Getting hot in here. Man listen, I just wanna see Mike hit that lean shit. I have no idea how cats were comparing his skills to Usher. Or even Hammer. Mike is king.
UPDATE: Better still...
UPDATE #2: This vid was sent to me by reader Dominic Bearfield. Thanks for looking out.
« Spoiler Test | Main | Why bother » Water break04 Dec 2008 02:00 pm Comments (55)
One man, Q. Quincy produced Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad. 
Aaawwww man, truly one of the saddest figures in American History, the demise of Michael. Although, thanks to the internet, we can always freeze him in time and forget the last 15 years did not happen. As for how black folks feel about him, as a Mexican dude I can't say but I can offer some opinions on the subject from a few black guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h1euQKJsr4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEHVR9Hj_b0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er1Pm37yX08
Fighting Words: we think he's a smooth criminal. But seriously, I haven't found many black folks who think he's unequivocally guilty. And a lot of people blame his weirdness on his abusive father. As for this black person... well, I used to think he wouldn't have been able to get away with anything if he really were guilty, but then I saw R Kelly get acquitted. So I don't know *what* to think any more.
I loved Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, and even Dangerous. But man, it is just so sad what happened to him. He didn't commit career suicide, he committed career annihaltion.
Ironically. a conversation veered toward Michael this weekend and as we were discussing the 80's I had to ask, what did people think when Michael was becoming a white woman? I was born in 86 so my frame of reference is skewed. I was an avid Michael fan and even owned the Moonwalker tape (still got it, just no VHS), yet it never phased me that the little boy with the bell pepper nose singing "Ben" was the white woman with "good hair" singing "Liberian Girl." I asked around and to a man, EVERYONE felt the same. To those who were truly cognizant in the 80's and had watched Michael from jump, was it weird for you? sidenote: Listen to "Human Nature" and tell me its not about child molestation. Damn Joe!
Would Michael Jackson have been much happier if gay marriage had been legal in the 70's and 80's? Oh, how many albums have we lost due to our bigotry? How many Captain EOs have we been denied?
I'll tell you what this white guy thinks of Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson couldn't carry Lionel Richie's sequined shirt. Heeeeeyy Jumbo Jumbo!
No mention of his conversion to Islam?
Jaybird, pedophilia /= homosexuality. And really, only God knows what's going in in Michael Jackson's head. Born in '75, Sara, and it was freaky. I was too young and didn't really think about his plastic surgery when Thriller came out. Posing next to a tiger and having a monkey named Bubbles seemed perfectly reasonable when I was ten or so. Then "Bloom County" (think Doonesbury, but more 80's-ish) started picking up the stories about his nose and the like and it was funny. By the time he was grabbing his crotch and hitting cars with crowbars it was more funny-uncomfortable, and by the mid-nineties, I think, it was really friggin' sad. Would love to hear from older folks than me, though.
lol not a fan of Lionel or the whole falsetto thing in general.
@Persia: And from my 6 year old vantage point, the Black or White video was like the highlight of the year. Panther morphing and all. Someone should write a book and call it "Perspectives on Michael." He is a living, breathing Rorschach test.
Oh, man, "Smooth Criminal" is the second-best music video in the history of the universe. Second only to "Thriller." The whole mini-movie of "Smooth Criminal" is awesome. It can be found on the Moonwalker movie, which also features some pretty great videos in addition.
I'm sorry (or maybe I'm not) Michael Jackson is the greatest music entertainer of all time! And it doesn't matter if I am black or white. Btw, I'm black.
you know that michael got a patent on the mechanism that allows him to lean? check it: http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5255452
Michael Jackson is the greatest. Has anyone ever been to a party that couldn't have been made better by the injection of 'Billie Jean?' My guess is no. Meanwhile, has everyone seen the 40 minute version of 'Ghosts'? It's, um, interesting. For instance, about five minutes in, just after the enraged townspeople have barged into MJ's mansion, we get this exchange: Mother: "Aren't you ashamed? Young people are impressionable."
I really don't like Michael Jackson at all. I think he is and always has been pretty terrible. I find most of his music, with the exception of some of his early disco-like productions ("Pretty Young Thing"; "Rock with You"), to be unlistenable. Give me some Lionel or Billy Ocean any day of the week. Damn, I'll take Eddie Murphy's "Party all the Time" over most of Michael's ish. I guess maybe I just dont "get" Michael Jackson.
@laborlibert that's an understatement. reminds me of the girl last week at thanksgiving who didn't "get" Jay-Z.
