Was Billie Jean a stolen song?

Billie Jean, as everyone knows, was not Michael Jackson’s lover. She was just a girl who tried to pin responsibility for a young child of dubious paternity on the poor man. Well, he showed her.

But, it turns out, Billie Jean might not have been his song either. Or, at least, not entirely.

In Rolling Stone’s Michael Jackson issue, Daryl Hall (one half of American musical partnership Hall & Oates) describes a conversation with Jackson in the studio sessions to record ‘We Are the World’:

On "We Are the World" we were all in the room together. He sort of clung to Diana Ross pretty much, but at one point I was off to the side and he came over to me and said, "I hope you don't mind, but I stole 'Billie Jean' from you," and I said, "It's all right, man, I just ripped the base line off, so can you!"

The song they seem to have been talking about is I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), from Hall and Oates’ album Private Eyes. One of their 11 number one hits, it was released in 1981, two years before Billie Jean.

Was its bassline really filched for Billie Jean? Here’s the evidence:

(Thanks to The New Yorker for spotting this one)