Creator Says Jacko Penned Bart Classic
February 21, 1998 © E! Online by Daniel Frankel

Here’s yet another story about Michael Jackson “collaborating” with an 8-year-old boy.
Wait, man, it’s not like that–we’re talking about Bart Simpson. Seems Poland’s King of Pop wrote the music for a tune on the 1991 novelty disc The Simpsons Sing the Blues, “Do the Bartman”–but barely anybody knew about it until this week, when Simpsons creator Matt Groening spilled the beans at the World Animation Celebration in Pasadena, California.

Die-hard Simpsons fans will, of course, remember that Jacko guest-starred on a 1991 episode titled “Stark, Raving Dad,” where he played a large white man who keeps Homer company while locked away in a mental hospital.

Jackson even dueted with Bart on that show’s musical number, “Lisa, It’s Your Birthday.”

While that episode’s credits listed Jackson by the pseudonym John Jay Smith, nearly all Simpsonites knew who the voice belonged to.

“It was always amazing to me that no one ever found out that Michael Jackson wrote that song,” Groening says. “He was a big fan of the show.”

If you recall, “Do the Bartman” was a rap-like dance number (no kidding), with Nancy Cartwright–the voice of Bart Simpson–telling everybody to “Shake your body, turn it out if you can/Front to the back, to the side if you can/Everybody in the house do the Bartman…”

Of course, careful listeners might have clued in to one particular lyric: “If you can do the Bart, you’re bad like Michael Jackson.”