Michael Jackson: an essay
I turn thirty in ten days. Which means that I was two years old when Off the Wall was released. And everybody talks about Thriller. Over the years, I’ve been on record to argue that while it was the greatest album of his career, arguably of all time, I always proposed that as a record, Bad was better. I’ve been yelled at by fellow musicians, called crazy by fellow black people, but I was just being honest. It was in Michael’s passing, however, that I was able to reflect on Thriller in a way that perhaps I never have before.
I was three years old when Thriller was released. I remember my mother bringing home the vinyl, I remember opening it up, seeing Michael in his white suit sprawled out… But what got me above all else was the tiger he was cuddling. Michael Jackson has a pet Tiger! I thought. And the first Michael Jackson song I remember listening to, now in my adult age, was “You Wanna Be Starting Something”. And like every other kid around the world who stood in front of their parent’s record players, I wanted to dance. His was probably the first music that I danced to. But Michael wasn’t the greatest entertainer who ever lived, not yet. The moonwalk wasn’t invented. At least not quite yet. So the dance moves I knew were still from Off the Wall, from “Rock with You”.
I remember my mother and her roommate sprawling all of their Jackson 5 records across the floor, my mother showing me which Jackson was hers, and which Jackson was her roommates. Her sister Greta had claimed Michael, God rest her soul. And before my exodus from being a tot, I remember the competition that had heated up. Madonna had “Like a Virgin”. Culture Club had “Karma Chameleon”. Prince had “1999”. But Michael Jackson had “Thriller”. And I was too young back then to know what “the greatest ______ of all time” meant. But I knew that that video was special. It wasn’t a video, a short film, however it is that you see it in 2009. In 1983 it was an event. You couldn’t find one person disrespecting that album. That was insane. Unthinkable.
Upon his passing, the arguments began. Was he the most famous person on the planet? Sure he was as big as Elvis ever was, as big as The Beatles ever were… But he was bigger than everybody else. Everybody else. If Madonna died tomorrow, they’re probably not going to have 1.5 million people putting in for lottery tickets to attend a sold-out memorial at Staples Center. There are so many kids now who were born after Thriller and Bad, who are very easy to say how great Michael Jackson was. And there are many people now in their 30s and 40s who casually say now upon his death that he was great.
But Michael Jackson was great. He was Princess Diana great. If the Beatles invented Beatlemania, then Michael Jackson globalized it. His image was Jesus-like; he reduced people to their knees, to tears. To spiritual awakenings. There aren’t many stadium anthems bigger than “Man in the Mirror”. Sure you have “Stairway to Heaven” and “Hey Jude” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)”… But those songs don’t make you cry when they’re performed live. They don’t tear out your heart and leave it splattered on the floor, hopeless and desperate for the angels to descend down and save it.
Michael Jackson was so big, that nobody ever cared that he lip-synched over half of his performances post-Bad. Nobody every cared that his messages seemed to be more choir-church oriented and save the world than anything else. When other artists go down this road they’re mocked and taken for granted. Which may explain why so many have started charities. It’s so much easier to talk about a cause than it is to get up on a stage and throw your entire body and soul into it.
He was so big that he couldn’t just appear on television and perform or give an interview. It had to be an event. Kissing Lisa Marie at the MTV Video Music Awards might have saved a floundering franchise. Performing at the Super Bowl saved the NFL’s halftime draw. He was so big that all of his self promo videos were shots of millions of fans around the world losing their minds. Self-indulgent? Sure, but who else had the resources to pull that off. And he was so big that he didn’t just move into a house, but an amusement park, where he would live out his life the way he wanted, whether we agreed with it or not. We can go fuck ourselves.
But all of that is just ancillary; Michael Jackson wasn’t so big because of those things. All of that about Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the moonwalker that was the golden age of the black Michael wasn’t just why he was. Michael Jackson has been big since he was ten years old. He grew up when my parents grew up. And they embraced him because he was one of them; young, full of wonder. A minority. When I was an adolescent, all of the famous prodigies flamed out. Greedy parents. Drugs and alcohol. Suicides. But they still had Michael. And he was a teenager when they were teenagers. And he had bad skin when they had bad skin. And his music matured as their musical tastes grew.
And so instead of having my own Michael Jackson to grow up with, I got Usher, and I got Justin Timberlake and some guy who used to be around called Ginuwine; artists who are really just his disciples and nothing more. Michael too was a disciple, of James Brown most notably. But he eclipsed James Brown, took his dancing and turned it into something grander. Stevie Wonder put on brilliant shows. Michael Jackson stopped shows. Prince brought the house down. But nobody could build a house like Jackson’s. Timberlake and Usher will never be able to eclipse what he did. Kanye West is way out of his league. But I digress. There will never be another Madonna or Prince, and there will probably never be another Bono. There certainly will never be another Paul McCartney. But those stratospheres I fear would be infinitely closer to catch than the territory that Michael has carved out among the cosmos. Because he became a God amongst men. And for me, for many of us, he will forever be remembered as a legend. For my mother, and many her age, he will forever be remembered as that little boy with the afro from Gary, Indiana. Maybe he wasn’t her favourite Jackson, but he is more hers than he is mine. And I suppose he is more mine than he is some of yours.