Why is Michael Jackson so famous?

Cafe Society
21

Which is fine but doesn’t explain why they’re famous; it only goes to explain why they remained in the tabloids.

Michael Jackson was famous because he was an exceptional pop musician. Maybe your tastes do not run that way - I’m more of a rock and roll guy myself - but it is a matter of simple historical fact that Jackson was an exceptionally popular and critically acclaimed musician and performer who, in the early 80s especially, not only attained a level of popularity unequalled by more than perhaps 3 or 4 other acts in all of pop/rock history, but who had a tremendously influential effect on the very nature of the marketing and selling of pop music. He made the single best-selling studio album in the history of recorded music (by some measures “Thriller” has sold more copies than any other two albums combined) popularized music video, won more industry awards than a strong man could carry, and set a musical legacy sure to live for decades. And that was after ten years of producing first rate pop music.

All this happened BEFORE Jackson’s flat-out nuttery became popularly known.

I’m sorry, but this is just plainly false, if one looks at the simple facts. Elvis Presley was an absolutely gigantic star BEFORE he got fat, addicted to speed, wore silly jumpsuits or was famous for consuming piles of food. Most of his eccentricities came out after the peak of his popularity, and when he died he wasn’t a force in pop music anymore.

John Lennon was part of the most popular rock band that ever existed, and it attained that status long before anyone really knew anything about Lennon (and anyway, what was particularly weird about John Lennon?)

Kurt Cobain was certainly a problem child but I wouldn’t put him on the level of Lennon, Presley or Michael Jackson in terms of his popularity or greatness.

I don’t notice that. Paul McCartney’s still alive. So are Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Don Henley, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Prince, three quarters of Led Zeppelin, everyone (I think) in Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, Bono, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, Robbie Robertson, Diana Ross…

22

[QUOTE=Markxxx]
Jackson has average qualities as a singer and dancer.
[/QUOTE]

If this is an average dancer I’d be intrigued to see what you call a great one.

23

MJ, and other stars such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Cher, got tremendous amounts of free publicity for the wearing of clown clothes. The news outlets never mentioned the music these people put out, they just emphasized their grotesque wardrobes.

24

You’re contradicting your own theory here. Michael Jackson’s increasingly bizarre appearance and behavior over the years didn’t seem to gain him a lot of new fans, and it lost him a lot of his old ones. He was still doing a lot better for himself than plenty of other musicians, but his popularity did decline and he was the butt of jokes for years. Since he died I think a lot of people feel less comfortable making fun of him and more comfortable revisiting his earlier work.

I’m not a fan, but Michael Jackson was one of the most successful pop musicians of all time long before he became a freakshow. 1979’s Off the Wall was huge both critically and commercially, and 1982’s Thriller is the biggest selling album of all time. It’s sales figures are more than double those of the #2 biggest selling album (AC/DC’s Back in Black).

The coverage of Jackson’s death no doubt inspired some younger people to check out his music for the first time, but he sold millions upon millions of albums and singles long before his death.

25

It also didn’t hurt that MJ had Q producing his albums. That man is a true genius.

26

Wow. I didn’t know British Secret Service allowed moonlighting. :smiley:

Look at some of Michael and the Jackson 5’s direct descendants.

Usher
Solo Timberlake
Chris Brown
Tevin Campbell, who was also produced by Quincy Jones

New Ediition, whose success spawned a number of copycat groups that all had five members including NKOTB, 5 Star, Troop which makes those groups secondarily influenced. One of Troop’s biggest hits was a cover of All I Do is Think of You, a J5 hit.

Also the first Weird Al song I ever heard was Eat It. So there’s that.

You should search the forums for the 50+ threads that erupted after his death and read some of those.

27

My arguably somewhat weird way to answer this question is to tell you how much I don’t like the guy or (in a sense) his music. Personality wise I have no empathy with him whatever. He’s not someone I could relate to at all. His videos were showy and overdone which I have no respect for. His music was of a style and genre I dislike.

But every time I hear one of his songs I find myself ruefully shaking my head and saying “Dammit there is just no getting away from how good that is.”

He was a musical genius: his songs are so freakin’ brilliant that someone who doesn’t like them can’t help but like them :wink:

28

I’m totally a child of the 80’s, pop-culture-wise, and I’ve never gotten MJ’s appeal, either. All I ever noticed when he sang was that high-pitched, very feminine-sounding voice. But if that was musically appealing in the 80’s, why didn’t there seem to be any other popular acts trying to duplicate that sound? All of the other male pop singers I remember from that era - Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Sting, Phil Collins, Bryan Adams, Huey Lewis - had deep, masculine, husky voices. Even Billy Joel and Elton John, who occasionally ranged higher than average for a male, never had the high pitch as a signature style, and at their highest were noticeably lower than MJ.

The Bee Gees were probably the most similar to MJ in vocal style, but their heyday was before his.

If his appeal was in his songs and music, why weren’t there more like him?

29

cmkeller, if you’re a child of the 80s and can’t name another soprano/falsetto, you didn’t listen to R&B. The aforementioned New Edition’s first hit was mistaken for a lost J5 hit because of Ralph Tresvant’s high voice. He kept that range after adolescence.

There’s also the lead singers of:

Ready for the World
GQ
The Deele(Babyface)
El DeBarge
Switch(James DeBarge)
Prince(when he felt like it, see Do Me Baby)
Earth, Wind and Fire(Phillip Bailey)

The soprano/falsetto was big in 80s R&B plus Michael has always had a high-pitched voice. Black comedians did Michael Jackson impressions like White comedians do Jack Nicholson or Christopher Walken impressions (often). You can’t use his voice to indict his popularity because that was much of the reason for it.

