“He obviously wanted to do something like that for Billie Jean and he did his own version of that groove”: John Oates agrees with Daryl Hall that I Can’t Go For That was the inspiration for one of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits

John Oates and Michael Jackson.

John Oates has reiterated a claim made by his former bandmate Daryl Hall that Michael Jackson took the groove from their 1981 hit I Can’t Go For That and used it as the template for his own Billie Jean, which was released a year later.

Speaking in a new episode of the Rock & Roll High School podcast, Oates says: “[Michael] came to one of our shows in LA and he said he liked to dance to it in front of his mirror in his bedroom. You can hear, he obviously wanted to do something like that for Billie Jean and he did his own version of that groove.”