In July 1995, Michael Jackson and his wife Lisa Marie Presley filmed a music video together that the world was not remotely prepared for. The song was “You Are Not Alone.” The video showed them barely clothed, wrapped around each other in a marble temple. It premiered on 28 July 1995 on ABC, MTV and BET.
The context explains everything. They had married in the Dominican Republic in May 1994, and almost nobody believed it was real. The press had decided it was a publicity arrangement. So a year later, they answered it on screen.
The look of the video was not a director’s idea — it was Michael’s. The temple scenes are a direct homage to a 1922 painting by Maxfield Parrish called Daybreak, one of the most widely reproduced American paintings ever made. Jackson chose it, and he chose Lisa Marie.
Michael Jackson – You Are Not Alone (Official Video)
Director Wayne Isham shot it, with the theatre sequences filmed at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood and the pool scenes on a soundstage. And after Lisa Marie died in 2023, Isham finally spoke publicly about what those two were actually like on that set.
His account is the closest thing to an answer anybody has given. “They had an innocent, playful relationship that I felt was a real relationship. So it all came off fine.”
He described a shoot full of laughter. “You could see her laughing, him and her laughing, and her swimming around and coming up to the edge of the pool. It was a fun shoot. She was game for it, and she had a great spirit, and the two of them had a great time in it.”
Then the line that settles it: “It was in that newlywed fun and humor and laughter and smiles that you can see. So it was all very positive.”
“Daybreak” Painting by Maxfield Parrish – 30 Minute Documentary
And there is one detail almost nobody knows. According to Isham, the final shot of Michael and Lisa Marie in that video was filmed without the couple’s knowledge — they didn’t realize the camera was still running.
Which means the most genuine moment in the whole thing is the one neither of them was performing for.
They separated five months later.