I could be downstairs right now watching the Michael Jackson memorial with my co-workers, but frankly, I don’t think I’ll get much out of seeing a bunch of celebrities trying to milk whatever connection they might have had with Jackson for a few more minutes in the spotlight. This isn’t to say that his passing hasn’t effected me, but when it happened I was on vacation, far away from internet and 24 hour news channels, and wasn’t able to chime in with every other music critic on the planet, so I’ve had the luxury of waiting until now to express my thoughts.
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Thriller was the first album I ever owned, as is the case with most music lovers my age. I remember sitting down with my whole family to watch the debut of the video for the title track, and when I think of pop stars of the 80s, there’s no one who comes close to his stature. By the time I hit my teens and discovered punk rock and house music, Michael had become a joke, and was as easily dismissed as any of the constructed teen-pop bands that dominated top-40 radio in the 90s, so for a time I was able to pretend to myself that his influence was as inconsequential as any other manufactured corporate superstar.
It wasn’t until I started DJing that I started having second thoughts about the importance of this icon on my life. When all else fails, the sure-fire way to get the dance floor going (whether it’s an underground warehouse party or a low-key art opening) is to drop a MJ reference, which inspired me to find my old copy of Thriller and listen again with fresh ears.
When you’re obsessed with underground music, it’s easy to feel that there’s tons of great music that should be on the pop charts, but isn’t because the major labels don’t know how to market it. Then how do we explain Michael’s extraordinary success? On paper, it seems incredibly improbable: an extremely effeminate, absurdly eccentric, asexual (or possibly gay) black man, making pop music based mainly disco (just after homophobia and racism pushed the genre back underground) with nods to breakdancing and early hip-hop culture (which at the time was still a long way from pop chart material).
Even his most ardent fans would have to admit that he couldn’t have been the easiest pop star to sell to middle-America, so how the hell did he become so huge? Well, what I learned from taking a second listen to Thriller is that it actually seemed to come down to raw talent. When the weakest song on the album is the collaboration with a member of the Beatles, you have to admit you’re talking about some high-calibre material.
For me, this revelation was a real turning point in my own musical tastes. While I continued to enjoy difficult and obscure music, I no longer felt the need to dismiss pure pop in order to maintain my identity or credibility. This freed me up to rediscover top-40 radio and dive into modern R&B (instead of just admitting to liking classic Motown). It also forced me to admit that some of the music I loved would never become popular, not because of some corporate conspiracy, but instead because it just isn’t quite good enough to have the kind of wide appeal that Michael Jackson was capable of.
So instead of speculating on Jackson’s private life, and instead of lapping up the crocodile tears of celebrities that barely knew the man, I’m going to give thanks for how he managed to open my ears to all music, not just the cool shit.
