AND WHILE WE’RE ON THAT SUBJECT: According...

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THAT SUBJECT: According to the Timex Social Club’s Michael Marshall, “Rumors” was inspired by the always active rumor mill at Berkeley High. However, fans have had a field day speculating about whether certain key characters in the song--especially “Michael” and “Tina”--are actually Michael Jackson and Tina Turner. (The controversial lyrics describe Tina as being “much too loose” while Michael is portrayed as someone who “must be gay/I tried to argue/but they said if he was straight/he wouldn’t move that way.”)

Marshall has insisted that Tina is someone from school, while a character called Susan (“That gal is 6 feet tall, she’ll knock you to your knees”) is actually Susan from the now-defunct Vanity 6. Marshall has acknowledged that Michael is based on Michael Jackson, explaining: “I’ve always been a fan of his, but back then there were always rumors about him.”

Those “rumors” were countered at a 1984 press conference in which Frank Dileo, Jackson’s manager, read a two-page statement from the singer to “set the record straight” about the singer’s masculinity and androgynous appearance.

In the statement, Jackson denied that he had ever “taken hormones to maintain” his high voice, had never had his “cheekbones altered in any way,” had “never had cosmetic surgery” on his eyes, and said that “one day in the future I plan to get married and have a family.”

Glen Brunman, a spokesman at Epic Records, Jackson’s record label, said “Michael dealt with this and other vicious rumors in a statement issued in September, 1984. We are especially distressed that individuals and media outlets, for their own profit, continue to exploit rumors confronted and dismissed long ago.”