30

The simple answer is that he embraced MTV in a way that nobody ever had before. A long-form video for Thriller? That was absolutely unheard of. Videos with superb production values were very rare at the time, and he and Duran Duran showed the way.

The music was good as well, but that’s not what made him famous. It was style over substance, something that has long been the roadmap to success in the music business.

31

PRINCE had a deep, masculine voice?

Jackson was extensively copied; his musical style certainly, but his videos especially.

As to his high pitched voice, part of it is simply that most men just can’t replicate that. Jackson’s voice was very unusual, and even a guy singing in a higher register isn’t really going to sound anything like that. Prince has a high voice, not at all deep or husky, but he doesn’t sound like Michael Jackson. A lot of Europop acts also sang with high voices - just listen to A-ha’s “Take on Me,” which was a monster hit, and is clearly sung in a high voice, but again the guy just sounds like another Europop singer. George Michael typically sang higher notes, a lot of hair metal bands sang in high registers (the guy from Def Leppard, for instance) and on and on.

32

He was a tremendous self promoter. Utterly overrated as a performer but he sold himself well. A deluded sad man at the end. Hope it was worth it.

33

Are we going to do this with every popular celebrity? Jaysus.

Michael Jackson was so famous because he was extremely talented and happened to come on the scene when mass media was really opening up for young performing artists. Especially black cross-over acts. He took advantage of that opening and then took off on his own merit and hard work.

His songs was catchy and full of personality. He sang them well and when called to dance, the man was magical. He WAS a dancing machine. There were other singers before him that danced, like James Brown, but really no one could compare to Michael. The standard 80s video relied heavily on synchronized dancing, but usually the artist up front was the weak one (see Pat Benetar in “Love is Battlefield”). But Michael commanded the attention. Watch when he breaks up the fight scene in “Beat It”, and you see that the guy was NOT playing around. You see an intensity in his face that you don’t see anymore. A man in the zone.

He wasn’t a musical genius. For contemporary/pop music, I’d save that title for someone like Prince, who can actually play a bizillion instruments and is known for composition. But Michael was a performing genius.

We are so cynical and mean now that we would laugh at Michael Jackson if he came on the scene now. A skinny black guy with a jheri curl, high-water pants, an affected falsetto voice, and single white glove? Yet always singing about getting a girl and being bad? Come on now! But back in the 80s, we bought it because the wonderful performance blinded us. It also helps that he came on the scene when androgyny was the “thing”. We bought a heterosexual Michael Jackson just like we bought a straight Annie Lennox (who is straight, but she can make even me wanna be her girlfriend!) I remember in the fifth grade, putting on a skit where one of the girls in the class dressed up like Michael Jackson and did a ten-year-old’s best imitation of him. Nowadays, kids would be laughing at that, saying it was proof that Michael was teh gay. When really he just transcended gender. As he would later, and more tragically, transcend race.

The production crew may have made his voice sound better than it was, though knowing how he sang when he was a kid makes me doubt they had to put too much of a spin on his pipes. But they didn’t invent his initial on-stage charisma or his signature dance moves (interestingly enough, the Moonwalk is not “his.” He just introduced it to a wider audience).

I work with someone who can’t even concede that Michael was talented. The other day we were talking about how there are now helicopter tours over Neverland Ranch, and I said, “I like Michael as much as the next person, but there ain’t no way I’d spend money on that.” And this woman had to do her part by saying, “I’m not that ‘next person’. You must be talking about someone else.” Well, aren’t you just little Miss Shitty McShitShit, I wanted to say. The guy is dead. Yes, he was a freak and I suspect he did do some weird, if not bad things, with kids. And he isn’t even my most favorite entertainer. But I’m not hip to hatin’ just to hate as this person seems to be whenever you mention Michael Jackson. Give the guy SOME credit or don’t say anything at all.

34

I really don’t understand how someone who listened to music during the 70s and 80s could fail to understand why Jackson was popular. Thriller is one of the best albums ever produced, period. With nine songs on the album there were seven hit singles. Okay, I admit “The Girl is Mine” with Paul McCartney is pretty cheesy but the rest of the album was dynamite. As a seven year old boy I was mesmerized by Jackson’s performance at the Motown 25th anniversary show where he sang Billie Jean and did the moonwalk. Even when Jackson started become the butt of jokes (when he was celebrity weird rather than just plain weird) he continued to put out good songs like “Bad,” “The Way You Make me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror,” and one of my favorites, “Smooth Criminal.” Michael Jackson was one of the greatest musical performers of the 20th century and a man who possessed enormous talent. That’s why he’s so famous.

35

You need to have your “get it” meter re-calibrated.

36

because the other musical geniuses from the fifties to 70s were either dead or took a breather. the 80s was full of crap from both the old world and inner cities.

37

I was just watching This Is It with my daughter and it struck me what an amazing performer MJ was up to the very end. When he did Man in the Mirror it got me a bit choked up, it was so beautiful.

38

To some extent.

How old are you? John Lennon and Elvis Presley were world famous decades before they died. And refresh my memory: what is Paul McCartney’s tragic addiction? One-footed girls?

39

i don’t hate MJ that badly. i think he’s up there with elvis and the beatles and the other greats like elton and clapton. what people might be thinking (i often do) is they hate the type of fans he made.

40

RickJay:

Absolutely. “When Doves Cry”, to name what was probably his biggest hit, he’s practically growling.

I love “Take on Me” and…high? The chorus begins so low, you can practically feel the earth rumble (though it does get progressively higher toward the end - but that’s hardly the same as the voice being overall high-pitched).

Certainly Michael’s voice was unusual, possibly unique. And maybe that was indeed appealing to some. But it never seemed to me that high voices on males - not Michael-level, but on the high end of male vocal range rather than low end of it - was much in demand from pop-music audiences of the 80’s, outside of Michael himself.