Michael Jackson Facts

You Are Not Alone

"During 'You Are Not Alone' Michael would always whisper 'You are not alone!' into the ear of the girl on stage."

True?

'YANA' was played during the HIStory Tour and replaced 'She's Out Of MY Life' as the song, during which a girl was allowed to go on stage and spend some time with Michael. While Michael sang 'SOOML' with a hand microphone, for 'YANA' he had a microphone attached to his head, designed to pick up every sound he made and every breath he took.

He could have held a hand microphone away from his mouth to whisper something, but with the head microphone, this was not possible. So anything he would have 'whispered' to the girl (or anybody else, for that matter) would have been projected for the entire stadium to hear.

Unless...

Unless, of course, his mic was off, and the song was a pure playback. Well...

When we talk about 'the girl on stage', we always think of Solène Lory, the girl we see in the official video of the HIStory tour. And there's something odd about it: We can't hear her. Not at all! We hear her scream while she's still down in the audience, but when she's with Michael on stage, we only hear him sing.

His microphone was certainly designed to pick up his voice and as little other sounds as possible. Still, Solène is so close to him, and she's screaming so loudly, we should hear her at least a little bit every now and then. After all, during 'SOOML' we can hear the girls, too. Only faintly, that's true, but we do hear them.

Actually, during the HIStory Tour, we never hear any of the girls. We never hear them scream, we never hear them, as they bump into his microphone, we never hear the rustling of clothes or hair as it gets entangled with the mic. And while Michael did occasionally miss a line in 'SOOML', when he was distracted by the girl, he never missed a line during 'YANA', no matter what was going on around him. Never!

And if we listen carefully, we realise that it's always the same recording we're hearing. With the same sighs in the same places. So yes, indeed, 'YANA' was a playback, and Michael's microphone was apparently off.

So, is it true after all? Secret, personal messages for the girls on stage?

The whole point about lip-syncing is to pretend that it's live. When a singer carries a microphone around, and we find he was just lip-syncing... we feel slightly betrayed. I mean, you don't go to a life show to hear a recording that you can have in a better quality at home, right?

It's true, we don't see his mouth at all points in time, but the girl would have realised that he said something that didn't come across the speakers. Even though you certainly can't hear the loudspeakers very well on stage (you aren't in a favourable position to them), when something is not projected at all, it should still be noticeable.

Solène, at any rate, hasn't reported him whispering anything to her, and otherwise she has been quite detailed about her time on stage. Nothing of what she says leads me to believe that Michael was trying to communicate with her in any way. Maybe she kept it a secret? But why would she? Basically, she was showing off. Not in a bad way or arrogant way - Not at all, actually! - but if we look at it closely, we could still say that. In such a situation, would she keep a secret? I don't think she would. If Michael had whispered anything to her, I believe she would have told us. [You find a translation of her interview (she's French) below, just keep reading. I put pictures of the German copy up in the header to show that I didn't invent this, but the quality is poor due to the small space allowed by Wattpad. I apologise for that!]

Maybe Michael whispered into the ears of other girls, just not into hers? They seem to have planned for Solène to go on stage for quite some time. Apparently, they wanted to make sure that for the official video, they were filming that night, they had a girl, who would go crazy on stage. And they did their share to make her go crazy, too. It's hard to imagine that Michael would not have said his little line to her. After all, that would probably have made her go even more crazy, right?