Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Top Five Meryl Streep Roles
- Miranda Priestly - "The Devil Wears Prada"
- Susan Orlean - "Adaptation"
- Madeline Ashton - "Death Becomes Her"
- Sophie Zawistowski - "Sophie's Choice"
- Karen Blixen - "Out of Africa"
About Me
- Heather
- The self-proclaimed pop culture diva with apparently too much time on her hands.
17 comments:
First!!!
Seriously though. The girls & I were very saddened to hear the news. I'm almost 42, Taylor is 15 and Kendall is 9. His music spanned many generations and we all had our favorite songs. Whatever people thought of his personal life, there was no denying he was a musical genius. He was, to my generation, what Elvis was to the generation before. Nobody sounded like him, nobody moved like him.
Monday morning grammar and spelling problems on my original post. Let's try this again!
I completely agree! I don't think you could be a tween/teenager in the 80s and not appreciate MJ's work. I loved his music and his videos. I was heartbroken when MTV gave the #1 video of all time to "November Rain" over "Thriller." There is no better video than "Thriller" then and now.
Thriller was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my young life! Though my favorite song by him is Billie Jean. Just the perfect pop song!
What a shock!
I remember when MTV playing Thriller was an EVENT. And how many times does the airinga pre-recorded work that's not a premiere warrant that kind of attention?
I think that the comparison with Elvis is apt, and if the two kings could have met as mature adults they probably could have shared experiences and understood their own lives a bit more. Megabands like the Beatles (even if they hated eachother) at least had someone else around who experienced the same thing. MJ and Elvis could have whatever they want except the ability to run to the grocery store for milk by themselves or meet someone who didn't want something from them.
Thriller is the best video ever, bar none.
That album was the first real album I ever had, and "Thriller" the song was one of the first pop songs I ever really knew. I remember being at a birthday party for the kid across the street when I was very young and they just played "Thriller" over and over again. Kids just loved that song.
My dance teacher also used Michael Jackson songs over and over...Thriller, Beat It, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin. Absolutely ubiquitous in the mid-80s.
I even liked songs on Bad and Black and White. That Black and White video was an event too...remember it being scheduled during primetime and all the hubbub about the morphing technology?
I heard a pundit say that his music could not be covered, and I wanted to argue--that Alien Ant Farm version of Smooth Criminal is pretty great.
Krista, I disagree that it was a shock. It would be a surprise anytime, that's true. But he was not a physically (or mentally) healthy person. It would have been more of a shock if he would have lived to a ripe old age. It still is sad, though. It would have been nice if he could have done these sold-out concerts, made back some of his money, and gone out on a high note.
NPR had a music/pop culture expert on Saturday talking about how MJ had just gotten his act together. He had finally surrounded himself with people who didn't want anything from him. He was ready and excited about his upcoming tour. I agree with you, Jennica, that MJ's death was not actually a shocking event. Knowing that he might have actually started to drag himself out of his problems makes his death all the more sad.
Although I have never been as big a fan of music as I am movies, my childhood was certainly influenced by MJ's music and by his sad life. The big question being asked is, "Which MJ do you remember?" How sad that so many people - especially those children of the 90s and 00s - will remember the child-dangling freak instead of the brilliant songwriter and performer. This whole situation has made me rethink the way I'll remember him.
Yeah, I saw a kid on TV who said that he only knew the weirdo. That is pretty sad. I know Michael Jackson from his "ABC" time, but I wasn't born then, either. So I guess the weird activities just overshadow the music for some people.
I don't care so much about the weirdness. There are a lot of celebrities who do strange stuff (although he did take the cake!). That didn't affect me on a personal level though. I was more affected by growing up with the music from elementary school on.
Autopsy aside, I think Heather is right and he was trying to get his act together. There are stories about how hard he was exercising and training. But, I bet it was just too much for his body, both because he was 50 and because of what he had done to himself over the years. His body just couldn't take it anymore. Whether or not that also had something to do with drugs in his system is a question yet to be answered.
I think that part of the whole weirdness vs. the music split has to do with the fact that at his highest point as a solo artist, he was a video artist and dancer first and a musician second. After all, "Thriller" is the best video ever, but could you say that it is the best song ever? Is it the best pop song of the 80's? Is it even in the top 10 on that list? If the image is his best product, it was kind of inevitable that as we desired to see more of that image that image would become tarnished as the polished video MJ blended with the socially awkward MJ. And in the window smashing scene of "Black or White" it became the same thing. The songs will live on but unfortunately, as often happens with producer driven synth-pop, popular music often does not have a long shelf life. Time has a good way of filtering out the crap. What was that Dennis Miller line, "For every David there probably was 50 other artists with statues called 'Random Naked Guy' that have all been forgotten." In a very weird way I think we will have a clearer memory of MJ in a few years than we do now.
Matt, as a music expert (she says in all seriousness), do you think any MJ song will stand the test of time?
Yes. Think about all of the crap Elvis recorded to the point where now used record dealers sometimes won't even trade in most Elvis products. I have gotten offered more than a few free Elvis records just because there is no market for them. But on top of all of that flotsam there's "Love Me Tender" and "Are you Lonesome Tonight".
It's also the matter of what is timely and what is timeless. What sounded good in 19whatever can sound terrible a few years later. I am convinced that if "Melt with You" by Modern English, which topped at 39 on the charts, is A: the best pop song of the '80s, and B: the reason for belief A is that the song still sounds contemporary.
Likewise any one item in the Nick Drake catalogue sells more copies than all of the albums he sold when he was alive. He died in obscurity in 1972, but if he was still alive he would be one of the most important artists in music today.
This may sound snobbish but often time pop music functions as mere background noise, its uncreative, unchallanging, unfeeling, and ultimately uninteresting. Geeks and snobbs like me who keep the music industry alive (you've seen my record collection) aren't going to keep interested in a lot of the cookie-cutter stuff that MJ did. In fact I think that the Jackson 5's "ABC-123" may end up dwarfing all of his solo work. I can see 5 or so songs that last. Perhaps, "Billy Jean", "Rock with You" "The Way You Make Me Feel" and maybe a few more cuts off of Off the Wall.
Also, in a very practical sense who ends up in control of his intellectual property will help determine what gets remembered, especially if that individual or corporation ends up opening up the MJ cateloge to commercials, sampling, and movie soundtracks.
Yes, I have seen that record collection, which is why I consider you the music expert. Awesome analysis.
Thanks. That collection is going to grow by a few hundred more albums soon.
Where are you getting that many albums?
John is moving to Texas.
Also, it should be mentioned that we may never see an artist as big as MJ for a very long time, if ever. The music industry is so fragmentary right now there is not one ubiquitous outlet (Wolfman Jack, American Bandstand, MTV, etc.) that everyone watches or hears in order to get exposed to "hit" music. Instead, we have fragmentary outlets like Myspace Music, iTunes, Pandora, or satellite radio where everything is either equal or tailored specifcally to individual tastes. The industry is still trying to figure out the formula in how to calculate the number one anything. Let alone how to move 100 million units like they did with Thriller.
Post a Comment