Michael Jackson

[popcorn]

I've been listening to lots of Michael Jackson recently. Have you ever heard of Michael Jackson? Here are some jumbled thoughts about Michael Jackson.




I think there is a case to be made that, during the golden years of Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, Michael Jackson was the most charismatic person who has ever lived. At least if you didn't see any interviews with him where he said something like "Oh boy, they got some smelly jelly going on in there," which is by far the most troubling allegation I've ever read about him.

He could dance, yeah. I mean fucking hell. I go and watch the Billie Jean Motown performance regularly. Even though it's still amazing, it's easy to forget how astounding it must have been to see for the first time, even though it seems like such a simple recipe: a man sings, and dances. I can think of no contemporary equivalent that combines them so effectively (Francis and the Lights, maybe?)

How is it the world had known Michael Jackson and then found the choreography of groups like the Spice Girls acceptable? I don't understand why more artists don't combine popping and locking - basically kinds of optical illusion (eg the moonwalk) - with music instead of wasting their time with all this bum stuff.[nb]No offence to likers of bum stuff.[/nb] I have a musician friend who's always raving about arty types in her circle and once told me about a dancer who "dances in the most amazing way, she uses her whole body", which didn't impress me because I reckon that's more or less what people imagine when it comes to dancing, you know, using your whole body, isn't it? And now I reckon partly why MJ was such a great dancer was because he very precisely only used certain bits of his body while the rest of him stayed put, seemingly impossibly. He got an awful lot of use out of his ankles, for example.



His dancing wasn't just cool. Sometimes it was implacably sad, like the dance during the ending of Human Nature when the song modulates to a sad wistful key and robot MJ initiates shutdown procedure. I find this haunting.

MJ had abundance of stunningly good songs and then a swamp of middling-to-terrible album tracks that no one in the entire world has ever heard in their entire lives. Like the pointless cover of Come Together on History, I suppose recorded because he owned the rights and wanted to get his money's worth. Or Tabloid Junkie from the same album, which has an extremely funny chorus that you should go and listen to right now (the punchline develops a little on every repeat). That he released so much cack is disappointing considering how good a lot the half-finished and unreleased bits and pieces are. The other day I discovered Hot Street, a reject from Thriller, which is a fucking crime when you consider it lost out to The Girl is Mine.

Obviously the golden era stuff is great, but I'm actually quite taken with some of the later things too, when he stopped working with Quincy Jones. (Why did that happen anyway? Did they fall out? I googled it but got nothing.)  By the time of Dangerous (1990) he had developed an unusual, aggressive, percussive vocal style that doesn't really sound like anything else. He sounds fucking spitting mad. I fucking love Jam, the new jack swing track with the amazing synth-sax break Mark Ronson nicked for Uptown Funk, though it unfortunately also has the second worst rap bridge ever. The #1 worst rap bridge ever belongs to Black or White, which is a shame because the guitar hook is great, the rhythm is great (cowbell!), the vocal melody is great, the way an acoustic guitar joins in the second verse is great, the bass is fucking great.

What is it with MJ attempting to look so bad and then dangerous in this era, anyway? He'd already incorporated actual guitar shredding on Beat It on Thriller. So why does Black or White begin with an interminable skit featuring Maccauley Culkin listening to some shite HARD ROCK and then blowing his lame-o dad into space with a tape of some... weird synth thing that sounds like an angry man blowing bottles?[nb]I'm mixing this up a bit, in fairness. The album version has a truncated version of this skit and you only see dad blown into space in the music video, and also in the video MacCauley achieves this with a more plausibly badass electric guitar. Still has fuck-all to do with the musical or lyrical timbre of the song though.[/nb] The implication is that Black or White is a TRULY RADICAL ROCKER that no square can handle, but it's actually a bright and sparkly two-chord MOR track about being nice to people.

A note on Earthsong: on the one hand this is a hideous, sanctimonious, overproduced disaster. On the other, the chord progression and melody are powerful, and at one point he sings "What about elephants? Have we lost their trust?" which I think is a lyric that does not receive enough consideration.

It's easy to imagine a parallel universe in which Michael Jackson didn't turn white and go completely bananas. I imagine many of you have seen this 1985s artist's impression of what he might look like as an older gentleman, which is heartbreaking:



REALITY:



Aieee!

Was he An Paedo? I think it's a slightly boring question. Michael Jackson was always doomed to become depressed and weird and neurotic and possibly even dangerous,[nb]A mate of mine once observed that a string of MJ's album titles describe his career and life, in chronological order: Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, History.[/nb], not just as a result of his abusive father but the insane amounts of pressure and media attention superstardom brought him almost from birth. He died for our entertainment.



