Not getting the Michael Jackson love

Do you dance? Do you like R&B? People still listen to Marvin Gaye, Notorious BIG, Otis Redding, James Brown, The Commodores, Prince, Madonna, etc.

Jackson was never profound, and your reference to artists who had pretensions of profundity is not the same. I don't think in dorms still listen to Elvis, but that doesn't mean Elvis isn't Elvis.

I spin Elvis in my dorm!

Thriller definitely holds up.

I hope you play this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdRCX...eature=related

I fucking will now.

Is that Vincent Price playing a conga in that Fun in Acapulco cover!?

I went out to a bar last night. It was scheduled to be 80's night but became MJ Night. The HIStory DVD was playing on a screen, Michael Jackson music was constantly playing and the place was packed. People were LOVING it. Some of it had to do with nostalgia but, honestly, his music is insanely danceable.

There were people of all different walks of life mimicking Jackson's moves on the floor. Total strangers were giving each other pointers on how to dance like him. It lasted all night and people were really, really enjoying themselves.

I can't think of another artist whose hits are more enjoyable in a bar/club. Even today, even with the stuff that people dance to these days, nothing comes close. So it doesn't feel old at all to me.

I was vaguely annoyed at how upset people got about this death at first, but having spent the last 36 hours hearing his songs seemingly nonstop, I have to admit, they're pretty goddamn good, and hell yes, they're danceable. I guess I forgot somewhere in the years of kiddie touching. Everyone's been having a great time listening to these songs we all used to love, talking about how great he was, and cracking the filthiest rape jokes imaginable, so I've reversed on the respone. It's great!

By the way, that Neil Armstrong joke is probably one of my favorite jokes ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvYygjcMDdQ

Yeah yeah, I know. But I was a kid when Free Willy came out, and god damn it this song is so stuffed full of emotion. This is the song I thought of when Mikey died, after Thriller that is.

EDIT: Reading that previous post about the bar, I had the same experience in Vancouver. It makes you have to back away and think every single person in this packed bar is loving this, and every single person in that bar even if they weren't sad about his passing per say, and even if they didn't know it themselves, were deeply impacted by this one man. It's amazing to think about.

I find people who don't get the love for Michael Jackson hard to get. If you had any fun memories from the eighties odds are that some of Jackson's songs are somehow associated. He was a huge presence to a level that today's artists cannot achieve again. Not to mention that his songs are among the best pop ever made. His degeneration into being a creepy joke can diminish what he accomplished but could never outright erase it.

I think a huge part of what made him so successful and great, is that he felt so insecure about everything else. To him music was the thing that brought him attention and love, while everything from family to relationships fell apart. In the end, it's what he put his heart and soul into. Even his obsession with his looks was more about trying to repair an inadequacy as opposed to a promotion of vanity.

I can't see anyone on MTV right now caring about anything other than the way they look and their image.

If you don't get the Michael Jackson love, then you probably don't remember that he changed the face of music and music videos and influenced almost every pop star you see today. To me, the guy has all the hallmarks of a legend.

I was unaffected by Michael moonwalking his way out of existence, but I was never a fan, so... I just can't be forced to care. At least some people are managing to enjoy themselves as a result of his passing in a positive, albeit, fundamentally strange manner... but such are the by-products of a culture that worships money, celebrity, and death. I suppose I could dance to that if a gun were put to my head.

I'll use this thread to throw out my obligatory love for Dangerous. It deserves the same worship and accolades along with Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad.

Listen to it today. It sounds just as fresh as anything Kanye West or Ne-Yo are putting out. And it has a hell of a lot more juice and energy than just about anything on the pop modern scene.

MJ was way ahead of his time--musically and culturally. It's too bad his demons ultimately shadowed and detoured the plateau he could've continued to reach.

Even Invincible has some good shit. If only the album weren't so overstuffed.

Quincy Jones deserves a hell of a lot more credit for MJ's success than he will ever receive.

How old are you Uth?

Very...

No offense or anything, I'm just trying to gauge where your mind would be when Jackson hit the scene.

None taken. I was 11 when Off The Wall came out, so at that time I would've been mostly listening to Hendrix, Sabbath, The Doors, Zeppelin, Nazareth... on the heavier side of things. My ragged Star Wars sountrack would've still been prominent in the rotation at that time as well, along with my favorite classical artists that I'd sneak out of my grandfathers collection - Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky... I've just never really been into pop music that much.

