Same here just like I’ll still watch and enjoy TV/movies produced by the Weinstein brothers.
Michael and the J5 were always on the radio when I was growing up I can’t excise their music from my life and I don’t want to.
Yeah. Jackson in his prime released absolute behemoths of pop songs that have few equals to this day. Like someone upthread, I’m not sure how much Jackson was actually involved in creating this music - he had the best songwriters, producers and musicians making it happen.
Growing up in the 80’s, I never listened to Jackson, but I remedied that omission later on. It’s been years since I did spin any songs of his, and I’m not sure how I would feel now. But to suggest his music is not worthy is pretty ridiculous.
Sales is the worst metric for determining the quality of music. It’s really more a measure of the marketing and how much it was pushed into your lap. And woah nelly, that record was marketed out the wazoo. MTV advertised the release of the video for weeks, and then showed over and over again. Trust me, without the marketing team pushing those records heavily, you would have never heard of them whether Jackson recorded them or not.
It’s pop. I don’t like pop. I didn’t like it then, and I still don’t like it.
Um… what? Jackson was a major star before Thriller. He was a star when he was a little kid, had modest success as a solo act until Off the Wall that sold millions before MTV even existed.
If you think the Thriller video on MTV sold the album, you’re right. However, the album was released in Nov 1982, and the video in Dec 1983, 13 months later, and after numerous top 10 hits were released from the album. The video did help propel the album to “best selling album ever” by the end of 1983.
And, and, AND, Michael Jackson was instrumental in turning music videos into a medium to promote the music. He helped define the genre. I suppose it was other people with the creativity and they lavished it all on to MJ instead of any random artist who would have done as well.
Yes, and that was all due to marketing. Still doesn’t mean that sales means quality. It’s a stupid stand-in that people use because it’s an easily comparable metric and you don’t have to think too much about the art to cite it and understand it. Might as well go around declaring McDonald’s is the best cheeseburger.
The videos themselves are marketing. He was good at that. It’s what makes a “star”, not quality of output.
They know what they did to their lettuce though. Bastards made it inedible. Blech
I do not believe any singer in the 1980s could achieve Jackson’s level of popularity based on a good marketing campaign alone. He was popular because a great many number of people genuinely loved listening to his songs.
And I’m not saying he made horrible music. He made average music that is easily consumable and marketed. He succeeded to the lengths he did mostly because of marketing, though. A great deal of people who owned Thriller had it given to them. My wife got her copy for Christmas. She didn’t particularly like Jackson, but his record was one of the things you could give a tween at the time without pissing off their parents. It was basically the audio equivalent of a Cabbage Patch doll.
Lots of albums have had marketing and been pushed on the public. None have sold fifty million copies.
Look, Jackson had GREAT songs, It’s not just marketing, and his music is not “average.” The idea that it’s only marketing that makes those songs popular is honestly kind of crazy. “Billie Jean” is a terrific, brilliantly written and recorded song. You can use marketing to get a song on a radio; you cannot make them sound great and be incredible popular.
“Average” pop is way below that. The average but popular music of the time was Rick Springfield and Air Supply and DeBarge.
And none had gotten pushed as hard as that one did. And again, who the hell cares that it sold more? It just means he had more market penetration. The album was marketed to hell and back.
You would know none of it without marketing, no song is “popular” without good marketing, and that record was marketed very well. I firmly believe that’s the secret to the number of units it moved. The songs themselves are pretty “meh” to my ear. Jackson might as well be singing gibberish, as well (heck, I might like it more if he was). I didn’t have any particular love for them then, and my feelings haven’t changed.
Heh, all of those put out very similar music to Jackson’s solo work. It’s fine, but I’m not learning to play any of it unless there’s a paycheck at the end of it. They’re all about the same, but Jackson had better marketing.
A cover band or musician is only smart to learn some pop. There’s whole generations who love it.
It might make the paychecks come more often.
Um, the Beatles wrote plenty of pop music. You may have heard of them.
Wasn’t a fan before, but if I had been, I would definitely have stopped.
I’ve always thought that talent is an undeniable fact, and it can be appreciated regardless of my thoughts on the artist as a human being.
I also think that Jackson is one of those artists I classify as a great performer, and not necessarily a great singer. I don’t think that he would have risen to the top of the heap if he didn’t put on such a great show.
Everybody involved with Thriller and OTW talks about how hands-on MJ was with every aspect of the process. Quincy talks about MJ’s “ass power”—that he was willing to sit on his ass in the studio and work until everything was exactly right.
Q is a genius and those records wouldn’t be what they are without him. But he produced dozens of artists over a 60+ year career and nothing else came close to those heights.
That’s my impression. But still, there can be a huge difference between creating iconic stuff from scratch as a musician, and having artistic control over what choice cuts, bits, hooks, riffs, fills and sounds created by other people to choose from.
I change the station if MJ music comes on. I find it remarkable how often I have to do that. The local radio stations here have in no way reduced how often they play his stuff. I have met nobody else who feels as I do.
I agree with this. I think he was a much better singer as a child. Not that he was a bad singer. He had his sound, and he knew how to work his instrument. But to me, his tone, the strength of his voice, its versatility—fine, but just okay.
There was a joke going around when he collaborated with McCartney. Paul told him if he promised not to out-dance him, he promised not to out-sing him.
But MJ was tremendously talented. If all it takes to sell 50M albums is relentless marketing, record companies would do so every other Tuesday.
I disagree, I’m talking about (and I think the subject of this thread is) his music, not his “entertaining”. Because listening to his music on the radio or a turntable is bereft of that entertainment. Many great entertainers were wildly popular yet never wrote any music (Frank Sinatra, Elvis). Conversely, a lot of great music has been sold on its merit without theatrics.
Let’s name off all the other music videos that costs 12 million dollars to produce and didn’t achieve that level of popularity. Oh, right, there isn’t one. Or one for 11 million or 10 million or nine million…
That was just an insanely disproportionate amount of money to spend on promotion and absolutely has to be factored into the success of that record.
Go to YouTube and listen to someone (who can sing very well) covering Billy Jean with just an acoustic guitar - it’s flat. The melody is almost non-existent.