Have you ever heard of Michael Jackson? If so, what did you think about it?

[Norton Canes]

Only know his singles, never listened to an entire album (OK in the case of Bad I guess I nearly have since most of the tracks were released). The Bad tracks are the most interesting, that thunky rhythm that permeates most of them is almost industrial. Also liked the smooth, almost liquid minimalism on some of the songs from Dangerous - Remember the Time, and especially In The Closet, love those little blippy noises.

Really, after the epic hyperbole of Bad he should have made the next couple of album releases more low-key - they would still have sold in skip-loads but the incessant marketing baggage might have been kept at bay. And he might have stayed a saner person. I guess the snowball wasn't stopping.   

[DrGreggles]

Off The Wall was (and remains) a brilliant album, with each following release being a case of diminishing returns (in terms of quality, I mean - they all probably outsold OTW).

By the time he'd got to Earth Song he actually made me want to vomit.

[popcorn]

Oh yeah, I'm sure everyone knows by now, but Michael Jackson and his team wrote a lot of the music for Sonic 3, but it was all hushed up for uncertain reasons. Interesting story, explained here by nerds in the fashion nerds like to explain things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Uko0fCp86c

[Golden E. Pump]

Absolutely scorching pop hits from 1978-1991. After that HIStory was patchy and Invincible was mediocre.

This is probably the most concise post I'll ever make. I'm at work, or I'd go into far more detail (no one cares).

[Shay Chaise]

Someone once argued that Michael Jackson's red leather jacket was the most iconic moment in the history of the human race, in terms of greatest impact on the greatest number of people, for what it represented. Arguably the greatest on-stage performance artist in the history of the human race. Unparalleled.

[Gulftastic]

As mentioned above, Off The Wall is his high point. Thriller is good but wildly overpraised, and most of Bad is just shite.

I like seeing performances of the Jackson 5 from just before he became a full on solo artist. His talent is almost exploding out of the group.

His fans are fucking mental.

[Nowhere Man]

For my money, he's fantastic in short bursts, but falls short next to the likes of Stevie Wonder & Prince.[nb]the latter whom he strangely enough got compared as if they were going toe to toe, although Prince released 10 decent-excellent albums next to MJ's paltry 2 good albums.[/nb]

[popcorn]

Shiiit some of the stuff he did was so fucking awful though. Like the CG intro his 1997 gigs, which culminates in MJ crash-landing onto the space in a space pod, fuck me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRa2827yMog

[Jockice]

Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' is a fantastic single. Was at a birthday do last year at which it filled the dancefloor.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Shiiit some of the stuff he did was so fucking awful though. Like the CG intro his 1997 gigs, which culminates in MJ crash-landing onto the space in a space pod, fuck me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRa2827yMog

That kind of loops round to me, in being so tastelessly shite it becomes entertaining in the broadest sense. It would be a shit idea even if it was rendered in immaculate, stunningly realistic CG. Total 'surrounded by yes men' stupidity. It's a 7 year old's idea of how an awesome concert would start isn't it?

[Golden E. Pump]

For my money, he's fantastic in short bursts, but falls short next to the likes of Stevie Wonder & Prince.[nb]the latter whom he strangely enough got compared as if they were going toe to toe, although Prince released 10 decent-excellent albums next to MJ's paltry 2 good albums.[/nb]

This. [/closethread]

[DrGreggles]

For my money, he's fantastic in short bursts, but falls short next to the likes of Stevie Wonder & Prince.[nb]the latter whom he strangely enough got compared as if they were going toe to toe, although Prince released 10 decent-excellent albums next to MJ's paltry 2 good albums.[/nb]

Stevie hit a run of form in 1972-1976 that I'd say represents as high a high as any artist ever.
5 classic albums* released in 4 years.
Anyone would suffer by comparison.

[nb]*Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life[/nb]

[Dr Syntax Head]

He knew how to make the most of a guest guitar player. Slash, Van Halen, Steve Stevens (Billy Idols player if you're wondering), Santana.

Man in the mirror and Jam are my favourites.

But what a talent wasted in later years. He could have been one of the more influential soul artists I reckon. Shame.

Comparing to Prince though is pointless. They are very different artists.

[Golden E. Pump]

Stevie hit a run of form in 1972-1976 that I'd say represents as high a high as any artist ever.
5 classic albums* released in 4 years.
Anyone would suffer by comparison.

