Listen to the Silence

Michael Jackson, dead at 50.



I have actually been listening to and thinking about Michael Jackson a lot lately. I just downloaded Off the Wall over the weekend. It's one of the great albums (Don't Stop Till You Get Enough, Rock With You, Workin' Day and Night, Off the Wall), but overlooked because its follow up collaboration with Quincy Jones, Thriller, may be (that's just trying to being open minded - but in this case, I think it is safe to say it is) the greatest record of all time, every song a work of genius, really not a flaw on the entire thing. And then Ta-Nehisi wrote about Michael and Thriller just the other day.

The music was brilliant, the videos transformed the industry (Billie Jean was the greatest music video of all time, until Beat It came along, which held the title until Thriller; nothing has ever, or ever will, come close to the Thriller video), and his performances enthralled the masses. And those moves. Oh, and how could you forget that voice that could make you feel so, so good (yet coming from a man-child that couldn't find that inner peace for himself).

For all the tragedy of his life that became apparent after Bad, the product of his fame and isolation and abuse and exploitation and things we can never know, the wrong and oftentimes confusing and sometimes disturbing turns in his life - for all of that, the cultural impact of this man cannot be overstated.

To write much about Michael Jackson the person would require an understanding of Michael Jackson the person. But I'm not sure there can be any such understanding of the person, since he was never allowed to be one. He thought of himself as Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, and so lived in Neverland. The terrible irony of that is that he had it backwards; he was the performer who was never allowed to be a boy, and so never understood real childhood (living in an amusement park is most certainly not real childhood, nor is trying to never grow up), despite desperately trying to grasp for it his whole life. That grasping which perverted itself into the hopeless reach not just for a childhood that never existed, but also for inappropriate, inexcusable and incomprehensible physical connections with children.

What he was, and never had any choice to be otherwise, was a performer. Appropriately, then, here are some more of these culturally iconic appearances and videos. (For even more, click here.) They are the best way to remember Michael Jackson, because to the world, they are Michael Jackson, as long as we don't think of all the rest.















UPDATE: Since you asked, the original Jackson 5: Marlon, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Michael. When they left Motown for CBS Records, Jermaine was replaced by Randy.

I'm not sure who Mick Jagger replaced on the Victory Tour for State of Shock.