I didn't particularly dislike him or his work, it's just something I was never into. His talents were indisputable, and he's certainly going to be long remembered as one of the greats of pop music, but that's about all I can muster insofar as any semblance of enthusiasm. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm trying to piss on his grave or something, because I'm actually quite pleased that so many people have a huge distraction such as this to focus on instead of everything else we've been worrying about lately, it's just something I have no interest to participate in. Although I wish I could, seeing as I definitely would stand to benefit from some distraction from the world myself these days.

The music you mentioned is pretty much all I listen to.

Yet somehow, Jacksons music has that something special to grab my attention.

The thing is, I bet you anything a good chunk of those people dancing last night hadn't listened to a Michael Jackson song in years. I'm pretty sure the first thing that popped into the minds of the sheep outside the hospital and Neverland wasn't "Oh, Thriller was a great album!" There's a lot of people glomming on to these songs simply because it's the hip thing to do right now. A lot of those CDs getting sold on Amazon are gonna end up dusty in the back seat of someone's car in a month or two.

I'm not saying the music isn't good and that Jackson doesn't deserve the reputation he has from them. But people aren't going back to the songs right now because they're rediscovering timeless classics. They're leeching off of current events.

My kids are 9 and just about 14. They knew Michael Jackson as the vaguely-alienish guy who talked like a girl. Their whole lives he was nothing but an oddity. Occasionally one of his songs would pop up on the ipod while we were in my car, and they would ask who it was, and when I told them, they would respond "he's so weird." That's who he was to them. Which sucks.

Yesterday we spent about an hour watching his videos on YouTube, and both kids had me rip OTW,Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous to their ipods almost immediately after. I don't think they are "leeching off of current events", but what just happened was certainly the impetus for them becoming finally interested in his music.

Oh, I don't doubt that recent events will spur a legitimate interest in his music in some. But I think just as many will get over that interest as soon as the story is out of the headlines.

Michael gets played in every club I've been to in the past 5 years. He has a huge following to this day. I'm sure there are people just going along for the ride, but MJs music is timeless.

My parents used to run a vending machine business in the 80s and they had a showroom where people used to play arcade games and jukeboxes. My dad told me a story on how people played Thriller non-stop and he made tons of money from MJ.

We even got into a small argument because he remembers me dancing as a baby to the Thriller album. I told him that was impossible. I was born in 1983, the same year Thriller came out. People were still playing that on jukeboxes years later.

People are disinclined to be seen in public speaking ill of the famous recently dead. See also: the media coverage immediately after the deaths of Presidents Reagan and Nixon.

Give it two weeks, and all the blogs and stand-up comedians will go back to cracking jokes about how Michael's in Heaven now, touching the cherubs inappropriately.

Almost every club I go to, even the ones that play modern music pretty much exclusively, has played michael jackson at some point. In fact, there're few songs more certain to get everyone up and dancing than Thriller or Billie Jean.

What's weird about his passing for me is that I just bought a few of his albums a month ago. The last time I owned Off The Wall and Thriller was when cassettes were still barely relevant, so I decided it was about time I'd revisit the man's career. It was a wise move. OTW is probably my favorite of the two, although, I thought the opposite as a kid.

I still need to repurchase Bad and maybe Dangerous.

And I still like his music video for "Scream" with Janet. It's not a great song, but I think people don't give it enough credit.

Being a burgeoning "serious" Rock Music listener in junior high/early high school (which amounted to classic rock stuff, U2, a little R.E.M.), I was at exactly the wrong age to appreciate Bad, and I'm still not overly in love with it. And this disenchantment (along with further revelations about his offbeat personal life) probably prevented more enjoyment of his later stuff, as well.

But I was at exactly the right age to appreciate Thriller a few years earlier, and it mostly holds up very well. Even if "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" have become unavoidable cultural touchstones more than songs for many of us, it's hard to deny the less-often-played singles, like "Human Nature" and "P.Y.T." as great pop songs.

But, still, the truly indisputable stuff is his work with his brothers. Even if his solo material doesn't grab you, the best of the Jackson 5 material is as perpetually relevant and refreshing as any of the pop hits by The Four Tops, Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and the other great Motown artists. In fact, I was listening to Love Train, the Philly Soul boxset the other day, and "Enjoy Yourself," a track by the Jacksons from that period between the classic Jackson Five era and Off the Wall, came on. Considering what came before and after, it's surprising that this incarnation of Jackson and his brothers doesn't really get any play at all - it's that early exuberant pop mixed with Michael's Off the Wall/Thriller young adult voice. I need to seek more of this stuff out.

