He's one of the few musicians I've been listening to since I was six years old. I've long thought I Want You Back is one of the best songs, period. She's Out of My Life has for a long time been a personal favorite, as is Girlfriend. Billie Jean survives being overplayed on muzak. Off the Wall is an underrated album, as is History. His personal legacy is perhaps a dubious one, but he was one of the great dancers and entertainers of his century and it is a shock to read of his passing. The J. Randy Taraborelli biography, despite stopping in the early 90s, is very good.
Today was not a good day for the 1980s (Fawcett, McMahon).
Not to be rude so soon after his death, but: “perhaps”?
I’m surprised how sad I am at this. Being born in 1978, MJ and my childhood are intertwined all over the place. My very first “adult” LP was Thriller, and my first CD was Bad. I haven’t listened to them for years, but I’m realizing today that they are still very much in my consciousness. RIP.
RIP.
I am surprised Tyler was shocked at his passing. This had to be one of the least surprising early celebrity deaths of all time. If you’re under 25 years of age, his impact is probably lost on you somewhat. Before Thriller ever graced MTV for the first time, he had been a household name for over well over a decade. His worldwide popularity was greater than The Beatles or Elvis, but I don’t believe people felt the same intensity for MJ as they did for John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
agreed that he was a worldwide star. i spent a year in kenya (88-89) and as my name is michael and i’m from america people would frequently ask me if i knew michael jackson or michael jordan.
Jeff Goldblum? Surely you hoax.
I have removed the Goldblum reference, thanks for the updates on that…
Goldblum is still with us. It was a hoax.
Tyler, I hope that picture is not of something you own.
End of an era Tyler. I can remember sitting with my folks watching the Ed Sullivan show when the Jackson 5 performed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjLGEZZ7CG4) and my Mom turned to me and asked — “why can’t you do that?”
To me 1969-1970 pop icon were the end of my brother and sister childhood — retirement of Mickey Mantle from the Yankees (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrW3c9To-vI) and the break up of the Beatles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oZYqAeIdYk&feature=fvw) but Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 were the awakening of a new pop icon for our generation.
Great success, but very troubled life. Wonder how he will be remembered.
“End of an era Tyler.”
I think the reason there’s such a deep and wide reaction over the death of this controversial yet gifted man is that he in fact spanned two, or even three, eras, and had a profound impact on multiple generations.
Previous commenters have noted the resonance of the Jackson 5 on their formative years. The Ed Sullivan show was before my time, but I am well aware of its place in American cultural history. Michael Jackson now joins Lennon, Harrison, and Morrison as among that show’s performers that passed on too soon. The 60s loses another child.
For me, the era that is over is the ’80s. When I was 7, in 1985, EVERY kid in my class was a Michael Jackson fan. We were too young then for irony, and the decade itself was much more sincere than the ’90s would end up being. It was the ’80s, and we loved Thriller, and never thought for a moment that there was anything uncool about that. On the contrary, nothing could be cooler than MJ.
Finally there is the third era. Having been deservedly crowned as the “King of Pop,” Michael entered the final phase of his career, wherein the youngest generation came to know him best not through his music but through tabloids. Now the butt of jokes, even many older fans began to question their allegiance to their childhood hero as the 2000s wore on.
Despite the events of recent years, however, many of us realized today that what happened in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s between us and Michael Jackson was real and today we can embrace that old feeling and listen to those formative songs once more, and remember a whole other era, and how his place in it and ours connected and merged, and mourn the fact that that memory is all that is left now.
I don’t think any western musician has reached more people all over the world as MJ had during the 80s and 90s. Speaking personally he was western music for most indians in the 80s and 90s. Everybody had to do the moonwalk and some of his other moves to show off their dancing chops in school
. May he RIP…
O/t Why isn’t Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone (about Goldman Sachs) Topic A all over the internet(or at least the financial segment thereof)? At the end of the day, do you really care or don’t you?
what a figurine (or be it figurone?) … is he supposed to be holding Roddy McDowell in Planet of the Apes?
