"Stranger in Moscow" is a song by American singer Michael Jackson from his ninth studio album, HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I (1995).

The Daily Mirror held a "Spot the Jacko" contest, offering readers a trip to Walt Disney World if they could correctly predict where the entertainer's next appearance would be.

To steal the great achievements of the people, the accomplishments of the workers..."[18] The song was written in September 1993, while on the Dangerous World Tour stop in Moscow.

[1] It is based on the credits theme of the 1994 video game Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which Jackson and his tour keyboardist Brad Buxer were hired to compose for.

[21] Conflicting accounts state that Jackson either dropped out of the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 project following the sexual abuse allegations around this time or, chose to be uncredited in-game because of his dissatisfaction with the limitations of the Sega Genesis sound chip.

However, Jackson and his collaborators were so pleased with the result of "Stranger in Moscow" that they decided to give HIStory a full studio album as the second disc.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic noted of HIStory, "Jackson produces some well-crafted pop that ranks with his best material... 'Stranger in Moscow' is one of his most haunting ballads".

[24] Tom Molley of the Associated Press described it as an "ethereal and stirring description of a man wounded by a 'swift and sudden fall from grace' walking in the shadow of the Kremlin".

[23] Fred Shuster of the Daily News of Los Angeles described it as, "a lush, pretty minor-key ballad with one of the album's catchiest choruses".

[26] Chris Willman of Los Angeles Times stated: "Stranger in Moscow", is a step removed from the focused paranoia of much of the rest of the album, more akin to the deeper, fuzzier dread of a past perennial like "Billie Jean".

Jackson imagines himself alone and adrift in a psychic Russia, pre-glasnost, hunted by an unseen KGB: "Here abandoned in my fame / Armageddon of the brain", he sings in the somber, constricted verses, before a sweeping coda kicks up four minutes in and the stalkee suddenly breaks his cool to wail about a desolate, inconsolable loneliness.

"[28] The magazine's Alan Jones stated that the Todd Terry remix "works like a dream, and guarantees Jackson another substantial hit.

[31] James Hunter of Rolling Stone commented:[Jackson is] angry, miserable, tortured, inflammatory, furious about what he calls, in "Stranger in Moscow", a "swift and sudden fall from grace"...HIStory feels like the work of someone with a bad case of Thriller nostalgia.

Occasionally this backward focus works to Jackson's advantage: On "Stranger in Moscow" he remembers the synth-pop '80s while constructing wracked claims of danger and loneliness that rival any Seattle rocker's pain.

It was directed by photographer Nick Brandt, and filmed in Los Angeles, is focused around six unrelated people living in isolation in a cityscape on a dark, cloudy day while the rest of the world moves around them in slow motion (introducing the so-called 'bullet time' effect).