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I really don't understand why the majority of the general public dismiss everything after Thriller

Mike P.

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Don't get me wrong, Thriller totally deserves all of the praise and acclaim it gets but what about everything he did in the 90's? If you really think about it, He released just about as much music in the 90's as he did in the 80's and all of it is of equally as good if not better quality. I just don't get why so many people try to dismiss him as an 80's artist.

I know a lot of the bull crap he went through during that period tended to overshadow everything else, but the quality of music he was putting out in that decade was far, far better and more timeless than 90% of the music that was coming out at the time. Dangerous and HIStory are arguably his best work artistically and musically, and yet there are so many people who don't seem to even know they exist.

I just wish people would see him for more than just Thriller. Michael is one of the very few artists who I can honestly claim to have a just about flawless discography.
 
I can't stand the lack of praise for his later works as well. I think this is another sad side-effect of the "freak show" image that the media started painting after Thriller. You had the crazy tabloid stories, the allegations, all of which built up to that and was then pounded into everyone's minds. People were so put off by his supposed weirdness that it turned them off from his later music. :(
 
I totally agree with you. Since I can still totally remember what it was like for Michael back in the 90s. Especially here in America. I should since I have on blank video tapes every single news that was ever about him back then. Some going back to 1993. I had taped those news stories and all of them were mostly bad. Nothing good was ever said about how great HIStory album was and stuff like that. I was only 11 when the Dangerous album came out. So I really only remember about half of that era. Though my country's media did seem to have this fixated obsession over the controversy over his song They Don't Care About Us. And video he was making for it. I remember that was all that I ever heard back in the summer of 1996. And I could not have been more angry and sick about it. When to me I didn't think there was nothing wrong with the song. It always angers me to no end how my country's media was with him. It is no wonder why the Bad tour was the last tour he ever did in my country. Thriller is a great album. But I had always thought that Dangerous and HIStory were way better than the Thriller album. Especially since some of the best songs he has ever done were on those 2 albums.
 
I'm pretty sure the media and tabloids never liked how much Michael already accomplished. This boy (not the racist boy) have gone too far already, let's put him down and then the tabloids began that massive crusade to destroy him since the Joseph Merrick's bones and the hyperbaric chamber crap. They created that caricature of an allege circus freak. Just like people did with Joseph.

Yes, Dangerous and HIStory are artistically and musically superior to his 3 previous albums but it also pisses me off Q receives way too much credit and praise than he actually deserves, he gets much more praise and acclaim than Michael himself, even though he composed most of those classics he's best known for.

Even though the media didn't achieve to stop making him the biggest selling solo artist with their massive crusade, they were responsible his sales declined, many idiotic sheep believed the garbage and bullshit (not only on his personal life but the reviews on his 90's music) media said and sold. I guess you understand my anger and despise towards those "fans." How I wish his estate put more effort to get those 2 albums more celebrated and acclaimed instead of putting so much emphasis on Thriller.
 
I remember the media bashing Blood On The Dance Floor, but then that same media were praising The Spice Girls. That is something that I'll never wrap my head around.
 
They also compared every one of Michaels albums after Thriller to the sales generated by Thriller and then made it sound like they weren't successful. No other artist had their albums sales compared to his when they released an album. The fact is that as Michael stopped talking to the media the media decided to do what they could to bring down. However as others have stated musically he got stronger and stronger and I love the reactions of people as they discover his later albums. I only hope the Estate will promote these albums with anniversary editions, films and concerts in the same way they did for Bad.
 
Michael's most successful single in the UK was Earth Song, You Are Not Alone was a huge hit and everybody has heard of Black or White, Michael's fame got better, by far.
 
The problem is complex... but as for the media's fixation with sales numbers...
That's also Michaels fault, because he as well was fixated with sales numbers.
The sales numbers, the biggest selling, most awards, record-breaking blah blah
were always a big part of his PR. There was too much fabricated hype PR.
So no wonder the media jumped on that once the sales numbers went down over the decades.

