Michael Jackson Split Single with Surfer Joe and Frankie and the Pool Boys

There's a headline I never thought I'd write!

In August of 2022, the Surfer Joe Band was at my house and we were talking about Lorenzo's love of 80s pop, and Michael Jackson came up. Lorenzo said he had an arrangement of "Billie Jean," and wanted to record it.  They didn't have a B-side ready, so I suggested that the Pool Boys record "Beat It." And that is how the greatest novelty record of 2023 came together. Someday, the universe will have to ponder why a surf treatment of Michael Jackson came into existence. We get it, it's definitely a novelty release. But the songs have great melodies, and that always suits the surf style. We also know that MJ is rightly viewed in a harsh light, and we have no excuses, other than we enjoyed his music when it came out 40 years ago.

We did have a lot of fun doing the recording and putting the package together. We tried to match the original single art as closely as possible. I used an AI program to help identify the fonts used! In them olden days, we used to flip through thousands of pages in a font book!

You can listen and purchase the songs from Bandcamp, or stream on all the major services.

"Beat It" by Frankie and the Pool Boys

"Billie Jean" by Surfer Joe