Though it's been a mere six hours at this writing since the news was confirmed that self-proclaimed "King of Pop" Michael Jackson was dead at age 50, everybody and their mother (well, if their mother is of a certain age) has already weighed in with their thoughts on the meaning of his career, life and death. So why shouldn't I join in?
It's hard to reconstruct now, 26 years after the fact, but at the time "Billie Jean" first hit the airwaves, it sounded like nothing else before it. It sounded, well, ominous, but incredibly catchy at the same time. A brilliant song, and everyone responded to it. And then there was the rest of Thriller. Hit after hit after hit. Unlike now, when music stations and charts have fractured into a million subgenres which never find a common audience, everyone heard these songs. And everyone saw "Thriller" the music video. As the line goes, "No mere mortal can resist / the evil of the thriller."His music also fit the mood of my high school. I always thought of my group of friends as the "not reallys" - not really fitting neatly into any particular clique, category, or race. So Michael Jackson, together with Madonna (who "sounded black") and Prince (who simply enjoyed tweaking everybody's expectations and minds) made the perfect soundtrack.
And the last 26 years? Not so good. It was another four years before Michael Jackson would release another album, and I didn't like it. The one after that was even worse. And then there was the clusterf*ck that was his life... the bizarre marriages, the animals, the money wasted, the dangling baby, the plastic surgery, the lawsuits, the allegations of sexual abuse against children... it went on and on.
I think part of the reason I'm finding it hard to stop thinking about his life and death is that it's sobering to think that he had basically completed his best work by age 25. And that was pretty much it. 50 was young to die, but it was still a quarter century past his peak. He spent more half his life disintegrating in public.
I don't think it had to be that way, and it's a shame that it did (and I feel even worse about his children. Imagine living with that ghost floating over your shoulder for the rest of your life.)
In the meantime, I'll dig into my music collection and pull out my favorite Michael Jackson songs: "Working Day and Night", "Shake Your Body Down to the Ground", "Off the Wall", and "Don't Stop Until You Get Enough". And I hope that even the "haters" can recognize that once upon a time, he really was a genius.
Edited to add: It's also strange to realize that our president is two years younger than Michael Jackson was, and that he must have also grown up with his music as a soundtrack....
