The King of Pop: Gone Too Soon

Today's post was going to be about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, because that whole episode is so worthy of a blog post...but he got pre-empted by one of the world's biggest icons of popular culture: the shocking death of Michael Jackson. One thing I love about the age of the Internet is that we get these news stories right away, rather than learning about it at the 6 o'clock news at home. I wasn't surfing the Net when I found out, though. My know-it-all co-worker loves to be the one who breaks all kinds of news to people at the office (I suppose it makes her life feel important in some way, because she learned of it first and gets to tell everyone else about it).

At first, she was ranting on and on about Farrah Fawcett and how that lady's son doesn't plan to attend the funeral, and Miss Prissy School Marm was going on and on about how she'd slap that boy silly and lecture him (of course she would...she's a damn School Marm personality that truly grates on my last nerve)...then she switched to rant about Michael Jackson's debts and cancelled concerts and blah blah blah.

Anyhow, that's how I found out about the death of the pop culture phenomenon. Michael Jackson's fame around the world probably rivals Coca-Cola and Mickey Mouse as America's most enduring symbols of popular culture. Though his popularity waned in the U.S. since the late 1990s due to his legal problems and the allegations of inappropriate conduct with children, he was still a major star in Europe and especially Japan. Its amazing to see footage of girls around the world having crying and fainting spells at his concerts and public appearances.

I already wrote a comprehensive retrospective on Michael Jackson for his 50th birthday in an August 2008 post (check my archives if you want to read it), so I won't go into detail my entire thoughts about his career and the tragic waste his life became in the end. I want this post to be an honourable In Memoriam, paying tribute to the talented genius of this global superstar and how his music affected my life personally.

One thing that amazes me about Michael Jackson's universal appeal is that everyone seemed to like his music and music videos. I was in my tweens in Bellevue, Nebraska when Thriller arrived on the music scene. The album was released in 1982 but it didn't really get popular until late 1983 and particularly 1984. At the time, most of the boys I knew were into heavy metal music and considered pop music to be "girly." I loved pop music and hated heavy metal, and one guy at church used to make a big deal about it. In fact, he "brainwashed" his 3 year old sister to like his type of music and I admit that it was funny to hear this little girl say things like, "bark at the moon!" (an Ozzy Osbourne reference) and "shout at the devil!" Despite differences in musical tastes, he liked Michael Jackson. I'd watch MTV at his house sometimes (my parents didn't get cable until last year) and we always wanted to see a Michael Jackson video.

Its hard to imagine, but before Michael Jackson, MTV didn't really feature African American singers. Videos were pretty lame, though, until the genius of Jackson saw the potential to make mini movies with storylines that may or may not reflect the lyrics. All of it was eye catchingly mesmerizing...from gang knife fights in "Beat It" (lifted from the classic 1950s film Rebel Without A Cause) to sidewalks that light up when he walked on it in "Billie Jean" (I remember a Steve Martin parody on Saturday Night Live) to the cinematic short film "Thriller" that riveted just about everyone. Today, the zombie dance sequence is still popular (look it up on YouTube...you'll see everything from wedding parties to prisoners in the Philippines dancing the unique steps).

No star was more untouchable in 1984 than Michael Jackson. His guest vocals made a hit single out of "Somebody's Watching Me" by a one-hit wonder whose name escapes me. He became the highest paid celebrity endorser when Pepsi paid him $10 million to appear in ads (and famously caught his hair on fire during the filming of a commercial). He reteamed with his brothers for the stadium "Victory Tour" concerts (I had unsuccessfully lobbied my dad to take the family to Kansas City for the concert). He wrote and gathered the largest group of singers after the Grammys in 1985 to record "We Are the World" for charity relief of famine victims in Ethiopia (sadly, Ethiopia jokes were popular at that time). And Thriller became the biggest selling album of all time (by some accounts, over 100 million albums sold to date).

If anyone did much to break down the racial barriers between black and white Americans, Michael Jackson was instrumental in doing so. His fan base was truly universal and crossed all racial categories. Like I said above, even heavy metal headbanger tween/teen boys liked Michael Jackson. All of my friends liked his music, even if we disagreed on every other group out there. He was a unifying figure in the music world. I simply cannot imagine what my life would have been like without his music, videos, and transformational popular cultural impact. You can see his influence today in Usher's dance moves, Britney Spears and Chris Brown's music videos, Justin Timberlake's music, and countless others. Even President Barack Obama owes some of his popularity to the trail Michael Jackson blazed in the 1980s. Would he even be president today if Michael Jackson hadn't broken through America's race obsession and showed an appeal that went beyond "Black or White" (a hit song from 1991)?

Though I believe the unprecedented success of the Thriller album at the age of 25 set into motion the self-destructive path Michael Jackson would follow in his second half of life, he did record two really good follow-ups (I think 1991's Dangerous is actually better than 1987's Bad, partly because the album had catchier songs and better videos--particularly "Remember the Time" and "Black or White"). None of them could reach the sales numbers of Thriller, though and in our numbers-obsessed culture, we seem to judge a person harshly if they can't beat their previous sales records (this is certainly true at my work). But no one has been able to match Thriller's numbers. Many of today's stars would be lucky to sell as many albums as Dangerous or 1995's HIStory compilation two-disc set.

On Dangerous, he had a beautiful song that he wrote for his friend Ryan White (the teenager who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion in the mid-1980s and faced the brunt of people's ignorance and fear regarding the new disease). Now, that song could very well be used at Michael Jackson's funeral services: "Gone Too Soon."

We don't know yet the full details of his death. All we know is that he was only 50 years old and had a cardiac arrest that put him into a coma before he finally passed into the spiritual realm. With all the botched surgeries on his face, you never know if it ultimately proved too taxing on his body. There's also the idea that people generally "kill off" their heroes and icons, because the demands and expectations fans place upon an entertainer often seem to be too much for any human to withstand (its no longer surprising that celebrities have periods of freaking out: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Danny Bonaduce, Corey Haim, and David Cassidy to name a few).

So, Rest in Peace, Michael. You've earned it. While he touched millions of lives around the world with his musical genius, it would be interesting to know what his life review might be like. There's debate on whether or not he's a child molester. My sister said that in a college psychology class she took, they debated this issue and the class came to the conclusion that he was not one. They believe that he felt more comfortable around children and animals because they didn't judge him the way adults did. What's undebatable, though, is his undeniable talent and personal pains he carried his entire life. His most revealing song is "Childhood", where he asks the question "Have you seen my childhood?" and makes a plea not to judge him without understanding his childhood, which is well documented. His father was basically a bully who deprived the Jackson boys a childhood with his dreams of fame and fortune at Motown for his family. That's the trade-off, it seems. The financial and career success came at the expense of the kind of simple pleasures the rest of us mortals get to enjoy in anonymity. Since the Jackson 5 days, the youngest brother became the most successful and spent the rest of his life creating a dream childhood for himself. Now the judgment on all aspects of his life rests in the spiritual realm.

For the rest of us, his music will live on forever. There will never be another performer like Michael Jackson. He truly belongs to the Ages. Best wishes to you, Michael, on the next phase of your spiritual progression. Thank you for the great music and videos over the years. I will never stop listening to his songs, especially my personal favourite: "Man in the Mirror."