Sonic Composing

Michael was involved in composing the soundtrack for the 1994 Sega video game Sonic the Hedgehog 3, although he was ultimately uncredited as he was said to be unhappy with the sound quality of his music on the game.

Keyboardist Brad Buxer – who worked closely with Jackson during the 1990s – revealed that the soundtrack served as inspiration for the King of Pop's 1996 track Stranger in Moscow.

He told Abbey Road Institute Paris in 2022: "With Stranger in Moscow... (Michael Jackson) calls me at 10:30 in the morning. I go knock on his door and I had under my arm a cassette player – I'd been doing all the Sega Sonic the Hedgehog cues because the way Michael works is, he'll tell Sega he'll do it and then he says, 'Brad, you do it.' Right? So I think we did one cue together with Michael. One. And the rest I had to do myself.

"So I had the cassette on me – I had 41 cues done – and I said, 'I'm sure you want to hear this Sonic the Hedgehog', and he said, 'No, just play something.'

"And I played the verse for Stranger in Moscow and then I came up with the chorus on the spot and he loved it. So in an hour and a half Stranger in Moscow was written."