Watch all the great videos. Of course, they've got embedding disabled, but if I could embed something here, maybe it would be "Leave Me Alone." What do you feel like watching?
(Spare me the Michael-hating comments on this post.)
June 26, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
35 comments:
This is all new music to me. I had purposely been avoiding him for years. Now, it's like when I first noticed Elvis.
I feel like a kid in a candy store!
Billy Jean, the first Jackson song that really grabbed me.
Followed by Beat It.
lord, he could sing
Don't stop 'til you get enough
Captain Eo!
Original 3-D effects have to be imagined.
Love him or hate him, He was part of everyone of my generation who went to high school in the mid 1980s.
Modonna is the other. She will probably live to be 100.
Although not his best, I remember as a kid stealing the "Bad" cassette out of my dad's car and listening to it on my walkmen at my baby sitter's house all day long. Michael Jackson was the kind of artist that appealed to nearly everyone. It doesn't take any special insight to understand how good he really was. As a seven-year-old, even if I didn't really understand it, I still understood it. That's what being universal is.
I really like his Jackson 5 stuff the best. Great Pop music, not bloated, just peppy songs with great arrangements and outstanding singing.
My daughter asked me what made Michael the way he was in his personal life. I think he was an untreated sexual abuse survivor.
Trey
(Spare me the Michael-hating comments on this post).
The world is watching ;)
My kids (ages 3, 5, and 7) love Thriller. They listen to it all the time.
Was there anyone in the mid-80s who wasn't watching MTV waiting for one of his videos to play?
Anytime you were on the dance floor, you saw someone copying Michael Jackson.
i tuned into MTV yesterday for the first time in ages and saw the video for jam again. now the song is in my head.
But the video is a crime. They had Jordan in it, but i don't think they had one decent shot of him dunking. Now that man was poetry in motion.
Hey, here's a nice story if true. In his will, Jackson left the beatles catalog to Paul McCartney.
http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-jackson-left-the-beatles-catalog-to-paul-mccartney-2009-6
They properly express skepticism whether it was legally possible for him to do so, but if he only tried that is worth something.
Yeats wrote about the difficulty of seperating the dancer from the dance. This is especially true of the talent and the pathology of Michael Jackson. His innocence and other worldliness were all mixed up with his pedophilia and self indulgence. He was an odd mixture of Fred Astaire and Caligula......I give credit to his talent, but one of the strongest arguments against child abuse is that it produces personality distortions such as Michael Jackson exhibited and, no doubt, inflicted.
I remember (loosely) Fred Astaire interviewed in the early 80's saying in effect that Michael Jackson was a dancer and John Travolta was a wannabe.
So true.
Out of curiosity I checked my I pod and I only have 'Rock with You'.
I'm sorry but I liked Madonna more.
Yes, she was/is a studio product.
I dont care.
"The Way You Make Me Feel" was probably my favorite Jackson song. Saw the video on VH1 late last night.
Best video: Smooth Criminal.
"Leave Me Alone" was one of the most visually interesting videos that he did. A reminder that Jackson was surrounded by TMZ-like coverage before TMZ ever existed (which makes the other side of his legacy that much more difficult to comprehend).
I never had "the Poster" for Farrah Fawcett, as I was too young for her prime, which makes her passing difficult to contextualize. It is much the same with Jackson, if only because our culture has become so splintered / segmented / marginalized that it would be difficult for anyone to reach those heights.
He was the first artist of the Mtv era to truly transcend the medium. The Video for "Thriller" elevated the artform; it became an event just to watch. His video premieres would be advertised weeks in advance; some of his final videos before "the incident" were aired on national TV before making the rounds on Mtv/VH1 (back when both networks actually played vidoes and not reality TV).
His work product was not limited to the 'hip hop' or 'r-and-b' charts, or even 'pop', it was music for the masses. That truly will be missed.
I think it's really bad that he gives the girl a ring *before* telling her he's a monster!
The choreograhy in Thriller was very good.
Vincent Price was good.
Q did some awesome work.
Sippican writes well.
No hate here.
"Remember the Time" is not the best video, but still a great song, especially the break-down. That's the first one I watched after hearing the news. On the phone! You and me! On the beach! In Spain! What about us! Girl!
