Michael Jackson is "evil"

i love it when writers tell me when they were born

Only when they’re 89ers. Can’t relate to writers born in different years.

"but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

yeah, another disgrace of a kind...

i love it when writers tell me when they were born

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, March 1, 2019 9:00 AM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Only Real 90s Kids Will Remember This Trick for Shrinking Your Dong"

twitter gonna be interesting on monday

Yeah, a very musically aware millennial friend of mine, after Jackson's death, posted saying "Oh wow, I've been listening to MJ's work, and I know you all said that he invented Pop, but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

Her social circle is a lot of pop-friendly older music journalists (many ex-ILXoRs, naturally) who had, in the wake of his death, pointed out that a lot of the template of modern pop had been laid down by Michael Jackson (or "Michael Jackson" if you're feeling less auteurist), would be the context there. I don't think that's a particularly controversial statement?

I wonder if the Jackson clan had Spike Lee make those recent documentaries because they knew what was coming?

Her social circle is a lot of pop-friendly older music journalists (many ex-ILXoRs, naturally) who had, in the wake of his death, pointed out that a lot of the template of modern pop had been laid down by Michael Jackson (or "Michael Jackson" if you're feeling less auteurist), would be the context there. I don't think that's a particularly controversial statement?

CNN: Corey Feldman defends Michael Jackson.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/05/entertainment/corey-feldman-michael-jackson/index.html

in a lifetime of brilliant career moves, this might take the cake

China rages continue....Fans in Chongqing city rally for #MichaelJackson , KEEP FIGHTING AND WE SHALL WIN #MJInnocent pic.twitter.com/zx3B1MGm87

— Keen Zhang (@mkgenie) March 2, 2019

small show of MJ support in Chongqing "lies runs sprints but the truth runs marathons".

I believe James and Wade. I also believe that Oprah is a terrible, terrible interviewer. "So, James, why are you so much more fucked up than Wade? Is it because you're not famous?" Wade jumping in and suggesting that evaluating their relative rates of recovery was maybe not such a good idea was a huge relief.

Watched this but didn't see the Oprah thing.

We only see it through the eyes of these two guys and their families, which is maybe a necessary corrective considering the fierceness of the MJ machine, but I found it utterly convincing. Gruesome stuff.

There are plenty of issues with the azo dye tartrazine (yellow #5). Shrinking dicks isn't one of them.

For some unknown reason I stumbled upon a video interview with MJ maid Adrian McManus. "Vaseline everywhere" would be a good addition to crime scene depictions: "Muddy boot prints, evidence of struggle, broken lamps, vaseline everywhere, blood spatter on walls..."

Thing is, even if you take for granted that some Michael Jackson is now beyond the pale - and there's never going to be consensus on that - people haven't started to get their heads around what's inadmissible and what isn't. Even if you draw the line at Bad or Thriller, or even Off The Wall, is the Jackson 5 now beyond the pale?

I'm not sure we as a culture have even begun to process how to deal with the voice of a child who grew up to be a serial paedophile and predator. And that's before you consider the child was an abuse victim himself and that the Motown-era records still contain some of the most joyous vocal performances ever committed to tape.

For all the debate about separating the art from the man, we're never asked to do that when the artist in question is seen as generally righteous. No one asks you to separate the art from the man when it's Curtis Mayfield or Stevie Wonder or Kurt Cobain - if anything we're invited to conflate them.

people seem to be down on baby hitler though

you gotta step up, man

baby hitler do do do do do

and yeah I have no clue what this is going to do for MJ's legacy. it's certainly going to hurt to some degree, his music is gonna get pulled from some stations and studios are gonna think twice about licensing any of it right now. but there are definitely a few key differences between MJ and say, R. Kelly, Louie CK, Woody Allen, or Bill Cosby - obviously, MJ was a much bigger celebrity than any of those guys, and he's dead now so there will be no trial, no 'discovery' process or anything. more than that I think MJ is a lot easier to separate from his actions, because his songs were so much more ubiquitous and woven into the DNA of pop music today, and I think it's possible to listen to them without necessarily being reminded of it. Like - it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did, and I can't imagine watching The Cosby Show without thinking of how he used that persona to take advantage of women. They were all doing it at the time. With MJ, it's like...when did this start? Was it around the time of Bad, when things really started going haywire? Like, I can't hear Jackson 5 stuff or "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" and think, this dude's evil. Late 80s and beyond, sure, but the classic stuff.... :/

Mad respect to you frogbs but I have a tough time relating to what you have written. I am no closer to solving the "can you love the art while repudiating the artist" question than anyone here.

