"Michael Jackson was real American thriller" commentary, Chicago sun-Times
Say what you will about Michael Jackson — and everything will be said in the next few days — he was an American thriller, one of the most brilliant talents of our times.
It is easy to forget this now. It is even easier, if one is young, to never have known. It is easy to see Michael Jackson only in the disturbing images of his last two decades — the freakish plastic surgery, the children he covered with paper bags, the alarming stories that leaked from his secretive California ranch, the unsettling Neverland.
But there was a moment — Michael’s moment. And a sound — Michael’s sound. And a way of moving — Michael’s way.
And nobody could do it better.
We watched Michael Jackson grow older, if not really grow up. He was the stunning child singer who fronted the Jackson 5 — the family singing group from Gary, Ind.
The group played “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time one Sunday night in 1969, and afterward Ed offered his crooked smile to this 11-year-old kid with the big Afro who had just twirled and sung like he’d been working the stage for 20 years.
Ed could see what we all could see — a natural-born star. Could the kid handle it?
In his art, Michael Jackson swallowed whole everything good in America. His music was funk and rock, black and white, power chords and ballads. And utterly infectious.
But in his personal life, he was America gone too far. He was the train wreck of a celebrity culture gone off the rails. He was America’s belief in reinvention taken to a grotesque extreme.
No matter. Not today.
Michael Jackson is dead, and all we really want to remember is how we danced to “ABC,” how we thrilled to “Thriller,” how we scraped across the floor trying to copy that moonwalk.
We couldn’t do it. Nobody could.
There was only one Michael Jackson.
"'79 album 'Off the Wall' best of phenomenal career" by JIM DeROGATIS, Chicago sun-Times
Excerpt
As the music world begins to assess the complicated legacy of the man who crowned himself the King of Pop, there is no denying that Michael Jackson's climb from humble beginnings amid the belching smokestacks of Gary to the top of the charts and worldwide superstardom will rank beside those of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beatles as one of the most extraordinary rags-to-riches stories ever.
Nor is it an exaggeration to say that Jackson, who died Thursday a little more than two months shy of his 51st birthday, made a more profound impact in the arenas of soul, R&B and dance-pop than any other singer or songwriter in history.
Sadly, these accomplishments also will forever be intertwined with one of the most tawdry and tragic public meltdowns that pop culture has ever witnessed. Long shadows were cast by charges of child abuse, behavior that ranged from mildly eccentric to disturbingly bizarre and the star's inability to create worthwhile new music divorced from his personal turmoil throughout the last 18 years of his career.
In many ways, Jackson's biggest musical success turned out to be his biggest handicap, since its beyond-all-measures accomplishments were something he could never top.
Released on Nov. 30, 1982, the singer's sixth solo studio album, "Thriller," is widely considered the best-selling disc of all time, with sales estimated anywhere between 40 million and 100 million copies worldwide. But despite the much-vaunted impact of its genre-blurring sounds on radio and the pop charts -- it spawned six Top 10 singles, including the back-to-back No. 1 hits "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" -- and the fact that its big-budget videos broke the unofficial color barrier at MTV, real fans never thought it his finest work.
That honor belongs to "Off the Wall," the 1979 album that actually pioneered the mix of funk, disco, pop, soul, jazz and rock that he polished for mainstream consumption on "Thriller." With songs such as "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" and "Rock with You," and collaborations with superstars such as Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, who clearly viewed the then-20-year-old star as a peer, "Off the Wall" is the album hardcore fans reach for, including celebrated acolytes such as Justin Timberlake and Usher.
For that matter, more moving than anything on "Thriller" is the 1972 ballad "Ben," another No. 1 hit and a song that Jackson, right at the start of his solo career, invested with so much emotion that it instantly transcended its origins as a love song to a killer rat from a B-grade horror film.
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