As I start to type this post I am not sure where it is going to go, but I am compelled to write it nevertheless. I am a child of the 80's so I grew up on the music and music videos of Michael Jackson. That's not right, I grew up with his music and his talent.
Michael Jackson played a very big part in my childhood and adolescence. I remember the first song of his I ever heard to this very day. My dad went over to the closet where he kept all of his vinyl and grabbed this album that I remember thinking, "had this cute looking kid leaning on a wall" on the front. I was a mere pup then so I couldn't read that the album was called "Off the Wall." I had to have been 3 or 4 years old and did not know the words, but when I'm old, gray, and have altzheimers' I'll remember the melody to "Rock With You" because of my father.
Michael was an inspiration to me personally. He made me believe it was ok to be whatever you wanted to be. Here was this black kid in the music business which at that time should have meant he was strictly an R&B performer and yet he was not. He was a pop artist, blending R&B with Rock creating his own unique brand of pop that crossed over the lines of race and the boundaries of geography. To watch TV and see this black man wearing tight jeans and not baggy ones, and I swear he was the first black artist I saw wearing punk clothes. Michael made me believe it was cool to wear that stuff. While I never had a white glove or red jacket, I do like sporting chains and have an affinity for Hot Topic that I can draw a direct correlation between Michael's style and his impression on me as a kid and my "it feels go to me" attitude.
His music and music videos became part of the foundation of my childhood growth. One of the first things I remember saving my allowance up for was to purchase a copy of the "Bad" album in 1988. I was 9 years old and I played that record non-freaking-stop. For months [and I do mean months] I would come home from school and play that record from beginning to end when I got home from school doing my best Michael moves. That album was bad too. Not a bad song on it, which is no easy feat, and Michael seemed to do it effortlessly. "Bad" was also the first time I clearly remember listening to an artists' song or watching a video they made and identifying with what they were going through at the time.
On the "Bad" album Michael penned a song called "Leave Me Alone," and while the lyrics would lead you to believe it's just another break-up song, it's music video made it clear Michael was getting tired of all the speculation in the media about him. In the video there were visual representations of every weird "MJ" thing that had been reported at the time. There was the section about him trying to buy the remains of the Elephant Man, Bubbles the chimp, the shrine to Liz Taylor, the hyperbolic sleep chamber stuff, and it was obvious to me that Michael was a person just like everyone else on the planet... he had feelings like the rest of us and they were hurt.
I used to make "mixtapes" of his videos that I recorded off of MTV and spend hours watching them, rewinding them to try and learn his moves better. I read liner notes of the cassettes of his song to learn the lyrics of the popular ones and less popular ones. I'm watching MTV's marathon of his songs and "Who Is It" just came on and I found myself singing along to the entire song as if I was a kid again. No joke, "Dangerous" was the first CD I ever bought. I begged my parents to order it through Columbia House and they did, and the title track was my "theme song" that year. Don't giggle, we all make the soundtrack of our lives and "Dangerous" was on mine in 91.
And since we are a video game website, I'll mention the game tie in here. The Moonwalker video game sucked, but his character in Space Channel 5 and Space Channel 5.2 totally seemed like he was in the right place. Outer space.
He had his eccentricities, and some of them were difficult to understand, but we all do, hell even I do. [We can get into my OCD later] The thing that separated us from Michael is that we didn't have the public clamouring for any little tid bit about the weird or off the wall things we were up to on a regular basis. I never lived with the man, so I couldn't say what was and what wasn't, what did and did not happen, but you would have to be a cold person to not feel sad in some way that Michael is gone. Looking at his later catalog and listening to songs like "You Are Not Alone", "Stranger in Moscow", and "Childhood" the heart feels heavy.
People die every day. It is the end that we all inevitably head toward from the moment we are born and no life is more important than any other. I am sure that I am not the only person in the world for whom Michael Jackson's music was a touchstone in their lives. And whether you are a fan of his work or not, he leaves behind three children who face a harsh future without their dad, brothers and sisters that have lost a piece of themselves, parents who I'm sure like many whose child passes before them are at a lost, and millions of fans who feel the world is a little less bright today.
I will miss Michael Jackson. I will miss the music he had yet to give to the world. I will remember him fondly, and treasure all of the memories that the man and his music brought into my life.
