They print my message in the Saturday Sun; I had to tell them I ain't second to none

[primroseburrows]

This is probably the closest to a Michael Jackson retrospective post you'll get from me.

He was only two years older than me, so I grew up with him. My childhood memories were of 'I'll Be There' and 'Ben', not 'Thriller' or 'Billie Jean' (although I loved both, and more). I first knew of him as a cute boy with a lot of talent. I crushed on him back when I was twelve, and afterwards always admired him for his musical genius. In 1991 I saw this, and I realized that 'genius' was a horrible understatement:

I could write a whole rant on Michael and how he's been seen by North America (and how he's NOT seen by places like Senegal and Ivory Coast who love him for his music), but I'm not going to. Michael Jackson was more, and less, and light-years away from all that. He didn't just make pop, he made art.

Comments

[newleaf31.livejournal.com]

I discovered Michael Jackson when I was six, just before the release of Thriller. The night the album was released, my dad took me to my first midnight release at a record shop, because I'd been saving my allowance for that LP for a month. I think I listened to that record at least three times a day for about eight months. He was my second-ever crush. And he just seemed to keep getting better, for years and years. He was truly an artist, the likes of which we'll never see again.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the whole "King of Pop" label didn't do him justice, because people don't recognise pop music as an art form. And really, Black or White isn't exactly pop in the sense of being as accessible to the masses as possible, because a lot of the metaphor and symbolism and things went right over people's heads. I know it did with me, anyway.