here's a piece on michael jackson, prince, and madonna from say 2005.

and here's an assessment of the career of michael jackson.
ok most of this will be obvious, more or less. jackson was an excellent singer and a great dancer. he was not an independent artist, in the sense that everything depended on the writing and production of others. the jackson five were delightful; he was good in the disco era; he was good circa thriller, with a great stage act; but in no case was he original or innovative. his talent was quite the opposite of that: he combined existing elements and crafted the product extremely well: the first j5 album (a sweet synthesis of motown and bubblegum which completely dominated my mostly-black junior high circa 1971) and thriller were the only moments he really sounded extremely fresh, but surely the motown folk and quincy jones get a lot of the credit. thriller was important in establishing a new basic pop: post-disco/funk, and an alternative to "new wave." partly it was a return to pop-soul; partly it was an incorporation of the mainstream rock of the time.

the overwhelming moment came because you couldn't sell enough funk or hip hop to white people; thriller embodied a racial synthesis, even a kind of reconciliation. (eventually he became some kind of racial monster, an argument for the wholesomeness of existing racial identities.) michael jackson made good or at least elaborate and memorable videos (they're unwatchable now), which right at that moment became the key.

it was paradigm pop because it didn't instantiate any other particular genre: it was syncretic, masterfully so. and it was the occasion of a great coalescing of audiences or stampede of lemmings, depending on your mood. one reason to mourn jackson's passing is that thriller was a moment of cultural solidarity: one of the last times the whole culture was listening to the same thing, more or less. if jackson had not made thriller, his death would have been merely a lead obit, like bo diddley's, say. but i have to say that the decentralization or balkanization of pop music is a good thing, overall, and that mass art necessarily is fundamentally uninteresting.

the visuals were...idiotic: plastic sequined militariana and processed hair, race change surgery, a crust or bark of make-up, masks, etc. his tastelessness in every dimension was extreme. extraordinary. pitiful. cf. "neverland." it would be surprising if someone whose taste was that appalling could make really good music; on what principles is he going to select repertoire etc? and he made a lot of extremely boring or ridiculous music: essentially a lot of thriller and everything thereafter, more or less. but also before: play "ben." now play it again. now frisbee the thing into the ether. there wasn't a single really good moment after the early 80s, and there was a lot of incredibly cliched or self-indulgent horseshit.

he was a study in human misery for decades: continuously disintegrating into mental illness, addiction,  sexual strangeness, conspicuous continual tastelessness, extreme embarrassing stupidity, a world of delusion: the worst case of celebrity implosion since elvis. or, really, the worst of all times. it seemed to last forever. you kept waiting for some kind of redemptive moment or a moment of perspective or self-reflection, waiting for him to talk to the man in the mirror. or at any rate to make a decent album. even if he had, i wouldn't have bought it (well i never bought any of his albums; no need to; the question was how to avoid his music). to be honest, i don't think it was about to happen, as everyone seems to be asserting; i don't think it was going to ever happen. but i guess we don't know. it's not hard to predict the toxicology: opiates, anti-depressants, ambien, and three things you didn't know existed.

the king of pop, artist of the century, etc.: in my view he compares unfavorably to dozens of actually important musicians: louis armstrong, or jimi hendrix, or janis joplin, or muddy waters, or sonny boy williamson, or john coltrane, or miles davis, or bessie smith, or blind lemon jefferson, or blind willie mctell, or robert johnson, or hank williams, or tammy wynette, or merle haggard, or johnny cash, or patsy cline, or george jones, or the rolling stones, or professor longhair, or john prine, or the pretenders, or blondie, or bob marley, or lee perry, or king tubby, or augustus pablo, or toots and the maytals, or fats domino, or prince, or smokey robinson, or martha reeves and the vandellas, or aretha franklin, or otis redding, or wilson pickett, or al green, or the dixie hummingbirds, or james cleveland, or james brown, or thomas dorsey, or parliament-funkadelic, or the allman brothers, or the louvin brothers, or lotte lenya, or sarah vaughn, or bonnie raitt, or the bar-kays, or dave brubek, or the grateful dead, or led zep, or ac/dc, or jerry lee lewis, or the temptations, or the four tops, or jimmie rogers, or bob wills and the texas playboys, or sam cooke, or billie holiday, or howlin wolf, or little richard, or chuck berry, or bo diddley, or mahalia jackson, or shirley ceasar, or snoop dogg, or grandmaster flash, or public enemy, or dre, or wu-tang clan, or biggie, or eminem, or buck owens, or bill monroe, or ella fitzgerald, or benny goodman, or duke ellington, or b.b. king, or albert king, or freddy king, or otis rush, or magic sam, or loretta lynn, or waylon jennings, or the skatalites, or fela kuti, or creedence, or van morrison, or elvis costello, or count basie, or ornette coleman, or django reinhardt, or charlie christian, or charlie parker, or ma rainey, or elmore james, or lucinda williams, or bobby bland, or little walter, or brian wilson, or the ramones, or the dead kennedys, or minor threat, or nirvana, or the white stripes, or chet atkins, or dwight yoakam, or the seldom scene, or flatt and scruggs, or the stanley brothers, or les paul, or the clash, or jelly roll morton, or immortal technique, or woody guthrie, etc. leaving aside composition, production, or instrumental vituosity, all of these are, like mj,  recording artists, and even on that basis, with regard to many of them (such as hendrix, armstrong, hank williams, marley, coltrane, monroe, ellington, waters) mentioning jackson in the same breath would be madness. i think of him more like...aly and aj. nothing wrong with that - aly and aj are excellent pop artists - but the 48 hours of continuous programming is just a misunderstanding.

hoothe bad?