Michael was a beast. I can still remember when they previewed Billie Jean on "Entertainment Tonight." It is hard to explain how important Michael Jackson was to the era. I am sure younger people feel the way that I did when older folks talked about The Beatles or Elvis. But for those of you old enough to remember, think about what school was like the day after "Motown 25." Everyone was talking about that performance the next day, even folks you didn't think knew anything about Michael Jackson. And thanks for the shout out Mr. Coates. My students who read your blog will think that I am cool.
@T-NC I have no idea wtf the point the 2nd video is.
i'll probably get yelled at or banned for going off topic here (cause coates runs a tight ship like that), but i'm curious about something. TNC closed the comments a few posts down because it "wasn't going anywhere." so where was it supposed to go? and isn't it a little bit...well, crazy to think your going to reach a consensus on a topic like that when you have various people with various backgrounds and various views arguing and debating about such a hot-button issue? and i didnt read anything that crossed any lines of offense, it was just a spirited vigorous airing of different points of view. i don't know...i thought the point of blog comments wasn't to "go anywhere" or end up at a particular destination but rather, to continue the debate and discussion, to maybe look at something from a different angle and consider a view you hadn't before. it's your blog TNC, so do what you like, but as one who likes debating the issues and the arguments, it seems like a shame to pull the plug especially when it wasnt even getting that nasty or heated, at least in my opinion. anyway, its your blog. i'll go post on my own now and run it how i see fit which is easy cause i dont have any readers...
@laborlibert: Did you seriously just say you prefer "Party all the Time" to Michael? Dang, I mean, to each his own and all, and there's no accounting for taste (see, e.g., Michael's personal life), but "Party all the Time"? For real? Over Billie Jean? Over anything from Off The Wall? Over anything Micheal ever recorded? I'll leave Lionel and Billy Ocean out of this, but an Eddie Murphy vanity track? And I don't care if it *was* produced by Rick James...it just proves that cocaine is in fact a hell of a drug.
Look at any RB performer today esp Ne YO, chris Brown, Usher, Timberlake and you will see imitation of a King and how far and wide his influence span. Bille Jean always gets everyone tapping their feet!
Michael is/was an institution...he set a new standard for music-videos...without him, no extended versions...no warping, no aah, i just lost my train of thought. but anyway, no nuthin...
"lol not a fan of Lionel or the whole falsetto thing in general." I think you are thinking of post Saturday Night Fever BeeGees. I don't recall Lionel singing in falsetto very often.
I mean, he's an okay performer if you see him once or twice, but he's been doing that same bs dance for how many decades? I think James Brown was far better performance-wise. And the man (MJ i mean) does not have a good voice. He's always sounded to me like an 11 year old with an atomic wedgie. I feel like the only sane person here, and I'm starting to suspect that you all have been hipnotized by Michael's smooth moves while I am somehow immune to his dance-induced mind control. You all go listen to "Caribbean Queen" (no more love on the run) and "There'll be sad songs". Then go listen to "Man in the Mirror", and then get back to me.
LL, I'm a pretty big Billy Ocean fan. My buddy is such a big fan, that he looked into how much it would cost to fly Billy in to sing at his wedding.(they weren't rich. Billy isn't doing as poorly as one might think) But even I'm not gonna claim that Billy Ocean is better than Michael Jackson. C'mon. I'm really not sure if you are serious. If we're just going off voices, then maybe. But then Josh Groban would be better than Michael Jackson, too. Along with a slew of others.
You're right.I was thinking about smokey robinson. I think I'm young enough that mixing the two of them up aint so bad...
Persia, I'm not saying that they are equal. I'm old enough to remember the category that best described Michael Jackson's weirdness was... well. It was the 80's. There were a *LOT* of words we didn't have to know yet.
Stacy: I'm being a little funny here in my Ocean-love, but I seriously do prefer him over MJ in every category, other than dancing I suppose. I don't see why this should be so unbelievable. I mean there's beauty up above and things we never take notice of. And that beauty's name is Billy Ocean. Do you remember how much it would cost to fly Billy in?
haha.. remember when there was an MJ smooth criminal style video game out? In the game he'd defeat the bad guys by out-dancing them, because he had this magic which would like, force others to make the same movements he made, until they'd get tired and pass out or something.
No, it was never too serious. He talked about it quite a bit, but looked in to what Billy was doing and realized it would have been WAY too much. I think my buddy assumed he was out of work, and would have been happy for a gig. Not sure why we thought this might be the case. I mean, The Love Zone alone must have gone multi-platinum, right?