Sadly, I find it impossible to be shocked at MJ’s passing. It seems only inevitable as hyper-celebrities and their various coping mechanisms, usually including astounding quantities of prescription drugs, result in terrible wear and tear on mortal bodies. Once one enters into the freak show category of celebrity the pressures and toxins seem to multiply, and a burnout is inevitable. We see it again and again, so this was not the least bit surprising. Sad but true.
I think it would be a wonderful thing if in death, he is remembered with great fondness, because imo, he was far too demonized the last 15 years. So hopefully with more time, we will allow ourselves the chance to meditate more on the good times we had with him and his music. I grew up on Thriller. I feel like it was theme music to a wonderful time in my life. His dancing was amazing and he seemed to always being push himself creatively. I respected that about him.
I guess your opinion on whether he was unfairly treated in the press varies with whether you believe the charges of child molestation were true or not. I have always had a hard time believing them, as I always associate secrecy and steal with pedophilia, and MJ was the exact opposite. He telegraphed that children were everywhere in his life. That does not seem to me the reasonable strategy of a child pedophile, though.
Anybody going to comment on his reported conversion to Islam last November?
I’ve been listening to MJ since HE was about six, or seemed like it (they billed him as about two years younger).
But I’m surprised that no one has talked about how much he cost the nation, especially those who came of age in the Reagan years? His first hits marking the end of the 60s would have cost about a buck, but in the 80s, every time he did something, it was like a huge sucking sound, sucking billions in cash out of the pocket books and savings accounts of American families.
MJ was a huge burden on the economy. He must have forced millions of families to buy premium cable to get MTV. And instead of a buck for a 45, families were forced to buy a 20 buck video. And the clothes and dance lessons that families were forced to afford. And all the magazines people were forced to buy at the checkout lines. And the wasted gas going to and from concerts and the tax he put on seeing his from a mile away in some vast sea of people in his public appearances.
And you can see the burden he placed on the economy. When Carter was president, Americans saved 10% of what they earned, but as MJ came out with each new “innovation” the savings rate fell another point or two.
How can any economist not be thinking of his lasting legacy costs as his tax burdens continue on beyond his death.
[channeling conservatives and economists talking about the costs of cap and trade...]
Can anyone name one positive thing he contributed to the US and world economy?
I must confess to being an aging hippie boomer who bought a minimum of one $3 vinyl a week for a decade, wasted three days in a sea of mud, and noted MJ like millions of others as a sort of future hope at the end of a decade of hope and change. During the 80s I was too busy working (with millions of others) to bring America the huge tax burden of computers and internet that vacuum thousands out of American families to have fully integrated MJ into my life. But looking back, MJ was about the only thing that stands out in the 80s is MJ while in the 60s when I came of age, Woodstock was just a small slice of a remarkable era.
MJ and MTV had the kind of broad impact, touching everyone in the US and much of the world, not seen since Ed Sullivan and hundreds of people from Elvis to the Beatles (both proxies for Chuck Berry) to the Supremes to James Brown and just Motown in general crowned by Woodstock.
I’m not saying the 70s were a zero, but when its broadest cultural impact is Abba, MJ rescued the world from bland and united the world. And MJ didn’t exactly break new ground: Freddie Mercury, Bowie, Jagger, Alice Cooper, James Brown,…
But MJ’s Thriller CHANGED EVERYTHING. Why, by imposing a huge tax on everyone, he ended the worst recession since the Great Depression!
Isn’t it also worth mentioning that Michael Jackson was on record as an anti-semite?
Perfect picture!
>His personal legacy is perhaps a dubious one
Interesting way to describe a guy who raped children, I have to say.
What is RIP?
a lot of the comments on here make me sick. he was not a molester, those were proven as extortion attempts. as some should be ashamed of what they put, i’m sure the idiot in you blocks that.
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