Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson
I was seventeen years old when Thriller came out. I was right in the heart of his target market, yet I could not have cared less. A few years earlier I was horrified to see my (then) beloved Beatle icon Paul McCartney doing a duet with Mr. Jackson. In addition Mr. Jackson later had the temerity to buy the Beatles catalogue. It was not that I had had anything against Mr. Jackson personally, I just considered dance music to be mostly vacuous, and I still do.Michael Jackson is unwittingly responsible for the mindless celebrity gossip that passes as news these days. In short, I blame Mr. Jackson for everything that I now hate about music, and celebrity media. Clearly, it was all his fault and even more clearly he was brilliant at exploiting the media to his own advantage.
Michael Jackson did more to visualize music than anyone else. Above all, Thriller was the first pop album that was marketed for a visual medium. From that point forward the music industry cared at least as much about how you looked than how you sounded. And I hated every goddamn second of it.
Thriller represented a sea change in the constructs of how music could be percieved. The Thriller video will always be the most iconic music video of all time.
Perhaps I am deaf, and I am unquestionably in the minority, but I still fail to understand the phenomenon.
While I feel for his family, I find it difficult to find any emotion in his passing.
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