How is Moonwalker not on DVD?
sv: I had the game! It was on Genesis I think. The was the first thing that came to mind when I looked at the video above. Throwing his hat was also a signature weapon I believe...
sv & Green, There was an arcade game based on Michael Jackson's Moonwalker in the late 1980's. Basically, Michael had to "rescue" the children from Mr. Big. Michael could throw energy bolts and if you got enough power things, he could turn into a robot. And, the "super killer weapon" (the one that destroys all enemies on the screen) which was where Michael did one of his signature dance moves and all the bad guys danced with him. Additionally, Michael had to rescue a bunch of children, and whenever he would rescue a kid, the kid would scream, "Ohhh Michael!!!" in this really orgasmic voice. It just really seems weird now. There was also a Sega Genisis game based on Michael Jackson's Moonwalker as well. But, it was 2-dimensional as opposed to the 3 dimensional arcade game.
I think people's ambivalence about MJ is there because he's in some sense a tragic figure, and one that we all helped create, in some weird way. It seems like a case of someone getting really messed up young, and (largely due to his incredible success) never really getting the metric tons of therapy that he needed to find a way back to a healthy reality. If you're rich enough and successful enough, you can go quite a long time in your own parallel world, but eventually it will all come unspooled. If he hadn't gotten messed up as child, he might just have wound up like Prince - happily living in "Prince World", but not quite so weird and creepy in the public imagination.
The Motown 25 performance was iconic-- Michael was everything at that moment. Elvis, JB, the Beatles wrapped up into one presence. If you don't get Thriller's place in musical history then you're lost-- I mean your ear just can't be that good. Doesn't have to be your favorite album, but to trot out some sad-ass joke like Billy Ocean's stuff-- that's ri-goddam-diculous.
It is hard to underestimate the popularity of MJ back in the mid-1980s. I'm a 40 year old white girl who lived in the suburbs, and every kid I knew owned Thriller. Every kid wanted to know how to moonwalk. The guy was INTERNATIONALLY famous in a way I'm not sure I've seen since then. He crafted amazing music videos (in a time when they were more respected and actually aired on MTV more than 10 minutes a day). He was, in part, responsible for bringing artists of color to MTV. Why did he get so screwed up? Probably a combo of zero childhood plus abusive father plus international celebrity plus artistic temperament. It makes me so sad.
Does anybody remember when MJ introduced the moonwalk on Motown's 25th Anniversary at the Apollo?!?! His performance was pure art. He had the Apollo crowd mesmorized and people in front of the T.V. screen were buzzed to say the least. As a result the entire country or world imitates his dance moves to this day which is over 20 years later.
Michael was a musical genius and his 70s & 80s stuff is still some of the best stuff out there. Rock wit You and Billie Jean will get any party started. Lionel Richie was great but his really good stuff was with the Commodores and before the 80s. IMO, that Jumbo Jumbo Fiesta Forever stuff signaled his decline. To this day, I feel like smashing my radio whenever I hear Say You, Say Me and that interlude of totally different music starts in the middle.
A great analysis of Michael Jackson's physical, uh, changes over the years. http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Jackson.html
There have been better singers, but as a pure performer there are none better. He was bad, period. Somebody messed this dude up in a way that was very very wrong.
Hey man, are you going to do a Grammy post? Am I old for thinking that Lil Wayne and "Lollipop" are just . . . some really weak sauce?
Michael is brilliant. Whatever else you want to talk about, that much is beyond doubt. A brilliant pop artist, a brilliant singer, a brilliant dancer. Now, as to the strangeness, etc. -- * Frank Sinatra ate ham and eggs off the chest of a prostitute and consorted with organized crime. * Mick Jagger is a whoremonger, a drug abuser, and an adulterer. * John Lennon was freaky weird. * Elvis was totally fucked up. You see where I'm going with this? All of them are white, and all of them are lionized and adored. They receive ironic mocking, perhaps gentle, affectionate mocking. But they are embraced. Michael Jackson, on the other hand, is demonized and laughed at.
Terence, Most white people think Elvis was totally fucked up, though awesome, and that people who worship him are weird. Jagger was arrested for drugs in his day, the social conservatives thought he was the antichrist, he's just outlived it all. Don't look now, but good old Charles Manson and a million other kooks indeed sensed that John Lennon was freaky weird. His powerful strangeness drew in the weirdo who shot John Lennon's ass. Sinatra, well, you got me there. He's stuff white people like. Under J Edgar Hoover, though, the FBi spent years investigating whether he was either a communist or a Mafia affiliate. While *some* people treat them with inappropriate reverence, IMHO, none of them are good evidence of pop figures being uncritically lionized and adored.
