"Say Say Say" is a song written and performed by English musician Paul McCartney and American musician Michael Jackson, released in October 1983 as the lead single to McCartney's 1983 album Pipes of Peace. Produced by George Martin, t…
"Say Say Say" is a song written and performed by English musician Paul McCartney and American musician Michael Jackson, released in October 1983 as the lead single to McCartney's 1983 album Pipes of Peace. Produced by George Martin, the song was recorded during production of McCartney's 1982 Tug of War album, about a year before the release of "The Girl Is Mine", the pair's first duet from Jackson's album Thriller (1982).
It remained atop Billboard's Hot 100 for six weeks and became Jackson's seventh top ten hit of 1983, breaking a record that until then was held jointly by The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Also in the US, "Say Say Say" reached number two on the R&B chart (behind "Time Will Reveal" by DeBarge) and number three on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart.[15] Billboard also stated that the recording earned "top spot as Jackson's best-performing Hot 100 chart single" after leading the US charts for six weeks.[16]
Although the song had peaked at number ten in the UK, it began to fall steadily; McCartney subsequently held an early weekday live television interview, where he discussed the song's music video. This, along with screenings of the video on Top of the Pops (which normally played only singles that were rising in the charts), The Tube and Noel Edmonds' The Late, Late Breakfast Show, helped propel the song to number two on the UK Singles Chart. "Say Say Say" reached number one in Norway and Sweden, and the single also reached the top ten in Austria, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. With wholesale shipments of at least one million units, the single was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