Smooth Criminal is the shit.

True Dave, that era gave us Can You Feel It, still probably one of my favorite songs with the Jackson name attached ever. A really fantastic era of theirs that never really gets looked at because Michael segued into Off The Wall so soon after that.

God damn Harley I gotta say when I was 11, that song was just about the coolest thing that could possibly exist ever. I hadn't listened to it in years and years until last night and the nostalgia kicked in pretty hard when I did. I think a lot of people are remembering just how important Jacksons music was in their worlds growing up this weekend.

I'd kinda forgotten to be honest. I still enjoy listening to Off The Wall and Thriller as an adult from time to time, but I'd kinda forgotten how huge Bad was to me as a boy.

When he did the lean in the Smooth Criminal video, I lost my mind when I was little. My little sister and I used to try to do it all the time, only to fall right over and nearly break something. That song, the video, his killer outfit in the video...I just loved that thing so much as a kid.

It's been great watching all of his videos all weekend long. I think I've seen Thriller about seven times on TV since the news broke, and it doesn't get old.

I reckon I nearly dislocated my ankles trying to do that lean move over and over again.

Poxy, death is always a great commercial for an artist's work. Why even make this point?

When he was big in the 80s I was in my heavy metal phase, so I was never a fan. In later days I learned to appreciate his music, though I was still not a fan and never sought to listen to his songs.

For me, MJs best stuff was with the Jackson 5.

I go out dancing all the time. Literally every weekend. Sometimes Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Have for a while now. I would be hard pressed to name a Friday, Saturday or Sunday where they don't play either The Jackson 5 or Michael Jackson. I Want You Back, ABC, Rock With You, Dancing Machine, Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), Don't Stop til you Get Enough, Wanna Be Startin' Something, Billy Jean, Thriller, and PYT is like DJing 101. You play that and people dance.

Last night I killed Dancing Machine. That's a workout.

Well if nothing else I've learned that Dre loves gettin' his boogie on.

Nice.

My DJ friend Scott said the other day "You talk like a Sociology professor, which doesn't really fit with you on the dance floor. Very strange."

God, yeah, the lean is incredible and to this day I have yet to see a dance move that incredible. It seemed to defy physics.

His music was incomparable. His dancing doubly so.

I'll always drop a billi jean remix when i can. gets people Bumpin!

It does defy physics. Which is why Michael Jackson held the patent on these:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/0...ksons-pat.html

If I could walk, I'd so want a pair!

I also don't get people who don;t get this. Yes he turned creepy and kind of irrelevant after a while but that doesn't really diminish Off The Wall, Thriller, or Bad. They're still classics.

As as American pop icon, Jackson's up there with only Elvis and Sinatra; among other things, he shared their ability to command the loyalty of his fans even at those times when he wasn't producing quality work.

As a Motown singer, he was one of the greats, maybe a notch or two below Marvin Gaye and Levi Stubbs, for all that he was practically learning the songs phonetically.

As a composer-performer, his place is a bit more problematic. Off the Wall and Thriller are epics, but after that there's a little more than an album's worth of material that would have made the cut on either of those two albums. Not terrible, but nowhere near the standard of those two.

Listing the great black American musicians of the 20th century, I think I could maybe squeeze him into the top five (behind Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, James Brown, and Chuck Berry). On the other hand, I'm not sure how I'd justify ranking him ahead of, say, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, or Stevie Wonder (just to name a few).

In the end, maybe ranking isn't important. The guy mattered, in a way that only a select few musicians ever do.

Jackson qua icon transcends Jackson qua artist. Stevie Wonder aces him as a musician. But Stevie didn't do what Michael did. In box office and in other ways there's a commodification of success that has nothing to do with impact. We've just seen a sequel make $200 million in five days. It's quality is not a function of that success. How we process pop culture has changed. But Michael Jackson, with Thriller, etc. was revolutionary in pop culture. Whatever pop culture image one associates with the 1980's, a one gloved man moonwalking is top ten material. Just as Titanic was a cinematic phenomenon, whereas the film itself may not have been one of the best films of the 90's, that takes nothing away from it's galvanizing appeal.