Comments

[Dan]

You don't have to be jealous just because the man sold over 750 million albums, or won 13 grammys. As a recording artist he may not have had the musical genius of Miles or Coltrane, but you can't discout the entertainment value of MJ.

[Robert Kelly]

Holy god do we have different tastes in music. I'm starting to get over myself and this identity blather but your column some years ago on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is uncanny in its perception.

If I was the eye of the storm in-house DJ, this blog would face a catastrophe on par with a nuclear meltdown, or colliding planets. Opera, though, as the pinnacle of artificiality has probably been eclipsed by industrial music and its inhuman, mechanized offshoots, which I absolutely love -- the dark underbelly of the gay and the androgynous.

Now, if you want to see something really horrifying, check out the catalog for MJ's auctioned-away antiques and exquisites:

http://www.juliensauctions.com/auctions/2009/michael-jackson/

And Joe Jackson should be squashed with a steamroller operated by crazed basset hounds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3268133.stm

[SillyWilly]

I liked the "State of Shock" single he did with Jagger. That had some teeth to it. BTW, there's a version of that floating around YouTube w/MJ and Freddie Mercury (who wrote the tune). You can still find it if the BM! people haven't locked it down.

I stand by the thesis of my original essay: early stardom + abusive controlling parents + mass idolization = personality dysfunction which would require years/decades to overcome (if at all). Brian Wilson did to an extent, but the damage is evident in his music and public appearances.

IMO, Joe Jackson (MJ's dad) and Murray Wilson should have been hung by their thumbs from cacti in the San Andreas Desert while coyotes had their toes for hors d'ouevers. Just saying.

[CatM]

I had older brothers who blasted Cream and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin through the farmhouse I grew up in, c. 1970.. I was utterly mortified by my friends playing the Jackson 5 ... "ABC" at the class picnic..eeek!... way too uncool for school.. However. After years of being a complete music snob, I came to realize that MJ was a sensitive nerd, a dancer for the dancer in all of the dorks who needed lessons, a shy exhibitionist.... all the glitter was tacky, but the moves were transcendent... and his yearning for love and connection could be felt (and empathized with) even by those who were derisive of his uncool music and his eventual strangeness.

( I loved, loved, loved Billie Jean... even while my heart was with X.) His predilection for torturing his body made most of us uncomfortable , but this also made him oddly sympathetic... women routinely go through grotesque surgeries to attempt to approximate some weird and artificial goal: giant boobs, tiny waists, freakishly tight and unsmiling faces, tiny noses.... whites go to tanning salons, blacks lighten their skin.. everyone has their hair changed and their teeth capped. bald guys get hair plugs and everyone is having fat sucked out... meanwhile giant fat people seem to multiply in our midst... ("Brazil" is coming true...yikes..). MJ was channeling some body zeitgeist... race, gender, age.... wtf?

Maybe MJ wasn't a great musician.... he wasn't any of the wonderful people on your list... but... he did something none of them did... he used music and his incredible performance ability to encircle millions of people simultaneously (including me, music snob of the world) and made them feel they were connected to one another for a few minutes...

At the end of the day, I'll always go back to Van Morrison and Lucinda Williams, and Richard Thompson, etc, etc... for that different magic. But I totally respect and am in awe of the legacy of MJ...

[judith]

I don't think MJ was a musician so much as an entertainer. And he was pretty brilliant at that--whether he was actually performing or not...
I don't think "originality" (which I take it to mean furthering the form) is the only way to count or even all that important as an artist..."combining existing elements" is nothing to sneeze at.

But enough defending MJ (whom I don't even like all that much)
Where's your piece on Farrah? Cough it up!

[la Rana]

thats a whole lotta effort to say MJ was a priori bad.

almost every artist you list had a "period" of particular relevance highlighted by good work. a few tried to reinvent themselves once thier time had passed, often to hilarious, tragic, embarrassing results. The rest accepted their dawning impotence to create anything relevant, and decided to keep playing as if time stood still, sounding both dated and pathetic. which is worse? I don't know. But I do know that the stones, blondie, AC/DC and pfunk haven't made interesting music in 30 years, while whatever creedance, brian wilson, and smokey robinson may have sounded like in their time, today they're best suited to soft drink commercials and nostalgia.

the story should be: if you aren't miles davis, you're best off dying young.