Pretty much my take. His stuff got hugely overplayed in my view and it wouldn’t bother me to never hear any of it again. But not because of his creepy attraction to kids.
Someone arguably worse than Michael Jackson (Gary Glitter) had his anthem *Rock n’ Roll (Part II) banned from sports stadiums after lurid details of his transgressions came out and he was sent to prison. The song has been revived somewhat (I heard it played in a minor league baseball park a few years ago and wasn’t bothered). As the article notes, he sold the rights to the song 27 years ago and so hasn’t made money from it in a long time.
Thriller was the first LP I owned, at the age of seven. It was the first record I really obsessed over and absorbed every nuance of. From there I worked backwards to the Jackson 5 and forward in real time through his career with a similar fervor.
MJ’s music is fundamental to my taste in and experience of music, and music is a pretty huge piece of who I am as a person. So asking if I enjoy his music is like asking how I feel about oxygen.
And much like oxygen, the real answer is that I don’t have much of an emotional reaction to it anymore. Occasionally I hear something obscure, or some little piece of one of the standards hits me in a new way when I hear it out somewhere, but mostly I just don’t really react to it. It doesn’t take me to a particular time or place the way some music does because it has always been everywhere.
But what I definitely don’t think of is what a fucked up person MJ was. His music just transcends that for me. Not even because it’s great, necessarily, but because it’s been so ubiquitous in my life.
That’s not the case with, say, R. Kelly. He’s got some undeniable jams, but I can’t enjoy them anymore because his fucked-upedness comes to mind immediately.
It helps that MJ is dead. If he weren’t I definitely wouldn’t give him money, and I’m not sure how I’d feel about new material.
I do, but it’s because I love some Jackson 5 but never thought his solo work was any good.
To answer the OP’s question in a more general manner, I can still enjoy Gary Glitter, including “Do You Wanna Touch Me”. My copy was bought used several decades ago, so it’s not putting any new money in his pocket, at least. Still, it is a bit weird listening to that particular song, no matter who is preforming it.
Weirdly, I can still enjoy listening to my Velvet Underground records, even though Mo Tucker is apparently a Trump supporter. But that forgiveness doesn’t extend to Nugent. He’s been an idiot forever, generally the dumbest motherfucker in the room at any given point in time, and the Trump support was what broke the last bit of thread left in what was a dwindling enjoyment of his work over the decades.
Michael Jackson was such a big part of my childhood (no jokes here) that it would be hard to excise his music from my life. Billie Jean and Smooth Criminal are songs in regular rotation on my list of music listened to while exercising. I don’t have a problem compartmentalizing my feelings, so it doens’t bother me to listen to his music. If he were alive, I’d probably avoid listening to his music because I wouldn’t want to put any money in his pocket. He’s dead, so there’s no ethical quandry here. At least not for me.
Exactly. That’s what I mean by a true pedophile. There’s two kinds of people who rape children, one is the kind who use children because their convenient and easy to control not because they actually have a sexual thing about kids. And then there’s true pedophiles, who genuinely love kids and convince themselves what they’re doing is OK. That’s MJ
I was never a big fan of his music, and I never bought any of his music. I don’t sing along if I hear one of his songs on the radio.
When I hear one of his songs on the radio, I do wonder if his music is played more often outside the US. Certain songs are in high rotation, similar to other classics from the 80s.
But his music videos and dancing? I’ll watch them every time.
I do own one song from Jackson 5, as one of their songs is on the soundtrack to Guardians of the Galaxy. I sing along with that one.
Totally understandable. It was never officially released here in the US.
It was directed by Stan Winston and co-written by Stephen King. (Wonder if he regrets that now?) I think you can see it on YT, but I’ll warn you that it really does come across these days as “foreshadowing.”
This “song” is exactly typical of Jackson’s music. It’s just a droning backing track with whispered words that don’t have a lot of melodic variation.
It would be interesting to know how popular MJ would have been without the mystique, the dancing, the *over-the-top videos and the crotch grabbing. I suspect even the most popular of his songs would not have broken the top 100 had they been delivered by a dough-faced singer without theatrics.
I’m not hating on Michael, I just don’t think that musically or as a songwriter he was all that.
ETA: Michael Jackson’s Black and White music video cost $7.98 million (adjusted) to make.
His ‘Scream’ music video cost $12.48 million (adjusted) to make.
Sure, I can enjoy it. I can also enjoy the music of artists who overdosed or who were addicts or who were crappy to their families (Sinatra, Crosby, et al). I can also watch movies with Travolta and Cruise, despite their slavish devotion to a whacko religious sect.
It is interesting to me that Elvis Presley started “dating” Priscilla when she was 14, which is about the same age as the kids who accused Michael Jackson. I’ve never heard of anyone who stopped listening to Elvis because of that reason.
I still listen to Michael Jackson and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis (and likely countless others who got away with what they did.) I also still watch movies made by Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. I still enjoy the Naked Gun movies, even if one of the people in the films is a murderer. Jim Gordon killed his mother with a machete. He is still one of the finest drummers in the history of the music industry.
Art isn’t a person. Art is something they created. I can appreciate what they created without condoning whatever else the person may have done in their personal life.
Saying his theatrics helped his sales is sort of an odd thing to say of an entertainer because theatrics is what they’re selling, but the fact is that anyone releasing those songs would have had huge, huge hits on their hands. Jackson’s stuff is absolutely Grade A pop music, written by songwriters with incredible track records. “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” are peerless pop songs, and “Don’t Stop 'Til You Get Enough” is fantastic as well.
After “Bad” I think he was just repeating himself, but in his peak, that is great stuff.
I mean, “Thriller” wasn’t just a hit. It was the most popular album that there has ever been. Lots of people can dance and make music videos; exactly one of them, ever, has sold fifty million certified copies.
Oh and to answer the OP, sure. He’d dead anyway. He can’t benefit from me listening to his music.
I think you’re right about this. And any kind of sexual or sexual-adjacent contact with kids is illegal, immoral, and gruesomely wrong—no matter what the thought process underlying such contact.