Who Is It

It's pretty obvious that he's singing about the same girl from 'Dirty Diana', and in the music video it was hinted that the girl's name is Diana.

But 'Diana' is not mere metaphor or fiction, he's actually making jabs at Diana Ross, his 'mother-lover-sister' that he claimed her to be in his autobiography. See, in the song, he's singing about a girl who left him to be with someone else, and he's upset that he doesn't even know who is the guy she left him for.

Think back to 1979 - 1985, where Diana just broke off from Silberstein, and she got awfully close with Michael during that period. They went to Oscar dates together, hung out in clubs together, did intimate photoshoots together, and even spent nights together during the filming of the 'Wiz'. Michael wrote a few songs for her albums during this period, too.

In an interview, Michael boldly insinuated that the person he wants to marry is Diana Ross, but nobody took him seriously because they just thought that it was just idolization from Michael's part, sort of a cute crush or something.

Then suddenly, in 1986 Diana announced that she was getting married to Arnes Naess. Michael was upset, he admitted in his Moonwalk autobiography that he was jealous of her new husband because he has never even met the guy before, and he refused to attend her wedding nor wanted her to collaborate on a song called 'I Can't Stop Loving You' and even turned down Diana's invitation to appear on her show. A year later, 'Bad' is released and it featured a song called 'Dirty Diana', most probably 'dedicated' to Diana Ross as a way to get back at her.

In the Glenda tapes, where MJ had his phone conversation with a friend wiretapped without either of them knowing (you can find the audio tracks on Youtube -- called MJ secret phone conversations), he told his friend that an 'older woman' used him and was fooling around with other men behind his back. He also mentioned that it took him years to get over Diana, and this was right before Dangerous was released so the timing for the song 'Who Is It?" (which is featured in this album) makes sense.

Actually, if you match the lyrics of 'Who Is It?' with Michael's rumored affair with Diana, everything fits together. There's no metaphor or groupies or whatever. It's a straightfoward song about 'Diana' (Ross) breaking his heart, that's all.