Monday, June 29, 2009

Michael Jackson, Ctd.

The predictable media orgy over the death of the "King of Pop" continues. But there never was a moment, not a single moment, when Michael Jackson had anything of importance to offer American culture, and he never did. He had no real artistry -- Quincy Jones was the sensibility behind his albums, as far as that goes -- and he had nothing to say. Oh sure, the Jackson 5 were better than the Osmonds or the Partridge Family, and Michael sang "Never Can Say Goodbye" pretty soulfully for a 12-year-old (but that's in the nature of a stunt). But to compare Michael Jackson to Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Prince, Frank Sinatra, or other true geniuses of popular music is not only misleading, it's an insult to our collective intelligence. There is no tragedy here, only grotesquerie; there was no height to fall from.

Perform a thought experiment. After Thriller, Jackson's career sputters, and his next couple of albums fail to catch commercial fire. How unusual would that be? Not at all. Then pretend there was no freakishness: no more plastic surgeries, no hyberbaric chambers, no Neverland Ranch, no friendships with little boys, no chimps in matching outfits. Michael grows up, marries, has a few kids. Still wealthy, he fades out of the public eye, retires from performing, moves into the production end of the business (emulating his master Quincy Jones), invests in a nightclub. Essentially, he's Boz Scaggs after Silk Degrees (like Thriller, an album of hits).

Then, at the age of 50, Jackson dies of a sudden heart attack. He hasn't been tabloid copy in 25 years. How "big" would this news be? Clearly, it wouldn't go unnoticed; but without the decades of freakishness, Michael Jackson as a star presence in 2009 wouldn't amount to much. America loved that freak.