Otherwise... the media likes simple stories that every idiot can swallow easy... and the downwards spiral horror show story is nice and simple to tell and sell. Would be too complecated for example to mention that the HIStory album even generated No.1 singles in countries where he never had a No.1 single before. (Like Earth Song and TDCAU were his first No.1 singles in Germany ever). It sadly just doesn't fit in...
 
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analogue said:
I remember the media bashing Blood On The Dance Floor, but then that same media were praising The Spice Girls. That is something that I'll never wrap my head around.
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I liked the Spice Girls when they came out, but their music has not stood the test of time, lol. The last time I tried listening to one of their albums, I just could not get into it at all whereas Blood on The Dance Floor is still one of my favorite songs.

One thing that would probably help HIStory is if it was released as a single disc album without the Greatest Hits. I don't think that helped much with people comparing it to his past work.

The thing is, I grew up in the 90's so Dangerous, HIStory and Invincible were the only eras I got to experience first hand. I was around 4 or 5 when I first heard about him after seeing the Bucharest concert on HBO and I thought he was the coolest person in the world. I begged my dad to get me some Michael Jackson tapes after watching that concert and he said he was going to let me listen to his Thriller cassette when I got home from school, but unfortunately my little brother ruined it before I got home. :( I ended up getting Thriller, Dangerous, and a new boombox for Christmas that year and I remember dancing around with a black fedora and a silver tinseled glove, lol.

But aside from the Bucharest special, the Super Bowl halftime, and a couple of random MTV marathons from the early 90s, I don't ever recall seeing too much positive promotion of Michael when I was a kid. I did not know about the '93 allegations when I was a kid so I'm sure my parents made sure I didn't see anything about it on TV, but I do recall other kids at school making fun of him and calling him Gay, which I did not understand and I didn't even know what that meant. after '93 I heard next to nothing about him publicly for the rest of my childhood until Invincible came out. I think I saw maybe one advertisement for HIStory when it first came out and that was it. Kids at school would make fun of him, say he wasn't cool, and call him a washed up 80's singer.

Even after his passing in 2009 when everyone was suddenly jumping on the MJ fad bandwagon, People would talk about how great Thriller was, maybe a little about Bad, and trash the rest of his career afterward as if he hadn't done anything relevant for the past 2 decades. Yet when This Is It came out and they started playing clips of his songs on TV specials, these same people were acting like "They Don't Care About Us" "Earth Song" "You Are Not Alone" "Blood on the Dance Floor" and "Morphine" were all brand new songs that he had just recorded before his death, when they had really been around for years, people just ignored them.

This was in the U.S. BTW. I don't know how much better his popularity was in other parts of the world at that time.
 
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Mike P. said:
This was in the U.S. BTW. I don't know how much better his popularity was in other parts of the world at that time.
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The situation in the US was special. Lots of things went wrong there after 93. And he never really got off the ground again after that.

Internationally... after 93 he had the haters everywhere... but still he was the major pop force with major media coverage for whatever he did. HIStory must have been his biggest success in Germany (worldwide third largest music market) i think, also because he came to the Wetten Dass show which back then was THE big show with half of Germany watching. It was a big event everyone was talking about... like a Motown 25 for Germany. Earth Song and They Don't Care About Us were No.1 hits around the world... and the HIStory Tour was huge as well. You couldn't get around it.

Invincible didn't do much here... i remember one reporter asking "where is the new-mj-album hype?? suddenly it was just there.." ...but that was the same as everywhere.
 
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No wonder why Michael didn't want to tour USA after BAD. In my country general public doesn't know or barely knows his later work but they're divided. Some of them acknowledge him as a musical genius, some others believe all that crap and completely dismiss him as an artist.
 
