Everybody who cares has his own theory about when Jackson went off the rails, most of them pinpointing a moment when the scale of his weirdness definitively outstripped his ability to dazzle you with his talent. But I think he bottomed out at the exact moment he was topping out: partly because the ugly, chaotic management of the Victory Tour, with its grab-what-you-can-while-he’s-hot calculations, permanently damaged his image as someone who genuinely loved his fans, and partly because it left him with a benchmark in sales and cultural dominance that he could never repeat. His inability to repeat it seems to have done as much to drive him crazy as his fixation on buying a super-sized version of the childhood of which he’d been robbed.
Were the later albums any good? I’m sure they have their moments. But as early as Bad, I found myself unable to judge them independently of the three-ring circus that now passed for his life, and not just because the life was distracting, but because he seemed to have trouble keeping them straight himself. It was Jackson’s decision, for whatever reason, to slip to the tabloids that he was trying to buy the bones of the Elephant Man and that he slept in a hyperbaric chamber, even staging a photo of himself lying in state. Then he not only recorded a song called “Leave Me Alone” but commissioned a video for it that attacked the tabloids for running the stories he’d given them, complete with the ultimate heartbreaking image of poor Bubbles the Chimp in chains. This was half a dozen years before the first official charges of child molestation — never mind that promotional film showing a crowd of kids experiencing mass religious hysteria at the unveiling of a mile-high statue of Michael with a helicopter flying between its legs. But it was already clear that the delicate man-child’s mind was not just strange but wallowing in a dark, creepy place where unjustified self-pity and rampaging megalomania were intertwined.
Time will sort all this out, of course; in a few years, maybe I’ll be able to give an unbiased listen to Invincible, his last album. That’s the one best remembered for the weird scene where Michael — confused and hurt that he had failed, yet again, to rack up numbers remotely comparable to those of Thriller — decided the best way to save face was to publicly describe the head of his record company as “a devil” and accuse him of heading a racist conspiracy to prevent Michael from making money for Sony Music. Maybe the many, many people who are out in force mourning him this week can still hear his music just fine, though I suspect that the vast majority of them are just driven to pay testament to the celebrity of a man who was always ready to tell you himself that he was the biggest star of his age. That would explain why the footage you always see of people reaching out to him, their faces wet with tears, as if he were a five-foot-ten-inch taco with the image of Jesus on it, don’t look much like they’re enjoying a musical performance — just as Jackson, for most of the last fifteen years of his career, minimum, really didn’t look as if he were enjoying performing. At least Off the Wall, “Billie Jean,” and the best stuff he did with his brothers are assured a place on the permanent shelf. In the meantime, his life and career have already inspired at least one important book, Margo Jefferson’s slim, chewy On Michael Jackson. Be sure to read it if you haven’t already. I’m guessing that Michael never did, which is a great pity.
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I lost you when you said that “unlike both Mozart and Stevie, becoming a child prodigy wasn’t his idea” I seiously doubt that becoming a child prodigy was Mozart’s idea — his father left him no options.
RD commented on
Jul 01 09 at
5:53 pm
Your article is so right on, like you’re in my head. I’m just a few years older than you, so I vaguely remember the 5 on TV, and I remember the cartoon better, but it was “I’ll Be There” which was one of the songs that broke the color barrier at the segregated radio station I listened to. I was 8 or 9, the age when a kid starts really being aware of the world out there, and I knew there was something really special about that record, both the singing and the production. But I hated the fear of sex which permeated his greatest adult song, “Billie Jean,” and the Victory cash-in followed by “Leave Me Alone” really turned me off forever. I was thinking today how I regretted my callous initial reaction to Michael’s death. Thank you for showing me that there’s another serious music lover who had the same feeling. As my best friend put it, “I grieved the loss of that little boy a long time ago.” Just try not choking up listening to “Who’s Loving You,” recorded before any of those big hits.
ArchieLeech commented on
Jul 03 09 at
10:46 pm
I’m lucky I’m young enough to have been a kid during his heyday and cared nothing of the tabloid stuff and only the music. It’s a shame the circus aspect of his life can have that much an impact on how u feel about MUSIC.
Well written, but ur cynicism saddens me.
DJ UCH commented on
Jul 04 09 at
5:41 pm
You made the same point that I did at the end of this piece…though I have complete appreciation for his later work. There’s a conflict there that can’t help but be compelling:
There’s A Riot Goin’ On
Thriller may be his biggest-selling album, and Off The Wall his best,
but the record I return to, time and time again, is HIStory. At times
grandiose…paranoid…vengeful…violent… self-pitying and
frustrated, HIStory is one last furious act of Jackson’s will. A final
chance to try to get his side of HIStory out before his image was
forever tainted in the eyes of the public.A pop star wouldn’t have made this record. Nearly every track is
self-involved and self-interested to such a degree that American Idol
contestants won’t be worrying the public with cover versions any time
soon. Let’s just try and imagine Kris Allen belting out: “stop fucking
with me, makes me wanna scream”, “jew me, sue me, everybody do me”, or
“the kgb was stalkin’ me, take my name and just let me be”. And these
were from the album’s SINGLES!!! The one single that didn’t have
batshit crazy lyrics, “You Are Not Alone” (written by the otherwise
dependably batshit crazy R.Kelly) saves ITS crazy for the video; where
a nearly naked, winged MJ cavorts around with a similarly (un)dressed
Lisa Marie Presley. Pop fans, you have now gone through the looking
glass…The music is just as shocking as the lyrics. You don’t find many
performers the wrong side of 30 who get MORE aggressive, LESS
palatable as time goes on. The vocal performances are peerless
throughout…ranging from (amazing) tuneless, staccato grunting to
hectoring playground taunts and gloopy easy-listening
vocalizing. The various producers on-board keep things futuristic and
aggressive for the most part…with hairpin turns into haunting
melodrama and cloying sentimentality as needed. It’s an aural last
roll of the dice…an attempt to say everything you’ve always wanted
to say…all at once…before it’s too late.And then it was too late. Forever cemented as Wacko Jacko in the eyes
of the world, MJ was never this bloody-minded again. Half of the new
material on his next release Blood On The Dance Floor (which itself
was already more than half remixes) was a retreat to simpler lyrical
concerns. It didn’t matter. People no longer believed Mikey singing
boy/girl lyrics. His lyrical obsessions retreated further on (the
otherwise excellent) Invincible, which will be the last studio album
release we get from him. The game was over. The “real” Michael lost.But was that the real Michael? Or were there many real Michaels? The
one image I’m left with is that of a man who chose to promote an album in
which he sang “take my name and just let me be” by sending a massive
statue of himself floating down the Thames in London.Well, which is it, conflicted brother?
I don’t think either of us figured that one out…
Carlos Halston commented on
Jul 04 09 at
9:40 pm
FUCK OFF YALL DUKMB FUCKS..HOW CAN YALL SAY SUCH THINGS ABOUT A DEAD PERSON. I WISH DEath UPON ALL THOSE WHO TALK BAD ABOUT MICHAEL….YALL DESERVE TO BURN ALIVE YALL PIECES OF SHIT BITCHES…YALL WILL NEVER BE LIKE HIM N E V E R !!!!!!!!!!!!! MUTHERFUCKERS BET YALL SUM DUMB WHITE ASS CRACKERS TOO!!
Empress commented on
Jul 09 09 at
6:43 am
