I guess I’ll say something about Mike.
July 1, 2009
<i>Thriller</i> came out in 1983 which means I have spent my entire life pretending not to care about Michael Jackson. That is to say, there hasn’t been a single week of my life that has gone by that I haven’t heard a Michael Jackson song, read an article about him, or at least seen a picture – so that makes it pretty hard for me to keep up this whole “not caring” act.
The fact of the matter is: Michael Jackson is dead. I’ve been so used to reading outlandish tabloid stories about him for the last 26 years (or you know, since I COULD read) that my immediate thought upon hearing the news from a co-worker last Thursday night was “Eh, he’s faking it.” Because wouldn’t that make more sense than him <i>actually</i> being <i>dead</i>?
My boyfriend and I went to a Newbury Comics on Sunday afternoon and there were no Michael Jackson CDs or records. None. Last Wednesday there would have been at least ten or so. The Idolator article I’ve linked to below wonders how many Jackson records have actually been purchased since last Thursday since Soundscan doesn’t track used sales. It is an interesting question, and an interesting phenomenon. People Are Buying Records. The fact is, all of these people could EASILY grab a torrent of any Michael Jackson album or single or WHATEVER… but they want to pay money. They want to own a copy of <i>Bad</i>. They want to somehow touch this guy.
And me? I want to know what I missed. See, 26 years of denying interest in something is a Long Time. But I’ve always been interested – hell, morbidly fascinated – with this man. The dance moves, the over the top music videos with dance routines involving elephants, the tabloid stories, the courtroom dramas… God. I sat through the BET awards hoping against hope that SOMEONE would cover “Man in the Mirror” but instead got a whole lot of Jamie Foxx “singing” and “being funny”.
So, I’m stuck on what else to say. I guess almost completely unrelated to anything I’ve just said I want to say that pictures of Michael Jackson as a child have been making me very sad. A lot has been made of the fact that this guy never had a childhood and so he spent his entire adult life as some kind of freakish manchild… and maybe that is true. I’m not going to judge the guy anymore. I’m just going to let myself like “Billie Jean”.
