Paris Jackson has heard the question a hundred ways. What was it like growing up as Michael Jackson’s daughter? What music do you remember first?
This past August, she gave one of her best answers yet.
Paris, now 28, sat down with host Alex Cooper on the podcast “Call Her Daddy,” in an episode released Aug. 12. When Alex asked about her earliest memories of music, Paris said it was hard to pin down.
“It’s kind of like asking a dolphin, or any kind of fish, ‘What was it like when you entered the water?’ I mean, only because it was around constantly.”
That makes sense. Her dad was the King of Pop. Music wasn’t something that showed up one day in her childhood. It was the air in the house.
And yes, that included his own songs. Back in 2002, Michael told Vibe magazine what Prince and Paris listened to at home, and his own records came first.
But when Paris named what filled those early years, she started somewhere else.
“I was raised on the Beatles catalog. I was raised on a lot of classical music. I was raised on, you know, Tchaikovsky. I always butcher the name, I don’t know if it’s Debussy or Debussy, but my dad used to say Debussy.”
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was the Russian composer who wrote “The Nutcracker.” Claude Debussy was a French composer, the man behind pieces like “Clair de Lune.”
And Debussy is the name she’s still not sure about. She says it the way her dad did, and she admits she doesn’t know if that’s correct.
The music answer comes early in the conversation, so you can hear for yourself how Paris says the name she learned from her father.
Paris Jackson talks with Alex Cooper on “Call Her Daddy”
Michael’s side of the story lines up with hers. In that same 2002 Vibe interview, he described the sound of home at Neverland, his California ranch.
“They listen to all of my music, and they love classical, which plays all around the ranch. They like any good dance music.”
For Michael, that music went deeper than background noise. In a 2007 interview with Ebony, he named the composer who shaped him more than anyone.
“Ever since I was a little boy, I would study composition. And it was Tchaikovsky that influenced me most.”
He went on to say that every piece on “Nutcracker Suite” was great. That was the standard he wanted for his own albums, where every song would be that good.
Years later, in 2021, Paris told Naomi Campbell on her YouTube show “No Filter” the same thing in one short line: “He loved classical music and jazz.” That was part of a longer list she gave, from Motown to the Beatles.
If you’ve never put the King of Pop and ballet music in the same thought, here’s the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” the work Michael singled out, performed by the Royal Ballet.
Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” music, danced by the Royal Ballet
It’s easy to forget that the man who made “Thriller” had Tchaikovsky playing around his house. Paris grew up in the middle of it. Decades later she still isn’t sure how to say Debussy, but she knows exactly how her dad said it, and that’s the version she keeps using.