I think what's happened with his death is that the pop culture zeitgeist is finally able to celebrate Jackson's musical contribution without the creepy, bizarre and downright ugly context of his fucked up personal life. The man was it for a period in the 80's - his beats were the best, his songs were the best, his moves were the best, his style was the best. I rocked a white glove when I but a wee lad not because I knew his music (I didn't) but because I thought Captain EO was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

All that had been eclipsed by his descent into a living caricature of celebrity. There is a sound bite on Roots Manuva's first album (or one of his first), I have no idea what it is from. It's an Arabic man (I think he's Arabic, his accent is pretty pronounced) asking some guy what Michael Jackson's problem is. He answers his own question by saying 'America makes Michael Jackson hate himself for being black.' I know that might sound extreme, but I think in the context of his career, it holds validity. He was going to sell 100 million records when 'Bad' dropped. He really believed that. When it didn't match Thriller's success, I don't think it's unreasonable to conjecture he fully embraced his epic program of 'de-racialization' and drastic plastic surgery. It was the pursuit of the ultimate form of celebrity, Jackson as the undisputed King of not only Pop, but of Music, Style and Fashion (culture?) that warped his thinking. The cocoon that his celebrity afforded him, growing every more remote, only exaggerated the process.

But now he's dead, and we can leave all that to the historians and sociologists. Nothing will burnish a career, while forgiving it's failings, like a pre-mature death. In the cultural landscape today, Michael Jackson is moonwalking, hopscotching across an illuminated sidewalk, traveling through space and just generally killing it (my apologies) with his superhuman skills. Everything that followed is diminished and ultimately rendered irrelevant. I'm not saying that this is right, or admirable, but it is reasonable. Popular culture has reclaimed Michael Jackson as he once was, before the megalomania and rumours and lawsuits: he was once the most talented man in the world.* This is why we put young Elvis on the stamp instead of old Elvis, it's why Marilyn Monroe is damn near a Jungian icon of sexuality and desire despite being drugged up and used by the end, and it's why Heath Ledger won an Oscar (no disrespect, as they say). Jackson's case is unique in that he ascended higher than anyone else (Elvis comes close, but he's not global on the scale Jackson was), and he fell further. Now that he's gone, it's as if all that weight bearing his cultural holographic imagery into the depths of mockery and disgust has been jettisoned.

This doesn't excuse him, if the allegations against him are true. In that case he is a monster; a sick and needing monster, but a monster nonetheless. In the shadows there will always be a shadow of Jackson as Grendel, the warped offspring of a lustful parent (although in this abstraction, the parent is played by a celebrity-stricken society). His physical transformation only serves to highlight this disjunction. Perversely, this dynamic acts to heighten the cultural and popular response to Jackson as he was, as opposed to as he became. Dig too deep into his tragic narrative and this same cultural/popular framework begins to appear deeply corrupt, destructive and ultimately empty.

But society is a funny thing, and perception becomes reality. He is now idealized in the hopes that the darker meanings of his downward spiral can be simply replaced, with the notion a young kid defying physics through sheer will and imposing his talent on a world that desperately wanted it.

*not literally, but in the context of the cultural mediasphere, sure

**wow, I don't really know what made me write all this. not a huge fan, I don't mourn his passing, but the social aspects of it are ripe for conjecture, I guess.

I can't think of any other artist where it became a hyped-up "event" to premiere their latest epic music video. The last time we got that from Jackson was You Rock My World back in August 2001 and the uncut version played in rotation on MTV, VH1, BET, etc. that day. It's shit like that which I'll miss the most from the man.

It's also amazing looking back from that whole period from late '82 when Thriller was released to the end of the 80s with Bad and its worldwide tour. Damn-near everything he had a hand in was a monster hit - not just Thriller, its singles and music videos.

You had Say-Say-Say for Paul McCartney's '84 album (I forget what it was called), the back-up vocals on Somebody's Watching Me, the now infamous Pepsi commercials, Victory with his brothers and its tour, USA For Africa/We Are the World, Captain E/O, etc. What other artist could continue to sustain such high-levels of success for such a long period?

That's the most mind-boggling thing about Jackson - especially compared to artists nowadays.

That "what's wrong with Michael Jackson?" bit is from Three Kings, Zhukov. Great dark little comedy, worth checking out.

Indeed, I love that movie. Now I know. Half the battle.

I sure do ramble on when Im drunk.