MJsBollywoodGirl7;3987106 said:
Though my country's media did seem to have this fixated obsession over the controversy over his song They Don't Care About Us. And video he was making for it. I remember that was all that I ever heard back in the summer of 1996. And I could not have been more angry and sick about it. When to me I didn't think there was nothing wrong with the song.
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I grew up in the 90's but don't remember much about... well, anything really. I just remember everyone at school talking about "They Don't Care About Us" and arguing over what the lyrics were. I don’t remember anyone saying anything negative but that’s probably because people are more sensitive to kids about these things.

Snow White luvs Peter Pan;3987429 said:
No wonder why Michael didn't want to tour USA after BAD. In my country general public doesn't know or barely knows his later work but they're divided. Some of them acknowledge him as a musical genius, some others believe all that crap and completely dismiss him as an artist.
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I hate it when people do that! Even though they believe those things about him it shouldn't mean that they get to attempt to diminish what he was an artist. I think they do it because they believe he was a monster so they don't want to complement him about anything, it's like they think it would somehow mean that they're endorsing the things they think he did. It's terrible logic but a lot of people seem to think like this. I think this may be one of the reasons some people don't acknowledge his newer music.

I've seen other people who puzzle me, there was a lady on the main MJ facebook page when there was still a discussion board on there who loved MJ's music and loved him as an artist, but thought he'd done what he was accused of. She said she liked to separate the artist from the man. She said she'd been abused as a child and nobody believed her, and I think that's why she believed those allegations, it looked like she was projecting what happened to her onto MJ and said she always believes the child. Some of us gave her the facts about it all but it didn't get through to her,I think if an opinion is based on emotion it's much harder for people to let it go. The longer a person holds a view and the more attached they are to that view the less likely they are to change it, even if you put the evidence right in front of them. It’s very difficult to discuss this with an abuse victim.

From what I saw when I debated various people on that facebook page and other sites is that some will ignore evidence in favour of something else, usually statements from the press, but some people thought Chandler's story was too graphic to be false so reject facts or come up with excuses and try to come up with ways their opinion could still be true. Most of the time it was people posting inaccurate information and us refuting it, the burden of proof was switched.
 
Thriller isn't even his best album, or second best album. Dangerous and then Bad are those. Invincible is also really good, and HIStory had a lot of classic songs.

I've never understood it.
 
It is also interesting to note that the combined sales of Dangerous and HIStory are basically the same as OTW and Bad.
 
Bad is better than Thriller but not even closer to Dangerous' and HIStory's league.

No matter how much evidence you present to people, if they don't wanna know the truth, there's no human power that make them change their mind. I forgot to mention a third kind of people, the ones who acknowledge how talented Michael was, a true artist but they believe all the crap about him nonetheles, just like my mother. The bullshit the Chandlers and the Arvizos created made him lose many "fans."
 
I think '93 poisoned the general view of him from that point onward. It took so much of the public's view away from his actual work and it never fully returned. Before, outside of a few silly, harmless tabloid stories, the attention was almost always on his music and performance. Post-'93, all the controversy eclipsed his work. People couldn't be bothered to focus on his work when the press filth was so much more entertaining. :no:
 
Because most people are sheep, to be honest. Whatever the media tells them is good that is good. But if they are told something is not good they do not even give it a chance.

I do remember that the Spice Girls' album was given 4 and 5 stars by reviewers while BOTDF was given 2...

I also remember how Dangerous was given 2 stars in Rolling Stone's 2006 album guide while Madonna's Hard Candy was given 4...
And Dangerous was given 4 stars initially when it was released, but RS downgraded it to 2 in their 2006 album guide. I guess if someone is falsely accused of child molestation then that suddenly makes their music worse too... Rolling Stone always hated Michael but they could not have got away with BS like rating Dangerous 2 stars in 1991, because it was a great album. But in 2006 when everyone hated MJ because of the allegations they could finally get away with downgrading his music like that so they pulled that crap on him.

