This isn’t necessarily true. I was born in '81, and I distinctly remember dancing around to “Beat It” when I was about 4 or 5. Not that I consider him a major influence on my musical taste, but young kids do have exposure to popular music.
And Jackson may have been getting wacky, but he was still relevant enough for “Black or White” to be considered a good tune when I was elementary school.
I’m about Cisco’s age and he’s right. People our age didn’t grow up seeing Michael Jackson as a star, they grew up seeing him as a weirdo. In the early '90s there were already jokes about Jackson molesting kids, having a weird relationship with Macaulay Culkin, and everybody knew he grabbed his own crotch when he danced. I remember kids singing a parody version of “Black or White” that ended “something was wrong and not right/I couldn’t tell if I was black or white.” I think the jokes about him turning from a black man to an Asian woman date back to that time also. And I’m sure there were some puns on “Free Willy.” The Elephant Man skeleton story may have already been out by then, too.
Celebrity culture was different then because there weren’t as many people watching as closely. I don’t think people watched celebrities go crazy in real time. But by that time, everybody knew something was seriously weird about Michael Jackson. Older people were still buying his music, younger kids were wondering what the hell was going on with him.
And today, he’s a freak show. However, young Michael Jackson is an increasingly popular Halloween costume. I saw about six of him this year, in a three block radius.
ETA: I was never a big fan and from what I’ve heard of it, Thriller was overrated. Billie Jean’s a strange, excellent song, and Beat It has a great riff.
Or maybe I was an oddly clueless kid …
When was Jackson on Oprah? That’s when I remember starting to think that he was really going round the bend.
Well, I kinda agree with you, but the thing is that those ten year olds are learning the music of the 60’s to 80’s. By the 90’s everything you heard that was considered r’n’r was recycled. I thought Nirvana was a kick ass band, but they didn’t bring anything *new *to the scene.
I’d love to find some new rock band, say debut after '00, which doesn’t sound derivative of some rock music I heard a long time ago.
Which is why it’s like jazz. Though rock is more fun, so newer generations can get into it.
I was born in 1983 and I can definitely confirm that Michael Jackson was considered a weirdo when I was growing up. Now it does seem like people my age have a greater respect for his contribution to music history, and I dare suggest that is also because of MTV–I don’t remember really developing an appreciation for him until MTV began airing nostalgia shows in the late 90s that treated him as a music god, declared ‘‘Thriller’’ to be the best music video of all time, etc. I think Cisco makes a valid point, in that for our generation at least, there is a lot of revisionist history about Michael Jackson. Though he’s not my cup of tea, I genuinely consider him to be one of the greatest performers of all time, right up there with Madonna in his ability to captivate people with his music and choreography. I did not come to this conclusion on my own–it was influenced by the input of older people and music television.
However, even growing up there were some kids that loved Michael Jackson anyway, and I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the influence of popular music on them due to their young age. I became conscious of popular music as early as four or five years old. By the time I was six I could sing all the lyrics to most Pat Benetar, Paula Abdul and Madonna songs. I received the Please Hammer Don’t Hurt 'Em cassette for Easter when I was seven and I wore that fucker out. I had aunts and uncles who were just a few years older than me and I was constantly exposed to their tastes, which is why I also remember Boys II Men and Color Me Badd and a whole bunch of other stuff I would not ordinarily have paid attention to. The Beatles were well past their freshness date in the early 90s yet I was obsessed with them and kissed my Paul McCartney poster every night before bed. So yeah, little kids are certainly capable of being influenced by popular music.
And I’m not a rabid MJ fan or anything, but *Billie Jean *is one of the best pop songs ever written.
I think you’re painting with a bit of a broad brush for people our age Cisco. While I agree with you in that MJ was never “cool” to us (although getting a music video on a real channel and appering on The Simpsons helped a little), “Thriller” was still a huge deal then.
MTV used to run these Greatest Music Video of All-Time countdowns every few months in the early 90s. They’d be different every time and I knew plenty of people that used to watch them waiting to see whether “Thriller” or “November Rain” took the top spot this time.
You have to when talking about a whole generation. I don’t know the millions of people our age to talk about them each individually.
Good grief, I feel like an old fogey, having been born in 1962. So I was around 20 when “Thriller” came out. It was a huge deal. Jackson was NOT considered a freak among the people I knew, he was just a superstar. Frankly, I only thought he was pretty good, though I did like “Billy Jean”.
Ed
I’d almost forgotten Macaulay Culkin was in that video. Boy, in retrospect, that’s uncomfortable.
I would just like to remind people that right or wrong, Michael Jackson has never been convicted of molesting children. Yes, I know there have been multiple accusations and possible pay-offs and any number of strangenesses on his part, but by the standards of the United States legal system, Michael Jackson is not a sex offender.
Which is why he’s not in prison.
Right or wrong, the court of public opinion is something altogether different.