But! I am pretty sure the answer is not to decide at which album the person became "Bad" (pun intended) and then only liking the albums before that point.

Would anyone suggest that type of divide about another criminal/villain/badguy? "Yeah Vader blew up that defenseless planet, sure, but his early folk-punk singles were seminal. So I just won't listen to his later work."

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

or: just edit yr ID3 tags to say Rod Temperton & Quincy Jones & carry on

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

this is a good point that bears repeating here and elsewhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/arts/music/michael-jackson-leaving-neverland-fans.html

“If you’ve been a fan for a long time, you’ve seen this over and over again,” said Casey Rain, 30, a musician and YouTuber living in Birmingham, England. He called “Leaving Neverland” a “sick attempt at hijacking the Me-Too moment.”

“There’s nothing about Michael that the fan community doesn’t know,” said Rain, whose blog post about “Leaving Neverland” became a go-to text even before the documentary aired. “I really don’t think that we lack objectivity on him.” (Rain and others who had not yet seen the film said their information came from a few Jackson fans who attended the Sundance premiere and took “very, very detailed notes.”)

michael jackson diehards are some of the worst people and have always been some of the worst people.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

oh I realize it's different for everybody and I think it's hard to "figure out" because there's sort of a gut reaction to it. For example I wouldn't willingly listen to R. Kelly anymore because the knowledge that he's singing about stuff he's literally doing to the underage girls in his dungeon overrides everything, I can't separate it out, and when they come up on the playlists I have I skip them immediately. But I can see still maybe liking "I Believe I Can Fly", the one song of his that isn't totally gross, because personally I don't really think of R. Kelly with that song, I think about Space Jam. At least, I don't have the same visceral reaction to it.

When it comes to Michael Jackson there was definitely a point where his music suddenly got a lot more aggressive and paranoid, where every other song was about the rumors about him and wanting to be left alone, and to me that stuff is pretty inexorable from his "Wacko Jacko" persona, for which these accusations played a major part. Anyway, I'm not trying to say that "This stuff is okay, this stuff isn't", just that this is the reaction I personally have to it.

"i believe i can fly" was always kind of gross to me, b/c
1) allegations about r. kelly were already out there (not least his marriage to a teenage aaliyah)
2) the self-empowerment clichés in that song always struck me as kind of ridiculous and gross (even if, yes i know, many people find them inspirational)
3) the contradiction between (1) and (2) was always a bit too much for me. here's a predatory asshole telling me to just believe in myself and i can be like him? fuck off.
4) the lyrics are dead terrible.

that said, the song is now stuck in my head, so... thanks?

"it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did"

I dunno, I still enjoy Allen's earlier movies. Polanski too. Sure they became terrible people later (maybe Polanski even then) but it's hard for me to write those off. I'm still going to enjoy MJ through Thriller (which I do think predated his worst proclivities); shit he did after that wasn't nearly as good anyway so go ahead, erase Dangerous from musical history, it matters not to me.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM

what year?

Would’ve been 2003 that I saw a 14-year-old did Billie Jean in the 8th grade lock-in talent show.

my friend's 11 year old has been a huge MJ fan for years.

I should note that I was exposed to essentially no popular music of any era by my boomer parents so I may just be weird.

Or, alternately, they are.

I've had a 7yo and 12yo ask to learn to play MJ songs in the last few months.

Probably not diehards tbf

someone must have exposed them to michael jackson

phrasing

"I should note that I was exposed to essentially no popular music of any era by my boomer parents so I may just be weird"

wait, how old are you? I'm 47 and had boomer parents. MJ was completely ubiquitous in my childhood in the 80's.

I’m 30

(I'm all for separating Nirvana's music from Kurt Cobain as a person btw.)

you may be misclassifying the generation of your parents (unless they were very old when they had you)

Or at the least don't favour conflating them.xp

I mean my parents were born in 1950 and 1951, they are canonically baby boomers

38 isn’t very old

I was born in '81, the only MJ songs I remember hearing as a kid were "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" on the radio every so often. By the time I was 10-11 he seemed like an uncool weirdo, no one at school cared, I didn't care.

michael jackson was popular

in your opinion

my grandpappy never heard of him

I wonder if this conflating with artist and his/her art is more of an issue in music than in other art forms. I mean you don't hear people saying that they'll never read Knut Hamsun's Hunger because the guy turned out to be a Nazi. In fact, so many writers I like had very nasty streaks, but it never occurs to me to avoid their works because of it.

MJ not really a problem for me as I was never invested in him. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough is sublime, as is some of the Jackson 5 stuff, but 80s and 90s Jackson really isn't my cup of tea.