The first of his hits i can really remember being popular in my lifetime was "Will You Be There" and seeing the video on MTV and not questioning that he was white. I mean, from the late 80s to early 90s he still looked like a real person, just with too much makeup on. So at the age of about 8 or 9, I was watching old videos from the pre-MTV era on VH1 and after "Dancing Queen" and some kinda Chaka Khan came "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough," the first time I ever heard what has since been my favorite MJ song.
The video began. A black man was standing at the center of the screen. He looked up and began the spoken-word intro. He sounded like Michael Jackson. "Mom! I thought Michael Jackson was white!" I had to get "the talk" about how Michael Jackson used to be black, but now he's white, and we don't really know why, he's just a really weird guy and he decided to make himself white.
lynette, your rant is very uncultured. When I tell the story of my favorite MJ moment to the high school kids at work, I make the connection that "you can't remember Michael ever being normal. When you were 9 his big hit was You Rock My World. When you saw that video on MTV you had to be thinking in shock and horror 'why is this freak singing such a horny love song?!?!?'"
But you do realize this guy's career goes back to the 60s right? Since he died, I put the 29 MJ songs on my iPod on one playlist. 12 of them were from before Thriller, 6 of them are from Thriller, and the other 11 were after, and of those 11 almost all of them are skippable (I don't even have the song "Bad" among them and am in no hurry to add it). The guy was still untouchable for about a decade after Thriller. But his heyday was everything leading up to that point.
It doesn't take much research to figure out Michael was a weird ass dude, perhaps the most fucked up person in the 20th century. It is obvious the guy was crazy, I think he knew damn well he was crazy and was ashamed of his failures, after being blessed with so much talent...otherwise he wouldn't have gone so far to lie and put on the show that he was a normal guy. He couldn't relate to the fact that we looked at him and knew his skin became white unnaturally, and like the child in arrested development he was, tried to lie it off and say "oh i have vitiligo."
He became a Big Lie. And it's unfortunate that the greatest entertainer of an entire century lived such a tragic life. But when we look at his life as a tragic tale, we see a man blessed with awesome gifts and incredible genius, who made the fateful decision to disown his brothers, and it was all downhill from there. Excepting Thriller, his best music was with The Jacksons. Instead, after conquering the world with Thriller he took on the challenge of topping it. I guess he decided the only way he could top it was to make himself white, and show people once and for all that there was no difference between black and whte.
And incredibly, he actually DID. For those few brief fleeting years between "Smooth Criminal" and "Will You Be There" Michael was whiter than me but every bit as cool and smooth as the guy who sang "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" and "Billie Jean." We all knew he was crazy. We all wished he didn't do it. But we still loved the jams.
But all we wanted was to see him dance. "Scream" and "You Are Not Alone" were huge hits, even after the freak show. But the genius was gone. He couldn't relate to the real world anymore, emotionally or sexually. "Scream" was catchy, but angry. We didn't want Michael to be angry, we just wanted him to dance. "You Are Not Alone" was a universal song, but it was written by R. Kelly, not Michael who could no long relate to the real world sexually. You're right Lynette, the semi-nude scenes with Lisa Marie were probably just a front. Maybe she was even paid to marry him for a few years. Maybe she did care about him and just wanted to do him a favor. Maybe she thought it would work but then married him and realized how fucked up and disgusting he was and couldn't love him. We don't know, but I would tend to agree with you that it was all a front. The man was living a lie.
But we should learn lessons from the extremes of Michael's life, not just say he was a freak and ignore the circumstances, and the POSITIVE impact he had. And if you do not believe he had a positive impact on the world, whose ass has your head been stuffed into the last two weeks??? The man shared his gifts and talents with the world. Twenty years from now we will still have the music, and the freak show will be an interesting story. 100 years from now he will be like Mozart or Van Gogh. And we will still have the music.
And have you ever listened to the music, Lynette? If you have and don't like it, you have horrible taste, If you only know a handful of the songs everyone knows and don't realize what the big deal is, you need to understand this guy was a star for 15 years before anyone realized there was something terribly wrong. The Jacksons have been overshadowed by Michael's solo career, but they were consistent hit machines throughout the 70s. They aren't the songs that keep getting played, but people in their 50s and up remember growing up dancing to songs like "Blame It On The Boogie" and "Dancing Machine" and "Shake Your Body" and "Workin' Day and Night."
And you're totally off the mark with the moonwalk. Yes the move had been around for a long time, but no one did reguarly because it was just a novelty. Michael, because he was supremely gifted and otherworldly creative, was able to incorporate it into a dance routine and using technologically advanced shoes, was able to PERFECT the move and actually use it on national televsion instead of to get some cheap cheers at the bar. It's no secret that James Brown is the one that taught him the move when he was still a teenager. It took him almost ten years to get it right. Once Michael figured it out, it took off and many others learned it, but it's still not like you can learn it if you're not an excellent dancer. And it can't be done well without the right shoes on the right surface.
It's like if Gaylord Perry decided to teach a 1st round and 20th round draft pick the knuckleball, and at 18 each of these pitchers trained to be a knuckleball pitcher in the minor leagues, the 1st round pick who has greater physical gifts will be more likely to master the difficult pitch. You call it his "little moonwalk thing" like it was easy to do. It is one of the most complicated dance moves there is. And can we not give a guy a little credit just for being a trendsetter? When he was 16 he busted out one of the simplest dance moves ever, when he and his brothers did "the robot" to "Dancing Machine."
I agree he was "a creepy MoFo," but he was also the shit. Ma'am, you ought to pay some respect where it's due.
R.I.P. Michael
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