Michael Jackson died two days ago, so this is going to be a bit of a personal post. Feel free to skip it if you’re not in the mood for a spot of rambling, nostalgic, borderline weepy sincerity.

For me, loving music has always gone hand in hand with loving Michael Jackson. I can’t remember the first time I listened to him - he’s always just been there. And he always will be. His death won’t alter the fact that millions of kids are going to grow up listening to him, because their own parents grew up listening to him.

The last couple of days have felt quite surreal, with every shop and passing car blasting out MJ songs, and everyone I’ve spoken to talking about him. I can’t think of too many other singers whose death would inspire such a reaction, if only because there are so few acts out there who are so universally loved.

The Wacko stuff is always going to be part of who he was, but it’s the infectious music most people seem to want to celebrate, and that’s fine with me. I’m fortunate in that my new day job has allowed me to indulge in this - I floated the idea to have a Michael Jackson singsong at Lucky Voice following the flashmob mass Moonwalk in London on Friday, and it turned out to be a great night.

There was no sense of mourning - there was singing, and dancing, and a weird, infectious jubilation at the fact that songs like “Man In The Mirror” and “Billie Jean” exist. I’d hope MJ would approve of people celebrating his music that way.

I was already a huge fan of Thriller and Bad when a remix of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” hit the UK charts in the late Eighties. I’d never heard it before and quickly became obsessed with it. It blew my mind that the guy who did “Beat It” was singing songs of that quality when he was a kid my age.

Then my Mum told me that she had a 7-inch of the original lying around somewhere which she’d bought on its release, and I begged her to find it for me. Again, I remember being totally awed at the fact that Michael Jackson was around, and a massive star, when my mum was a teenager. It seemed to enforce the sense that he’s always just been there, entertaining generation after generation.

I remember when the video for “Bad” was shown on late-night TV - too late for me, apparently, as I wasn’t allowed to see it. My parents saw it and were very “meh” - they thought it was overlong, and a lot of fuss for what was just a music video.

But Michael Jackson didn’t do “just” music videos. He did sprawling, ridiculous, vainglorious, high-concept blasts of pure entertainment. The fact is he could have just stood in a room and moonwalked and it would have been amazing - but he next-levelled the hell out of the medium by turning into animals, calling on his Hollywood pals to make guest appearances and dancing in a way that everybody - from little kids to grandparents - wanted to be able to emulate.

Anyway, “Bad” was pretty low-key as far as his videos went, but it was still Michael Jackson, somehow managing to look cool as fuck while resembling Diana Ross in leather and zips, singing and dancing. That was always going to be enough.

I have to say if I met someone who didn’t like Michael Jackson’s music, I’d assume they just hadn’t heard enough of it. And if they had, and they still didn’t like it, I would absolutely think less of them as a human being. If you don’t like “Billie Jean”, you’re doing life wrong.

I think if I’d ever have got to meet Michael Jackson I would have wanted to talk to him about the “shamone” thing. Before Bo Selecta started using it I’d always thought of it as “shambo”, mainly because I seem to remember that’s how Smash Hits spelled it.

Why did he just suddenly decide to start pronouncing “come on” that way? What was the thinking behind that? I have visions of Quincy Jones sitting Michael down one day and being like “Michael… what the hell are you doing?” Wherever it came from, you have to admire the fact that if anybody else attempted such an affectation they’d take a lot of shit for it. Of course MJ took more shit than most, but none of it really affected his standing as the greatest entertainer in the world. Like the glittery glove, the Moonwalk and the tape on his fingers, “shamone” was just another element which worked.

It’s as a fan of his music when I say that I’m kind of relieved the comeback shows in London aren’t going to happen. Like a lot of other people I couldn’t see them being anything other than a disaster in one way or another, and to have his legacy harmed like that would have been awful. It’s peak MJ we should be remembering, not the frail, allegedly heavily-medicated one. Having said that, the realisation that I’m now never going to see a Michael Jackson concert is a genuinely painful one.

The “other stuff” is never going to go away, and is almost certainly going to be unavoidable over the next few months as his closet is rifled for further skeletons. Magazines and papers will be creaming themselves with glee, although it’ll be hard for any of them to top OK,  who have done this fucking despicable thing. I’ve been guilty of making humourous capital out of the insane elements of Jacko’s following, but they do kind of ask for it. Right now, though, I feel more like one of them than one of the jokers.

The guy was unique, and has left a mark on the world of music, popular culture, Planet bloody Earth, which few people ever get near, and thinking about the fact that he’s gone does make me feel rather weepy. Which feels like a ridiculous way to feel about someone I never met. I suppose it feels like a childhood friend has gone, and another nail has been hammered into the coffin of my long-dead youth.

I remember watching Princess Diana’s funeral on TV and, while I’d like to be able to say I sat there sneering my way through the whole thing, the truth is I was fighting back tears. It was a funeral. You’re allowed to be upset at funerals. Sons and siblings had lost a mum and a sister. Yes, all the blubbing on the streets was a bit extra, and I didn’t partake in that. But I’m already pondering whether, ten years down the line, people are going to look back on Michael Jackson’s death - and whatever crazy public grief-related activities transpire around the funeral - and call the reaction ridiculous. I might feel that way about this very blog post. It’s easy to do that from a distance, I suppose.

Anyway, enough navel-gazing. I’ve been putting off writing about this because it’s hard to know where to start and what to say, so apologies if it’s a bit of a ramble. Probably best to just go back and listen to the music, and watch that Motown 25 performance for the zillionth time, and realise that despite his death Michael Jackson is going to outlive us all.

Below are some links to bits and pieces I’ve encountered on the web over the last day or so, and to sign off I’ll nick Germaine Greer’s words from The Guardian yesterday: “The surprise is not that we have lost him, but that we ever had him at all.”

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- The Fader links to DJ Ayres’ Michael Jackson mix, encompassing his entire career in chronological order

- Here’s a cool look at how MJ’s music has been sampled in hip-hop over the years

- Like many, I first heard the news on Twitter. The Guardian never misses a chance to write about Twitter. And here’s a thing about the effect the news had on Google, Bing et al

- BBC Chartblog has a nice tribute to the man, remarking: “Michael Jackson was very very good at being a pop star. Whether that means he was also good at being at human being is a whole other question.”

- Idolator links to some good tributes elsewhere on the web.

[image: Roadsidepictures on Flickr]

 

Possibly related:

1. The Michael Jackson Comeback - a conspiracy or just plain legendary?

2. Michael Jackson “Wacko Jacko” Halloween Mask - almost as scary as real-life version

3. Hip-Hop Isn’t Dead: Mark Ronson + Rhymefest + Michael Jackson = mixtape of the year?

4. Would you pay a fortune to see Michael Jackson at London’s O2?

5. Are the Jackson 5 going to reform in 2008?

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Sunday June 28th, 2009 at 10:28 pm