KB50MJ
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This is taken from the introduction to the TV Guide tribute to MJ. Just in case some missed it.
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MJ presided over the third and final big band of the rock and roll era. The First explosion was Elvis. That was about sexual liberation and racial integration and the blasted lasted about 10 years.
The Second explosion was the Beatles-and everything they bought on. Suddenly pop music was about long hair and experimental sounds, progressive politics and outlaw rhetoric. Rock was about a counterculture. the blast reverberated for 20 years, echoing through Springsteen, Prince, and U2.
The third explosion was Thriller, Michael Jackson's 1982 album-the biggest selling album of all time and an album that invented the pop world we are still living in 25 years later.
Thriller reemerged pop music with the mainstream entertainment. After 20 years of anti-glamor, pop became again what it was before the 60's: part of show business. After Thriller, pop was about not just how you sounded but how you looked, how you dressed, how you danced.
MJ ushered in a new era after the long reign of the counterculture. He did Pepsi commercials and met with President Reagan. He did not pretend not to care about commercial success-he wanted to break all the old records. Michael didn't idolize Dylan and Hendrix-he idolized Elizabeth Taylor and Walt Disney.
The Michael Jackson model has ruled pop music for 25 years, and it shows no sign of ending. He made the world safe for MTV and Madonna,"Flashdance" and "Footloose," Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. A student of P.T. Barnum, MJ courted cray rumors and publicity stunts-and at some point that hunger for tabloid headlines turned on him. He fed the beast and the beast turned around and bit him. At some pint Michael seemed to forget about being a musician and got lost in being a star.
One crucial fact often gets overlooked in all statistics and hype and hoopla: Michael Jackson was amazingly talented.
those Motown records he made as a kid were fantastic, but it was when Michael grew up and took control of his own creativity that he have us "Beat It," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Billie Jean." the first time you hear those songs-with their snaking rhythms and beautiful playing and strange, almost paranoid lyrics-you had to pull the car over to the side of the road and figure out what was going on. This was a new kind of popular music, so compelling that-like Elvis and The Beatles before him- Michael Jackson changed the mainstream.
If Michael Jackson had not be able to write those songs and sing them so powerfully, none of the rest of the circus would have mattered. And now that he is gone, once the gossip and exploitation and vultures pass by, the music he made is what will remain.
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MJ presided over the third and final big band of the rock and roll era. The First explosion was Elvis. That was about sexual liberation and racial integration and the blasted lasted about 10 years.
The Second explosion was the Beatles-and everything they bought on. Suddenly pop music was about long hair and experimental sounds, progressive politics and outlaw rhetoric. Rock was about a counterculture. the blast reverberated for 20 years, echoing through Springsteen, Prince, and U2.
The third explosion was Thriller, Michael Jackson's 1982 album-the biggest selling album of all time and an album that invented the pop world we are still living in 25 years later.
Thriller reemerged pop music with the mainstream entertainment. After 20 years of anti-glamor, pop became again what it was before the 60's: part of show business. After Thriller, pop was about not just how you sounded but how you looked, how you dressed, how you danced.
MJ ushered in a new era after the long reign of the counterculture. He did Pepsi commercials and met with President Reagan. He did not pretend not to care about commercial success-he wanted to break all the old records. Michael didn't idolize Dylan and Hendrix-he idolized Elizabeth Taylor and Walt Disney.
The Michael Jackson model has ruled pop music for 25 years, and it shows no sign of ending. He made the world safe for MTV and Madonna,"Flashdance" and "Footloose," Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. A student of P.T. Barnum, MJ courted cray rumors and publicity stunts-and at some point that hunger for tabloid headlines turned on him. He fed the beast and the beast turned around and bit him. At some pint Michael seemed to forget about being a musician and got lost in being a star.
One crucial fact often gets overlooked in all statistics and hype and hoopla: Michael Jackson was amazingly talented.
those Motown records he made as a kid were fantastic, but it was when Michael grew up and took control of his own creativity that he have us "Beat It," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Billie Jean." the first time you hear those songs-with their snaking rhythms and beautiful playing and strange, almost paranoid lyrics-you had to pull the car over to the side of the road and figure out what was going on. This was a new kind of popular music, so compelling that-like Elvis and The Beatles before him- Michael Jackson changed the mainstream.
If Michael Jackson had not be able to write those songs and sing them so powerfully, none of the rest of the circus would have mattered. And now that he is gone, once the gossip and exploitation and vultures pass by, the music he made is what will remain.