BJK
Well, to be fair, jackson has done the "poor me, i am hounded by the press" shtick for years. at least as far back as billie jean and that video. it was part of his bread and butter even as he did everything he could to attact attention.
the video for me wore thin, but actually i weirdly like the song even as i find the sentiment behind it tiresome.
then again, there isn't much lyrically to most of those jackson 5 hits, but they were great nonetheless. i mean if you don't like "ABC" there is just something wrong with you. That song was just funky.
besides those jackson 5 nuggets, i would say billie jean was his best. it maintained a kind of mysterious mood throughout, even if its content is really, really ironic given what we know today. And there is often a part in the arc of many stars' careers where they go from young, scruffy and hungry, to mature, polished but bloated, and right in the borderline between those phases is their best music about 9 times out of ten. Sting reached it with the Police in regatta de blanc (sp?), and Don Henley and the Eagles got there with Hotel California. I never heard the whole album Thriller, but the many hits i heard off of that album seemed be right in that zone for Jackson. Maybe Bad was, too. And of course off the wall seemed more scruffy, but call me weird but i find a musician's scruffy period to be endearing. Like to me i often enjoy the scruffy Outlandos D'Amor (sp?) more than the polished and mature and less energetic Synchronicity (although I do love the song Synchronicity II alot).
Of course not all artists follow that tragectory, but alot do.
Btw, i tried to buy thriller at best buy today. sold completely out. eveyrthing from him, gone.
now let's just hope that congress doesn't destroy the economy and iran doesn't kill all the protesters while we are distracted.
All I can say is that I like the word "tragectory", which it seems you coined accidentally, but is terribly apt.
My favorite is a Jackson 5 hit, Dancing Machine.
That song was a big hit when it came out in 1974. I remember kids attempting to do their best "robot" whenever that song came on the radio.
I don't know if MJ originated that "popping", robotic dance style or not. Probably not. Be he certainly made it popular, especially with "Dancing Machine". It's influence on break dancing and hip-hop is undeniable.
MJ to me is the 70s, and my youth. As was Farrah Fawcett. RIP to both.
"Leave me Alone" was brilliant. Mocking his own treatment in the media gave me hope that all the BS about him was just BS.
Sort of like Madonna's "Human Nature" defending herself. She always fumbled the ball in defending the sexual nature of her work when asked about it (Camille Paglia was always better doing that job for her anyway), but "Human Nature" was her best 'in your face' rebuttal to her critics.
"now let's just hope that… …iran doesn't kill all the protesters while we are distracted"
I have the answer. The Iranian protesters should embrace, rather than compete with, the meme. The next round of protests should be choreographed to the Thriller dance.
(Hey, it supposedly is a "You Tube Revolution")
Fivewheels
Damn that lexdysia (dyslexia)...
Shawn
Thousands of iranian protesters shaking their pelvis in the streets. sounds like a plan. should utterly freak the regime out.
Seriously, i have long said have the terrorists would go away if they just got laid now and then.
You tube is great. Where else can you find a clip of Dom DeLuise getting down with the Jacksons.
Dig the threads, man.
Jason (the commenter) said...I feel like a kid in a candy store!
Now you know how Michael Jackson felt every time he visited an all male daycare center.
Howard Stern - Gilbert, Michael Jackson, and the gobagoo.
Btw, Obama has officially come out with a statement, sort of. here's how the AP reports it:
Obama spokesman says president believes Michael Jackson was a musical icon .
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D992H4880&show_article=1
i know, i know, what a bold comment.
Um, Barrack, of course he was a musical icon. even as i have my misgivings about the man, that much is obvious.
Sheesh.
Feel free to say this instead, if true. "I grew up on his music. he has contributed greatly to our lives with his art and we will miss him for that." See, nice, neutral, and won't be taken as being okay with child molestation except by the deranged, and well, what can you do with them?
I haven't heard any mention of "Ben" or The Wiz.
For all of his personal foibles, Michael was the first breakout black star; he was the logical successor to Earth, Wind and Fire. I remember an interview with Maurice White where he stated that no matter how big EWF got(and we're talking huge here), CBS would not send their singles to pop radio until they had broken on urban stations. Michael changed that. Quincy Jones deserves a lot of credit for that, but the fact is that Michael was the face of it. Janet is an overlooked close second.
well i am elsymary and loved MICHAEL JACCKSON i was a teenager and love his music anytime was one of the times that music is all for you is something soft even my mother was trill about it now i am 46 and feel like we just were very close in liking music like that i travel with his music far away and where ever i went it was not unknown it was playin every where he was an idol and deserve respect even in some people will always be alive becouse when you listen to his music you feel like yesterday thanks
ELSY, I'm sorry about your MS.
I am so sorry for Michael,and special for hes cildrens... but I so happy for he left to as...God bles him!!!!
You all should listen to the invincible c d. It is awesome! Butterfly, Break of Dawn, whatever, Lost Children, Cry, Invincible. oh so many on one disk. I LOVE that CD. I wished that sony had given Mike a achance and promoted it more. the video would have be great to at least 5 of the the songs. Too bad!!!
Post a Comment