranger in Moscow" as "a pretty ballad interspersed with sounds of rain." Further praise came in 2005 when it was felt that the song had successfully portrayed "eerie loneliness" and was characterized as beautiful by Josephine Zohny of PopMatters. Tom Molley of the Associated Press described it as " ethereal and stirring description of a man wounded by a 'swift and sudden fall from grace' walking in the shadow of the Kremlin".
Chris Willman of Los Angeles Times stated "'Stranger in Moscow', is a step removed from the focused paranoia of much of the rest of the album, more akin to the deeper, fuzzier dread of a past perennial like 'Billie Jean'. Jackson imagines himself alone and adrift in a psychic Russia, pre-glasnost, hunted by an unseen KGB: 'Here abandoned in my fame / Armageddon of the brain', he sings in the somber, constricted verses, before a sweeping coda kicks up four minutes in and the stalkee suddenly breaks his cool to wail about a desolate, inconsolable loneliness. Here, in this song, is the real genius—and probably real personhood—of Michael Jackson".
Rod Temperton, one of Jackson's songwriters from his earlier career, believes that this is his best song.
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