Michael Jackson is "evil"

the point is that people were shocked at the time. the differences seem minimal in hindsight, obviously, jesus.

I remember seeing the Bad album cover and being like wuuuut is going on here

He tried to throw people off the scent by dressing in military couture, but for some reason that only attracted *more* attention.

the transformation work between his first solo record and his second

(Off The Wall was his fifth solo LP! though the previous two weren’t hits, he’d had a #1 single off the second, top tens off the first, and Motown cranked out a best-of just months after the second, padded with Jackson 5 material.)

Jermaine this morning on U.K. tv;

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/jermaine-jackson-leaving-neverland-michael-children-allegations-good-morning-britain-a8753851.html

xxp I remember a good thread somewhere about the Jacksons' use of fascist imagery, cannot find it anywhere though

treesh i lived through it! his look on thriller caused waves! it's true that at that point it wasn't seen as pathological

But he doesn't look that different on the Thriller jacket! His hair, yes, but that's about it!

*throws hands in air*

*segues into thriller dance*

I think a lot of the convos I’d hear about mj’s strange appearance were that he was like a more extreme version of a baseball player risking his health using steroids: the world’s most competitive, driven musician doing everything he could to become the most popular artist in the world—in a world that’s fundamentally anti black. He was driven to the point of self mutilation.

yea I remember hearing that he'd heard something about Rolling Stone not featuring a lot of black artists b/c they sold less magazines, and concluded he couldn't be the biggest in the world as a black man. makes a lot of sense, especially considering his "100 million" sales goal for Bad which is pretty lol in retrospect

His hair, yes, but that's about it!

If you don’t count his nose and his chin, sure.

and his cheeks

jfc the pics from '85-'95. I forgot about that weird ass chin implant

can't wait to see one of these on Elon Musk in about 10 years

"dating grimes was elon musk's thriller" would be a good display name

iirc the weirdest thing about his look circa thriller was that wrist thing

http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/michael-jackson-bone-protruding-thriller-album-fold-out.jpg

what the fuck

i’ve never noticed that before
what is it?

i can't explain the wrist, but it's from the inside foldout image on the thriller lp

lol first I thought you were talking about the tiger.

Anyway, those are his web shooters iirc.

There's the matter of makeup, lighting, photography, etc., but if you look at his face on the cover of Thriller (the album) and Thriller (the song), yeah, he's starting to look different. But I still think it's not radical until a few years later.

Just looks like he has a firm grip on the tiger trying to keep it in place.

specially devised tubes for sucking out the baby tiger's life essence iirc

this historical debate over his shifting looks is a little odd - his look for Thriller was definitely shocking at the time, there were playground jokes about his nosejob/skin lightening among my world of young ppl. What came after is beside the point, ppl had no idea how weird he was going to get.

yea I mean as someone whose first memory of Michael Jackson was the "Black or White" video it was really stunning to see what he *used* to look like

My band is finally finishing our magnum opus of New Orleans brass band versions of MJ songs, which we've been slowly working on for like...7 years. Cool timing. :/

yikes bad timing

jordan :(

let's not forget mj's amazing dancing skills
he put them to some pretty weird use over the years but his natural skill was undeniable
i remember the abundant crotch-grabbing being scandalous at the time

yea when I saw This Is It I was pretty amazed, he definitely did not move like a 50 year old man. for all the strangeness with his face he actually looked kinda decent those last couple years (I mean, comparatively).

his impact on dance styles is pretty undeniable, he's a key figure in that period where things became stiffer and more robotic (obviously he cribbed a lot from hip hop dance crews in this respect). the moonwalk is p much it's own unprecedented thing, obviously.

like this whole thing where you have a gang of backup dancers all doing these super-stiff synchronized robotic movements, that just became standard. personally I find it really boring to watch 40 years on when every pop act does it but whatever, I guess other people found musicians making music too boring too look at after awhile.

I think this broader conversation to some extent exposes how much of the r Kelly convo was enabled by the fact that in some circles he was *never* taken seriously whereas mj was universally so, and we will see ppl flip.

this seems OTM. there have been far fewer calls for "cancelling" MJ so far which feels like a double standard to me.

the moonwalk is p much it's own unprecedented thing, obviously.

even MJ acknowledged that the moonwalk was an extension/revision of one of James Brown's dance moves (which itself JB had no particular copyright on)

nothing is ever completely new!

MJ was doing a version of the moonwalk as part of the J5 and he was widely understood to be a prodigy incorporating the dance moves of many of that period's top black stars.

the saddest thing of all is watching clips of the j5 and knowing what time had in store for all of them, but particularly MJ. what a mess.

I ... guess? Not denying MJ learned a lot from Brown but I've never seen JB slide across the stage backwards like that, when he did the sliding thing he was constantly twitching his feet around. idk

sure, it's not identical. but it was hardly "unprecedented" (or should we say "unpresidented"?)

MJ feels too deeply embedded in culture to cancel entirely. Like, no one has gotten married in the last few decades without dancing to at least one song at the wedding, where would you even start.

I remember that moonwalk being really jaw-dropping when he did it at the Motown 25th, like this superhuman moment where ppl were amazed that a person could do that. it was shocking.

i mean JB is obviously super influential on everyone but MJ was so opposite in many ways, James is fundamentally very manly and effortful, sweating his ass off, grunting collapsing then forcing himself to go on through sheer force of will....

MJ thriller an on seemed like this weird alien creature, the moon walk was so striking because it really seemed like some strange unnatural magic like he just floated on the Earth

Delighted to see they are so many devotees of the terpsichorean arts on ILX all of a sudden.

ctrl-F "fosse"

no hits

I mean, if we're going to play the "where did those moves come from" game, let's at least cover the known sources

In a November 1969 episode of H.R. Pufnstuf, Judy the Frog teaches everyone a new dance called "The Moonwalk", which includes two instances of a stationary moonwalk.[10]

https://youtu.be/eUTEhEPONgc?t=70 for those who don't know what I'm referencing

would never deny Fosse, personally

i remember that Pufnstuf episode

Oh damn, that is insane (the Fosse clip)

I don't know shit about dancing!

for me it was that Smooth Criminal lean, I still have no idea how they do it

Thanks for that link, DJP. Wow!

alas for Fosse cred, The Little Prince was a huge bomb at the b.o.

re: the Smooth Criminal lean

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/MichaelJackson/story?id=7941951&page=1