[nb]*Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life[/nb]

I'd argue that Prince's run from 1980-88 was as good, if not better, though. Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign "O" the Times and Lovesexy. That's 5 masterpieces and three great albums in the space of eight years. When you throw in the unreleased Dream Factory and Crystal Ball material, as well as the Time albums (and other less successful projects) I think his creativity during these years is pretty much unparalleled.

With Stevie I adore that run of albums (I also love Where I'm Coming From, Secret Life of Plants and Hotter Than July surrounding this run as well). However, each seems like a natural progression from the last which I think is what Michael Jackson strived to recreate. Prince's run is my favourite on the sheer gall of going from punk and new wave-influenced synthpop, to stadium rock, to psychedelic pop, to European art-jazz, to sparse futuristic rhythm and blues, to gospel in the space of a few albums. There is a lot of variety on something like Stevie's Songs in the Key of Life (possibly the best album ever released by anyone, in my opinion) but it's not as out of leftfield as the guy who did Head in 1980 making a piano jazz piece like Venus de Milo in 1986.

With Michael Jackson I echo the sentiment that Off the Wall is his best. It's no coincidence that one of my favourite tracks on that album (I Can't Help It) was written by Stevie Wonder himself. I love Thriller (The Girl Is Mine stops it from being a masterpiece - it's that bad) and Bad had some bitching singles. Dangerous was when he started to become too self-indulgent and it really suffered from the rise of the CD format as it's about four tracks too long (for what it's worth, I'd remove Can't Let Her Get Away, She Drives Me Wild, Heal the World and Keep the Faith). This is where his output started to get patchy. Not as patchy as Stevie's post-80s work (he's probably done about six good songs since Hotter Than July came out - horrendous) but far more patchy than Prince's post-Lovesexy output (Love Symbol, Gold Experience, Rainbow Children, Musicology, 3121, LotusFlow3r, Art Official Age and HitNRun Phase Two are all better albums than anything Jackson released since 1991; Batman, Diamonds and Pearls, Come and Emancipation are all solid too). Jackson became less of a creative tour-de-force and more concerned with trying to emulate his past glories. His fucked up life made him paranoid and whilst he could always dance, his switch to a more percussive singing style really hampered his abilities, and his songs became far less accessible.

Wow, didn't mean to make a post this long. Sorry, not sorry?

TL;DR - big Jackson fan but he was nowhere near as good as Prince or Stevie. Prince was the best.

[Nowhere Man]

Since you mentioned I Can't Help It, I love this version that Stevie recorded a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNZRJB952b0

I absolutely adore Prince's music and it took me most of last year to get over his death, same for Bowie. The weird thing is that they both had two of the longest and most consistent excellent albums runs of their respective eras.

But song for song, if you include the highlights of the 1963-1971 & 1979-2005 I don't think any other pop/soul singer had a greater number of incredible songs over such a long period of time as Stevie Wonder. when you count stuff like For Once In My Life, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, Ribbon In The Sky, I Was Made To Love Her, Overjoyed, Do I Do, My Cherie Amour, Uptight, Thank You Love, So What The Fuss, That Girl etc.

on top of:

Where I'm Comin' From
Music Of My Mind
Talking Book
Innervisions
Fulfilingness' First Finale
Songs In The Key Of Life
Hotter Than July

holy fuck.

You would need a 6 disc boxset to cover the very best of Prince & Stevie.

[SteveDave]

It's funny that playing Michael Jackson songs is fine, but you DJ "I Love You Love Me Love" and the plug is pulled.

[popcorn]

I don't know Mr Wonder beyond the hits. What albums should I listen to?

[Nowhere Man]

Get them in this order:

Innervisions
Songs In The Key Of Life
Talking Book
Fulfillingness' First Finale
Music Of My Mind
Hotter Than July
Where I'm Coming From

you could probably get a decent comp for the best of the earlier and later years. 

Here's some sample tunes from his best albums:

Golden Lady (from Innervisions)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS2yMn3JbQk

Superwoman (from Music of My Mind)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-ohttPIqco

Maybe Your Baby (from Talking Book)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIzh3eocC9s

As (from Songs In The Key Of Life)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYQfWJNWe3I

They Won't Go When I Go (from Fulfilliness' First Finale)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whjD_1E0Lls

P.S. Everyone should get the chance to see Stevie Live whilst he's still around, he's still a fantastic singer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33ePlPQ9rPc

[ASFTSN]

On the day Michael Jackson died, a man on a pirate radio staton I was listening to said " 'King of Pop'? Nah bruv, let's give it up for some real music." and then played some extremely generic drum and bass twice.