I think white people were afraid of bad-mouthing Sinatra, to be fair. That dude might arrange for your family to meet an unfortunate accident if you really pissed him off. I'd agree that none of the unFab 4 Terence mentioned are really lionized today. Lennon is probably the best liked of the four, but getting assassinated will tend to ensure people dwell on the good parts. And demonized is a really strong word. I just don't see it as hate so much as pity. One thing occurs to me about MJ: is he still "Michael Jackson" without Quincy Jones? This discussion makes me wonder, without Jones'contribution, how big is Jackson? How well does his monster talent assert itself?
I was in high school when Michael Jackson had a stop-the-world moment with his Motown performance, and the two best albums ever - Off the Wall and Thriller. No one not even the boys in my completely white high school dissed his music. His music was the best part of my high school experience, period. I think Thriller unplugged something in MJ and made him repeat the same themes over and over in his subsequent musical endeavors. I couldn't stand looking at Smooth Criminal because it was / is such a caricature of his earlier musical genius. His absolute genius. I think only Elvis could be compared to Michael. Jagger seems happy and *functional* and is still producing records that I don't hear a lot of fans dismissing because he'd lost his touch musically (if you like the Stones, that is). He doesn't seem tragic. Michael, as much as I love him, seems woefully tragic, as though "something happened" to him.
Consorting with whores, being sexually promiscuous, abusing drugs and even consorting with organized crime are far below raping little boys on my immoral barometer. I don't think Mike's negative perception is a black-white thing, or related to sleeping in a hyperbolic chamber, playing with his face or having a pet monkey; I think Mike's negative perception is a raping children thing. None of the musicians listed ever appealed to me in the way Mike did, and I can assure you if any of them were repeatedly implicated in child molestation they would be demonized with as much passion as Michael Jackson ever was.
@Jaybird-- understood. This discussion makes me wonder, without Jones'contribution, how big is Jackson? How well does his monster talent assert itself? I think most, if not all, great artists need a collaborator or producer willing to challenge them. Quincy Jones did that for Michael Jackson. You can see something similar with the Beatles, who never did as well musically after their breakup-- IIRC, one of the Bee Gees suggested Paul McCartney's music would be far better with a good producer, and McCartney threw an absolute fit. Great music requires a challenge, or you end up repeating the same tropes over and over until they become crap (witness McCartney's solo career and the solo work of Sting, which went from pretty decent to bleh in a remarkably short window).
Maybe some of the comments above are due to age, but man: Party All the Time? Billie Ocean? Lionel Richie? (okay, Commodores, classic, but after that? really?) Sorry: these dudes were nothing like Michael. I'm 40. Like a lot of people my age, childhood was filled with Jackson 5: the records, the TV show, the cartoon. The Jacksons were hugely influential. The image they projected was fresh and full of joy. They felt like family. They were heartthrobs for the young'uns, and they sounded and moved better than a young group had ever sounded or moved before. Their influence fed the Osmonds, the Partridge Family -- led to countless other "happy together family" entertainment throughout the 70's -- and set a standard for boy- and girl-bands ever since. Michael was the star, however. He had the voice, he had the looks (seriously: look at Off the Wall. Worked for me. My pre-teen crush was deep...), and we grew up with him. He was ours. Plus, the place that Quincy took him was something truly special. And the way Michael moved? He may not have been the first dude doing isolations, but his skill made difficult moves look easy, and he mainstreamed a style that most people hadn't seen before. As other commenters noted above, that ish was eye-popping. If you lived through the 80's, you definitely tried your skills at moonwalking. You really couldn't have stopped yourself from trying, it was everywhere and it was magic. Chances are, you sucked. But so did nearly everyone else you knew. One of many universal experiences Michael's career gave us. I was 15 or 16 when Thriller came out. MTV had advertised the premiere for what seemed like forever, but they were only showing it, like, 3 times on the first day. I remember everyone racing home from school to catch it. MTV itself hadn't even been around so long. Nobody had ever given us a must-see musical event like this before, and the whole country seemed to be watching at the same time. That was something momentous. As time passed and Thriller became Bad, Michael was ubiquitous. My crush started slipping after Off the Wall. Tiny noses and too much Geri Curl were not for me. And ultimately, even his musical delivery got too affected. Then the "Jesus of the Children" act combined with the fact that he no longer looked like a man and it wore me down. Game over. But really: go back and listen to Blame it on the Boogie. Don't Stop till You Get Enough. Billie Jean. There is infectious joy in that sound. Seriously, listen to Smooth Criminal again. The song itself is pretty lame: the melody is repetitive and tedious. But Michael and Quincy made it fly. That's genuine brilliance. Even in the earliest stuff -- silly kiddie songs like Rockin' Robin and ABC -- just listen to Michael. This is a 10-year-old kid. What skill, what soul. Shame what he became. But what he was took us where we are.
