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Michael Jackson's death: latest news, photos, videos, tributes
Michael Jackson through the years | 
'Billie Jean' to 'Beat it': Jackson's music videos
Timeline of his life | Like Elvis, Jackson was a King who died young | Fans mourns
Share your memories | Got a photo of the King of Pop? | Did you see the Jacksons in 1984?
Rock critic Lester Bangs once wrote that we will never agree on anyone as we agree on Elvis.
No disrespect, but I’m going to have to disagree.
I can’t think of anybody — not now, not ever — who was as universally famous as Michael Jackson. I can’t believe I just wrote about Michael Jackson in the past tense. That doesn’t seem possible to me.
Almost everyone agreed, at least for a time, about Michael Jackson’s importance. We were obsessed with his hair, his gloves, his dance moves. And when I say we, I mean all of us. We agreed that we’d never seen anything like him. We agreed that “Thriller” was brilliant. You know it was.
And no matter how weird he got, no matter how many times it seemed that he was deliberately trying to tank his own legend, nobody can ever take Michael Jackson’s music from us.
Not even Michael Jackson.
There has not been a time in the past 45 years when he wasn’t famous, or at least infamous. Neither of those words, honestly, seem adequate to describe the heights that Michael Jackson scaled, and the depths to which his public image fell.
This is a man who sold 750 million records, and was on trial for child molestation. Who was best friends with both Elizabeth Taylor and a monkey.
He seemed to squander so much of the personal goodwill he’d amassed with the criminal charges, the changing face and lightening skin, the weird marriages and veiled children.
But before he seemed to change racial identities, he helped change the way we as a culture listen to music in terms of race. He singlehandedly broke MTV’s color barrier (yes, kids, it’s true, MTV used to play music videos and for a while, they didn’t play any by black people.) He also got Eddie Van Halen played on R & B stations, in the electrified licks of “Beat It.”
I personally remember white girlfriends who had pictures of Michael Jackson on their bedroom walls, when there’s no way a picture of another brown-skinned man would have made it past their dads. They told me this. It would’ve been ripped to pieces and tossed in the garbage. But Michael was different. He was..Michael.
It’s hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t Michael Jackson, and when we weren’t curious about him. He had one of the most common first names in the world, but when you said “Michael,” everyone knew instantly which one you meant.
I cannot think of one other current celebrity – maybe not one other celebrity ever – as equally famous to so many people, regardless of age, race, gender or even musical taste as him.
You did not have to love “Thriller,” his masterwork, to know almost all of the words to almost every song. You didn’t have to love him. But just about everyone, at least for a time, did.
Was there anyone ever so complicated? Even when Elvis got fat, he was never on trial. And even fat, he still looked like Elvis, sort of. Michael Jackson had the most famous face in the world and wanted to change it. It’s disturbing. So much about him was.
I remember telling my young cousin – begging him – not to dismiss this weird man before finding out who he used to be. I hope he remembers that guy.
It breaks my heart that people might not.
So how should we remember Michael Jackson? Should we negate all the bad and the weird and only talk about the heyday, the good times, before it all went wrong? I don’t think so. His life is the ultimate cautionary tale about childhoods lost to celebrity, about possibly disturbing signs dismissed as long as everybody’s making money.
He’s a sad lesson in hubris and excess. We need to remember that.
But we also have to remember why we loved him. We have to remember that tiny boy decked out in the suede fringe singing with the soul of a little Sam Cooke, who hit notes that no one should have been able to hit, gliding on his toes like he was being pulled on a wire, who freaked out a nation by turning into a zombie and doing a joyous dance of the dead with the other ghouls.
We should, I think, remember an amazing musician, an unparalleled style-setter, a human being who obviously wanted to be loved, but didn’t seem to know how to do that. A musical god who wanted to be mortal, with a wife and a family, but who couldn’t get over his otherworldliness.
All of these are Michael Jackson. And no matter how you remember him, you will remember him. There’s no doubt about that.
