Michael Jackson June 26, 2009 at 11:42 am
This isn’t a cheerful post for once. Last night, Michael Jackson passed away from a heart attack at the age of 50.
I truly hope this will make people forget about the later years and focus on what he did best: some of the best music ever made, along with basically basically the invention of the proper music video, and the spectacular extravaganza performance.
Michael Jackson has not released a single truly crappy album, with the possible exception of Blood on the Dance Floor, or at least the remix section. Starting from his Jackson 5 material, with some of the most memorable Motown tracks (”ABC”, “I Want You Back”, and now tell me you didn’t get those choruses stuck in your head when reading the titles), and basically perfecting the signature mix of pop, disco and jazz in Off The Wall. Of course, most people would consider Thriller to be the best pop album ever produced, and I certainly think it contains the best pop songs, but when it comes to pop production, Bad and Dangerous were possibly even better. If “Thriller” is the best composed pop song, then “Jam”, on the Dangerous album, is arguably the best produced pop song. The influence of these tracks can be heard to this day. Even later albums, that have been not quite as acknowledged as his earlier work, were genuinely good albums.
Furthermore, he has both revolutionised and perfected the music video. Even early stuff like Blame It On The Boogie has some fairly high concept stuff, but of course the culmination of that effort was from Thriller onwards. I remember that as a child, every time a music video by Michael Jackson came out, it was a huge event. It was all we could talk about, and every music video was fantastically original and amazing. I may not care too much about music videos and PVs in general, but if done right, they are amazing entertainment, and no one did them more right than Michael Jackson. The Nostalgia Critic even did a review of Moonwalker (which, in his style, was scathing and hilarious), but he couldn’t find anything bad to say about the “Smooth Criminal” music video, declaring it “perfection”.
On a personal note, I can’t put into words how much his music inspired me, and how sad I am that he passed on. The first music album I ever bought, in vinyl, was Bad. I still think it’s one of my best decisions ever.
