Bad is the title track from Michael Jackson's seventh studio album, released in 1987, and it became one of his defining songs of the late 1980s. Its opening, with a tense, percussive build before the main groove, helped establish the song's streetwise, confident tone in both the recording and its famous music video. The intro has since been sampled, quoted and reused in countless edits, dance videos and reaction clips online, where its instantly recognisable rhythm works as shorthand for attitude, swagger and a dramatic entrance.