“Almost everyone” is wrong. Not for the first time, or the last. Neither “important” nor “brilliant”. A man of some talent (with a major assist from Quincy Jones), and the first product of the mega-conglomerate media/celebrity machine, perfected in the 80s (unless you count Ronald Reagan, in which case MJ places second). Totally overblown.
A very lovely and fitting tribute. You’re right in that so much of his life was disturbing. But I remember rushing Dad along from a last minute Christmas shopping excursion. We had taken the brand new subway into downtown Baltimore and I wanted to hurry back home because Thriller was premiering on a network station (I couldn’t watch MTV) and I was dying to see it. I sat enthralled for the whole 13 minutes. And I eagerly set my mind and body to learning the Thriller dance. Michael Jackson holds the distinction of being the only superstar whose image I practically wallpapered my room with. And when I sat watching Wolf Blitzer telling us first that Michael was hospitalized, then in a coma, then reportedly dead, I wept.
Michael Jackson was by no means a perfect man. He did lots of strange things…inexplicable things. Possibly bad, unthinkable things…I don’t know. But right now, I feel as though I’ve lost someone that I’m gonna miss horribly. And the music industry has lost some of its brilliance.
Written well Bravo!!!!!! and thank you
In the 80′s, an uncle owned a limo company in Lake Worth. Occasionally, when he needed a driver real quick, he would call me to fill in. One of those calls was to pick up a couple in Jupiter Island and bring them to the Orange Bowl for Michael Jackson’s concert. They gave me a $100 bill and said to get a bite to eat and buy a ticket off the scalpers out front. I got a great seat and saw a spectacular show!!! I remember the fountain of silver sparks as Michael touched each step as he descended a huge staircase, onto the stage. A memory that will never fade.
Best article. Sums it up better than hours of coverage.
Very well written article Leslie. Anyone who enjoys music has been touched by his music at some point in their life. When I hear specific songs from his heyday, I vividly recall personal moments as if they were yesterday. Like him or hate him, his music will stand the test of time.
Lovely!
Wonderfully said, Leslie. Nobody could have made a more fitting tribute to the King of Pop. His prodigious talent and trendsetting style that defined an entire generation will live on in the hearts of his fans forever, eventually obscuring all the “rough patches.” It’s a tragedy that children born in the 1990s/2000s (like my own)mainly observed the scandal and thought of the King as some kind of “freak.” Rest in peace, Michael. You were always in your lifetime searching for love and affirmation. I’m sorry that you couldn’t see that you’d had it all along.
And why is this being dumped into “theatre news?” He didn’t do theatre, however ‘theatrical’ he might have been. If I wanted pop music news, I’d've subscribed to the pop music feed instead of the theatre feed.
God, the post sucks anymore.
Ms. Streeter is certainly entitled to her personal opinion of MJ being the single biggest superstar in entertainment history, but a few of her “facts” are way offbase. For example, nowhere can it be substantiated that MJ sold 750 million records. Even the official web site dedicated to MJ’s memory, MJJcomunity.com, quotes a total of roughly half that number.
(The following link gives a record-by-record account of all of Michael’s sales: http://www.mjjcommunity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60068)
I am not sure how Ms. Streeter justifies the single-name term “Michael” belonging exclusively to Michael Jackson. A Michael named Jordan has a fair amount of name and face recognition, maybe more.
And to suggest that Michael Jackson is the sole reason black performers succeeded on MTV is silly. Michael recognized the marketing importance of the music video medium, but not as a means of advancing blacks in the entertainment field. If so, why then did he spend most of his adult life and millions of dollars literally trying not to be black?
There is no denying Michael Jackson possessed enormous individual talent and stage presence. He was an excellent self-promoter and, like all so-called superstars, made the pop culture public believe he was more important than he really was.
However, MJ was certainly not the best vocalist we’ve ever heard, not even close. He was not a particularly gifted composer or producer. And he was certainly not the savior of popular music, just an interesting chapter with some bizarre footnotes.
Let’s maintain a little perspective before annointing Michael Jackson a more important historical figure than Elvis, JFK and Jesus Christ combined.