I think it's different in the US and outside of the US, though. I think European media (specially UK media) can be just as vile as US media, but somehow Europeans are more critical and sceptical of the media while Americans tend to believe everything they read. I remember the singles from Dangerous and HIStory were very popular here in Europe. Like said earlier, some even more popular than anything during Thriller era.

I also think HIStory is a fantastic album, one of Michael's best but not really a radio-friendly pop album. Radios do not like to play heavy stuff and most radio listeners do not like to listen to heavy stuff. They just want fun, nice little pop melodies with careless, fun lyrics not something that is too heavy and deep. And HIStory is a heavy album, not a careless, fun album. So that's another reason. IMO HIStory has even more to offer from many aspects than Thriller, but you have to be open to it, which many people are not.
 
respect77 said:
I also think HIStory is a fantastic album, one of Michael's best but not really a radio-friendly pop album. Radios do not like to play heavy stuff and most radio listeners do not like to listen to heavy stuff. They just want fun, nice little pop melodies with careless, fun lyrics not something that is too heavy and deep. And HIStory is a heavy album, not a careless, fun album. So that's another reason. IMO HIStory has even more to offer from many aspects than Thriller, but you have to be open to it, which many people are not.
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And that's why You Are Not Alone is the most popular song from that album (In the U.S at least) cause it's the harmless love song of the album.

It's funny cause I've always considered You Are Not Alone to be one of the weaker tracks on HIStory
 
Snow White luvs Peter Pan said:
No wonder why Michael didn't want to tour USA after BAD.
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As far as i remember he intended to tour the USA at the end of the Dangerous tour. Just like he did with the BAD Tour. But then we all know what happened and many concerts were cancelled.

Not sure what exactly was the reason with the HIStory Tour. Maybe he really didn't want to... or there simply were problems setting up concerts on US mainland because of the bad state of his image etc since 93.
He performed in Hawaii, USA though... :)

Michael-Hawaii-3-michael-jackson-16339867-444-480.jpg
 
Yes, I was right, the last concerts were going to take place in India, New Delhi on Dec. 93 but we know what happened after the concerts in my country.

Mexican media are typical infantile bullies who think themselves as comedians regarding Michael. During his state in Mexico there wasn't bad press but once he left the feast began. I just remember I refuse to believe all that crap. I don't know how Mike was treated during the Bad era though, I was 2 years old. And people here are just as sheep as they're in USA, probably the difference is that they're fanatical over different stuff.
 
I'm a very new Michael Jackson fan and I have to say that I really agree with what's being said. HIStory is my favorite album of his.

I mean, don't get me wrong... The earlier albums are sort of undeniable in a way. But I also don't think they are that *interesting* (if we can separate "good" and "interesting", lol... ). They are damn, damn good songs. But HIStory has real depth in my opinion. It feels like Michael dug deeper, it feels much more introspective. I mean, I cannot believe how good the lyrics for a track like Stranger in Moscow is for example.

There were some tracks later on as well... Morphine, Ghosts and Is It Scary? are *incredibly* good songs as well, and really inspired. It just felt like Michael wanted to dig deeper there, wanted to explore his songwriting skills even more. In a way, Invincible kinda turned out as a disappointment for me (that's too strong a word, I still love the album) because I didn't feel it had that *lethal* edge to it that I felt HIStory and the new tracks on Blood on the Dancefloor had.

But yeah, it's annoying whenever you watch documentaries about his career and the huge focus is almost always on the earlier stuff up to Bad, and then everything after it is just kinda skimmed over because "hey, that's when Michael started to get kinda weird right?" Ugh... I hate that.
 
Snow White luvs Peter Pan said:
^^I still have a sweatshirt with all the Dangerous in 1993, USA wasn't included but let me check to be sure.
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There were plans for USA dates, but they never became reality.
This was maybe planned as a third leg so the dates were not all released back then aleady.