Michael Jackson played a very big part in my childhood and adolescence. I remember the first song of his I ever heard to this very day. My dad went over to the closet where he kept all of his vinyl and grabbed this album that I remember thinking, "had this cute looking kid leaning on a wall" on the front. I was a mere pup then so I couldn't read that the album was called "Off the Wall." I had to have been 3 or 4 years old and did not know the words, but when I'm old, gray, and have altzheimers' I'll remember the melody to "Rock With You" because of my father.
Michael was an inspiration to me personally. He made me believe it was ok to be whatever you wanted to be. Here was this black kid in the music business which at that time should have meant he was strictly an R&B performer and yet he was not. He was a pop artist, blending R&B with Rock creating his own unique brand of pop that crossed over the lines of race and the boundaries of geography. To watch TV and see this black man wearing tight jeans and not baggy ones, and I swear he was the first black artist I saw wearing punk clothes. Michael made me believe it was cool to wear that stuff. While I never had a white glove or red jacket, I do like sporting chains and have an affinity for Hot Topic that I can draw a direct correlation between Michael's style and his impression on me as a kid and my "it feels go to me" attitude. His music and music videos became part of the foundation of my childhood growth. One of the first things I remember saving my allowance up for was to purchase a copy of the "Bad" album in 1988. I was 9 years old and I played that record non-freaking-stop. For months [and I do mean months] I would come home from school and play that record from beginning to end when I got home from school doing my best Michael moves. That album was bad too. Not a bad song on it, which is no easy feat, and Michael seemed to do it effortlessly. "Bad" was also the first time I clearly remember listening to an artists' song or watching a video they made and identifying with what they were going through at the time.
On the "Bad" album Michael penned a song called "Leave Me Alone," and while the lyrics would lead you to believe it's just another break-up song, it's music video made it clear Michael was getting tired of all the speculation in the media about him. In the video there were visual representations of every weird "MJ" thing that had been reported at the time. There was the section about him trying to buy the remains of the Elephant Man, Bubbles the chimp, the shrine to Liz Taylor, the hyperbolic sleep chamber stuff, and it was obvious to me that Michael was a person just like everyone else on the planet... he had feelings like the rest of us and they were hurt.
I used to make "mixtapes" of his videos that I recorded off of MTV and spend hours watching them, rewinding them to try and learn his moves better. I read liner notes of the cassettes of his song to learn the lyrics of the popular ones and less popular ones. I'm watching MTV's marathon of his songs and "Who Is It" just came on and I found myself singing along to the entire song as if I was a kid again. No joke, "Dangerous" was the first CD I ever bought. I begged my parents to order it through Columbia House and they did, and the title track was my "theme song" that year. Don't giggle, we all make the soundtrack of our lives and "Dangerous" was on mine in 91.
And since we are a video game website, I'll mention the game tie in here. The Moonwalker video game sucked, but his character in Space Channel 5 and Space Channel 5.2 totally seemed like he was in the right place. Outer space.
He had his eccentricities, and some of them were difficult to understand, but we all do, hell even I do. [We can get into my OCD later] The thing that separated us from Michael is that we didn't have the public clamouring for any little tid bit about the weird or off the wall things we were up to on a regular basis. I never lived with the man, so I couldn't say what was and what wasn't, what did and did not happen, but you would have to be a cold person to not feel sad in some way that Michael is gone. Looking at his later catalog and listening to songs like "You Are Not Alone", "Stranger in Moscow", and "Childhood" the heart feels heavy.
People die every day. It is the end that we all inevitably head toward from the moment we are born and no life is more important than any other. I am sure that I am not the only person in the world for whom Michael Jackson's music was a touchstone in their lives. And whether you are a fan of his work or not, he leaves behind three children who face a harsh future without their dad, brothers and sisters that have lost a piece of themselves, parents who I'm sure like many whose child passes before them are at a lost, and millions of fans who feel the world is a little less bright today.
I will miss Michael Jackson. I will miss the music he had yet to give to the world. I will remember him fondly, and treasure all of the memories that the man and his music brought into my life.
Labels: Michael-Jackson, Music, Music videos, Pop-Culture