"You see where I'm going with this? All of them are white, and all of them are lionized and adored. They receive ironic mocking, perhaps gentle, affectionate mocking. But they are embraced." Let me see if I have this straight. You're comparing Michael Jackson to Elvis, Sinatra, Mick Jagger, and John Lennon in terms of weirdness? C'mon, dude. The only one that would come close is Elvis, and he's dead! Sinatra is dead. Lennon is dead. Jagger did drugs. Please. This is one of the weakest attempts at pointing out racial hypocrisy that I've ever seen. You ever heard of Chuck Berry? The guy was caught filming woman going to the bathroom. He's a complete asshole. No one gives a shit. He's an absolute legend. The things that Michael Jackson have been accused of, and the way that he conducts his life are not even in the same ballpark as those other guys.
i have nothing really deep to add to this conversation, because at 27 I'm not really qualified to comment on any of the mentioned performers (and aren't in the mood for political discussion) - other than that myself and my brother were heavily into MJ and even went to one of his concerts, but thought he was going a little off the boil with "Dangerous" ... and it was all downhill from there. The plastic surgery debates et al were before our time, still. What little we saw of the guy were from album covers and a video of Moonwalker (aside: isn't that one of the freakiest movies you ever saw? post-adolescence I can't watch it in its entirety whilst sober) and, not being much exposed to any of the surrounding news or controversy, thought little of it. There was maybe a bit of a disconnect seeing as some footage of him and the five were also on the film, but eh... What I really wanted to ask was: Seriously..... this thread lost its way somewhere :)
Sorry, i retract that - I thought the two videos were in seperate posts... and after watching the TOP one, well, I still think the french acapella dude is pretty clever. But MJJ and his cohort of incredibly well coreographed chums wins it by a mile and a large fraction. Seriously, how did they DO that?! Not just the lean & the moonwalk, but the whole performance.
"Consorting with whores, being sexually promiscuous, abusing drugs and even consorting with organized crime"... Indeed, this what rock n' roll is about, and hip-hop too. I was born in 73 and am white. I was a HUGE Michael Jackson fan. I had several posters and I think I might have started crying when I heard that his hair caught on fire, because I was so concerned about my favorite artist. Michael Jackson was huge in a way unlike anyone before. Elvis/Beatles would be the best comparison. Larger than life. Sadly, Michael went the way of Elvis. His personal problems prevented him from ever becoming a functional adult. Watching his deterioration over the years was just sad. Musically my take is: Off The Wall (extremely funky but only about half the songs are great. Thriller (awesome, only one or two bad tracks, the rest are stellar.) Bad (starting to go downhill pretty fast. As much as I liked Bad & Dirty Diana, that album doesn't hold up well nowadays.) From then on, there hasn't been anything worth listening too. Oh yeah, and the Jackson 5 stuff was badass!!
@Uncle Ebeneezer, totally agree on almost all counts. And I'm white and born in '73. Nice. Michael was perfect for a time. I actually think all of Off The Wall was genius, and same goes for Thriller. I do think that this has a LOT to do with Q, and obviously Michael's music went way downhill without him. I want to echo the posters above who say that, not only were those albums exciting for us who were young at the time, they remain incredible albums. The same is true for other aspect's of Michael's artistry (dancing, videos) back then. I actually suspect that Michael's problems have partly to do with how deeply he cared about what he did. ("What he did" refers mostly to the music itself, but also to being a pop star, being adored by millions, etc.) When you listen to "She's Out of My Life," you can hear him sobbing at the end of the song. When you look at his performances from that era, the intensity he brought to the stage is more than just showmanship. This stuff mattered to him. And at some point, he couldn't really do it anymore, and people didn't really like him anymore, and he completely lost his mind. This is a kid who was raised with the mentality that the most important thing was to be adored as a pop star. He saw his brothers beaten for not being as good and lovable as he was. He was made to feel very valuable, by virtue of being an adorable and incredibly talented performer, and he was shown that failure to be that was a very bad thing. So he grew up thinking he would do whatever it took to remain beloved. This took the form of plastic surgery, etc. In the long run, it didn't work. That's the tragedy of MJ. And TNC, let me just add that I couldn't agree more about Usher, not to mention Timberlake and the rest -- they all want to be MJ, but they are not.
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Alright, I have to ask. Yes, I know all Black folks don't think the same on every issue ("Blacks are not the Borg" was my favorite comment today.). Yes, I saw the Chris Rock movie where he jokes that all dinner conversations eventually turn to Michael Jackson. But I have to ask, what do Black folks really think of Michael Jackson?
Posted by Fighting Words | December 4, 2008 2:07 PM