Couldn't find a better source at the moment, but on Wikipedia it says:
"The third leg of the Dangerous World Tour ended after 24 of circa 43 planned dates mainly due to Jackson's severe ill health and the stress of the accusations made against him."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_World_Tour

Before the 93 allegations there was no reason not wanting to bring the tour to the US... he was still the king of pop for america back then.
 
Michael got better and better in his composition and lyrics, one can almost consider it as fact. If you look at analysis of his work (Joe Vogel's book, various blogs, etc.) there is a MUCH bigger chunk of discussion on his work from Dangerous onward, espescially for the HIStory album. You could write a book on that album alone.

I'll always be jamming to Billie Jean, but the depth in his later work simply can't be ignored.
 
I think everything he did after Thriller is overlooked. I mean yeah Thriller is the biggest selling album of all time but imho the music that came after Thriller is better, I mean listen to Bad, Dangerous, HIStory, Invincible. Give them a fair listen and you'll see that the beats get better, the lyrics got more personal (example: Man in The Mirror, Childhood) he grew artistically and imo it paid off.
I wasn't around to see all that was said after Thriller but those things that were said might have had something to do with it, but like I said I wasn't around, so idk for sure.
 
I actually recall that when I was in High School, Someone in one of my classes said "The only good song off of Thriller is Remember The Time", lol. I remember thinking #1. It was on Dangerous not Thriller, and #2. If someone thought that was the only good song off of Dangerous than they must have an extremely bland taste in music because Dangerous is such a solid album from beginning to end, there is literally no filler on it.

This was during the time of the trials in '05 tho, so that person may have just been trying to act 'cool' in front of his friends by not openly admitting to liking his music and pretending like he didn't know anything about him.
 
Here's the thing after Thriller they turned on MJ because he was the biggest thing they saw him as a threat. So they all went after him came up with these lies. Here is the food chain, you can only get big until you are a threat to the media empire because everyone will focus on you. But there strategies didn't work because all it did was make him bigger.
 
CarouselKid said:
Here's the thing after Thriller they turned on MJ because he was the biggest thing they saw him as a threat. So they all went after him came up with these lies. Here is the food chain, you can only get big until you are a threat to the media empire because everyone will focus on you. But there strategies didn't work because all it did was make him bigger.
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''I broke Elvis's records, I broke Beatles records. Overnight! They called me a freak, they called me a homosexual, they called me a child molester. They made everything to try and turn the public against me'' - Michael Jackson
 
PurdyYungThang84 said:
I think '93 poisoned the general view of him from that point onward. It took so much of the public's view away from his actual work and it never fully returned. Before, outside of a few silly, harmless tabloid stories, the attention was almost always on his music and performance. Post-'93, all the controversy eclipsed his work. People couldn't be bothered to focus on his work when the press filth was so much more entertaining. :no:
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True! I began to notice subtle changes in how he was painted in the press/media as early as when he bought the publishing rights to The Beatles' catalog, add to that the huge success Thriller became (prior to that smart business move) and BOOM, that MJ success train seemed unstoppable. Mike Moonwalked on some white sacred cows by doing that, then gaining mass appeal across every demographic (in a way that Elvis never did), breaking all kinds of records like a mofo AND earning that crown, that title, KING OF POP. All this from a black man from humble beginnings in Gary, Indiana (Fo shame, he didn't stay in his "place", naw suh).

I've heard such ignorance about Mike's gift as an artist come down to people saying Thriller was a "fluke"! Stats junkies will measure his success by that album, foolishly thinking he really isn't that great because he couldn't duplicate those numbers. Well, DUH, nobody could duplicate those numbers!

What a mess and so unfair to his following albums, because on their own they were head and shoulders above what your average artist could only think of recording/creating!
 
I completely agree. The media managed to skew Michael's image so much that I suppose it affected their appreciation and concentration on his music and redirected it to the "Michael the one man circus show".

The impact of Thriller was so huge, and it is an incredible album, but as other people have already stated, most of his succeeding works really surpassed the Thriller album in terms of both creative brilliance as well as musical genius.
 
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