Good lord, whether you liked his music or not, or believed he was innocent or not, can we keep some perspective here people? MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON DIED! I refuse to believe there's anyone here who doesn't understand the enormous and indelible impact he made (and left forever) on pop music*, and especially on black entertainers breaking into the mainstream. Effects that are still rippling today. Even those who don't like his music understand this isn't a mere death. It's a severe rupture in pop culture's tectonic plates.
I spoke to my mother for hours after his death was announced (and we listened to his songs together) and like many baby boomers, she is appropriately shaken by the loss. Talking to her though was like experiencing his life as lived through his success in a flashback by someone old enough to remember all of it. She didn't take to the Jackson Five at first. There was a (now mercifully mostly forgotten, she'd like you to know) sub-genre of music in the late 60s called bubblegum -- The Archies' Sugar Sugar was the height/nadir of it -- and I Want You Back and ABC seemed to her just a black variation on it. "But," she whispered conspiratorially, "catchy pop music is easy to get stuck in your head" and by the time The Love You Save came along, she was enjoying it.
Throughout the 70s, Michael started striking out on his own, doing more and more ambitious stuff, and became clearly a major solo pop star. This alone would make him someone whose death today would be noted. But he had another, major leap in fame to make, and Thriller was it.
My own knowledge of pop-culture history, my mother's recounting, and wikipedia, all delineate two levels to the Thriller phenomenon. First, the album was released, and it sold very well -- but it wouldn't have right away qualified as industry legend. What happened to change that was, some months into the release, TV ran a Motown 25th anniversary special, which baby-boomers like my parents watched avidly. And, right near the end of the show, Michael came on and moonwalked to Billie Jean. "He killed!" my mum assured me with utter conviction and wistfulness. For a lot of (especially white) folks, this was the first time they'd viewed Jackson as some kind of major talent worth their notice. Thriller's sales soared thereafter; single after single hit the charts, and the album became the biggest ever, a distinction it still holds.
My mother remembers riding by the NY Museum of Natural History the night they were honoring the album's unprecedented sales. "It was a mob scene!" she recalls and she remembers a friend commented it was maybe the first time in the entertainment field that a black guy had become the undisputed biggest deal in the industry.
"I think I'd prefer to remember him that way," she said finally, and indeed the sentiment is easy to understand. The ugly accusations that followed (never proved but never really disbelieved, either) made his life probably not a very pleasant thing. In fact, I have to wonder how much of his life was ever enjoyable. We know he was robbed of his childhood, and reviled by many in adulthood. Did the artistic successes and fame balance all that out? (I've always found it appropriate that Elizabeth Taylor was such a close friend of his. She was one of the few alive who could empathize with every element of his experience: fame at a young age, massively bigger fame later on, and public rejection because of scandal)
And I must mention one other very important contribution from Michael Jackson to the world of pop-culture that my mother reminded me of (and one that's closer to my generation's cultural understanding of the star), and that's his videos. Specifically, "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and the 20 minute opus that is "Thriller". Without them, the Thriller album wouldn't have crossed over to the extent that it did... meaning: the white audience, which is ironic. And it had a symbiotic effect, raising MTV's stature and prominence in early 80s American pop culture as well, which is equally ironic. Both results are equally ironic because MTV initially refused to air Michael Jackson's videos because they wanted to stick to an all-white playlist.
That aside, the three videos were instrumental in elevating Jackson into a cultural phenomenom and an icon on the level of Frank Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles and Madonna, in which effervescent image is part and parcel of the musical legend. Plus, the videos are just damn good videos and continue to hold up today.
Yoko Ono is probably thrilled today, but she has her reasons. Anyone else who is able to look beyond the media projected "freak show" he became - and yes, it is difficult - can recognize the artist and the figure he was. I assumed he'd be around somewhere in the background of my life for as long as I was around. There's something about icons that we take their mortality for granted.
What's the final word on Michael Jackson? Leave that to the historians. I'm just going to sit here humming Billie Jean, and fondly remember one of the singular talents of two generations.
(*I suggest anyone who didn't follow Jackson's music to go to Amazon and listen to some 30 second samples from a Greatest Hits collection. You'll be amazed at how many songs there are you didn't know you knew.)