[Golden E. Pump]

They Won't Go When I Go (from Fulfilliness' First Finale)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whjD_1E0Lls

I actually prefer George Michael's cover from Listen Without Prejudice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AlPZ4_LsSs

I think his stripped down arrangement works better and his voice is more haunting than Stevie's, who has a naturally happier tone.

Besides that, I totally agree with your post, Nowhere Man.

[mrpupkin]

I've had an insatiable fascination with this bloke ever since I was seven years old and my dad taped his Live in Bucharest (Dangerous tour) show off the telly. At his best he danced with an unparalleled purity of expression and recorded some of the most off-the-scale incredible vocal performances ever. At his worst he was so mind-twistingly strange and misguided that to me it's just as interesting, even endearing, as the good stuff. I could blather on about him all day, as anyone who knows me would attest.

A lot of good points in the OP, for example about the sadness in some of his dancing. Never was the cliché about living on stage truer than with MJ. It was his pedestal, his altar  and his gilded cage all at once and his dancing embodied all of that, communicated something of his reality in an elemental way that I've not seen elsewhere. As for Billie Jean at Motown 25, it's magic but a real shame that he mimed it. My favourite version is Wembley 88 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMZogxtiTis). In fact that whole concert is worth a watch, his energy level is just unreasonable. Arguably peak Jacko. In discussing his legacy his live shows are often overlooked in favour of his videos etc which is silly because he was a live performer first and foremost and in his prime it's what he did best.

There's still something enigmatic about him, something unknowable, despite being someone whose life and eventual disintegration unfolded in front of the world in tragic slow motion. We don't quite understand his turning white beyond a vague consensus that he shouldn't have done it. We don't know for sure whether or not he was a paedophile – if he was then how awful that he got away with it due to his fame, if he wasn't then how unjust that a mentally unwell but innocent man was hated and thought a monster by pretty much everyone on the planet (cast your mind back to before he died). Did he really write all those songs? How do you write Smooth Criminal when you don't play an instrument? Why did he adopt children and pretend they were his? Did he really think people would believe his denials of plastic surgery?

I think I became fascinated because I couldn't get my head around him, and 23 years later I still can't. The only thing I know for sure is that watching him take flight is the best thing going, and I knew that when I was seven.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

The first time I became aware of Michael Jackson as a solo performer was with Off The Wall.  Our library got a copy for the recordings loans section, and I saw the cover and thought he looked like a chubby gollywog in a dinner suit-yes, I know not very PC, but that was the gut reaction of ten/eleven year old me!

[nigeyb]

I prefer Janet

[Golden E. Pump]

I prefer Janet

Control, Rhythm Nation 1814, Janet. and Velvet Rope are all great albums and she's underrated by British audiences in my mind. But better than Michael? That's a stretch.

[Dr Syntax Head]

On the day Michael Jackson died, a man on a pirate radio staton I was listening to said " 'King of Pop'? Nah bruv, let's give it up for some real music." and then played some extremely generic drum and bass twice.

Was he MC Grindah?

[Dr Syntax Head]

Control, Rhythm Nation 1814, Janet. and Velvet Rope are all great albums and she's underrated by British audiences in my mind. But better than Michael? That's a stretch.

I'd prefer Janet if they were both naked in my bed

[daf]

Meanwhile, in a parallell universe, this has just gone to number one :
https://soundcloud.com/grainger1981/loving-never-hurt-no-one

[popcorn]

Did he really write all those songs? How do you write Smooth Criminal when you don't play an instrument?

Apparently he composed songs - basslines and drum patterns and everything - by humming and beatboxing and recording into a dictaphone, then assisted by producers and engineers in magicking it into existence. See his Beat It demo , for example.

Rob Hoffamn, sound engineer: "One morning MJ came in with a new song he had written overnight. We called in a guitar player, and Michael sang every note of every chord to him. 'Here's the first chord, first note, second note, third note. Here's the second chord first note, second note, third note', etc etc."

More examples here: http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-incredible-way-michael-jackson-wrote-music-16799 It's really charming hearing him describe how he wrote Billie Jean and how obviously excited he becomes recalling the moment of inspiration.

I'm prepared to believe that someone with such an obviously extraordinary connection to music and rhythm could have composed without ever touching an instrument (though he's credited with some instrumentation on History apparently).

[Bazooka]

Ben is probably my favourite song about a rat.