Last week I was very upset over the unexpected death of Michael Jackson. I will always remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I first read the headline, that I actually thought was a hoax initially. I've only felt that feeling once before, when I was first told about my best friend's death a decade ago. Then too I thought it was some sort of very cruel joke. Because of my emotions, and the silly girl who made the negative remarks, my last post was a lot less about Michael Jackson and a lot more about people in general. I hope to amend that with this post. We all turn tragedy into stories about ourselves and here are some randoms about me and the impact MJ had on my own life. I am still working on an unveil for later this week *rubs hands together* and you'll see on Independence Day why I've been all over the place for the last two or so posts.
My mother always took me and my sister to various stores when we were young and allowed us to purchase things with a budget she gave us. It taught us how to manage money and the costs of the things we took for granted while allowing us to develop our tastes in different things and ensuring we wouldn't just buy a crappy doll that would break in two minutes from the dollar store. The first record I ever bought was the "Thriller" album. We were each allowed to buy an album but we chose things we would both love so my sister's choice was "Around the World in a Day" by Prince. I was born in 1982, which is when the album came out, so it was at the used record store and I was super-excited to get it. My sister and I alternated between that album and the Prince album and to this day those records go hand-in-hand in my head, though they were released three years apart from one another. Each record had a song I was scared to death of, "Thriller" had the song "Thriller", and "Around the World..." had "Temptation". The video for "Thriller" shook me up pretty bad too.
I loved Barbie dolls as a child, and I had the MJ Barbie doll. I recently saw a picture of a fan at his Gary, Indiana childhood home holding the same doll. I still have the doll, though it wasn't nearly as hardy as my other dolls and therefore his legs are cut off at the knees. His pants, microphone, shoes, and glove are gone too (victims of a childhood move from one state to another ten hours away). He still has his red jacket with gold detailing, however! Aside from him my Flo Jo Barbie doll is the only other doll based on a public figure I have. She still has her original one-legged tracksuit and alternating-colors nail polish but for some reason when I was about six I took an emery board to her eyebrows and then tried to draw them back with a Sharpie. She's looked like a (stylish) drag queen ever since.
When I was an adolescent we didn't have cable. It was one of the luxuries lost when my mother became a single mother, simply because she never watched TV and didn't think cable was necessary. As a result, I watched music videos, Def Comedy Jam, and the rest at my best friend's house. When we were about 12-13 my best friend got in a crapload of trouble for ordering two videos nonstop for weeks on the now-defunct pay-per-view music video channel The Box (known as The Jukebox years prior). The two songs we kept watching? Her favorite "Funkdafied" by Da Brat and my favorite was "Scream" by Michael and Janet Jackson. We thought the trouble she got into quite worth it but we did learn to just record videos we liked after that.
From that "HIStory" album which included "Scream" came "They Don't Care About Us" and "Come Together", two songs I truly loved. I did not know at that time that "Come Together" was a Beatles song and one of the infamous masters that MJ outbid Paul McCartney for. I still think MJ's version is one of the best (check out Ike & Tina Turner's version too though). I had a boyfriend at that time who played the album constantly and the album, and my favorite songs, always make me think of that particular guy.
When Princess Diana died I remember a lot of her interviews being played and pictures of her various humanitarian works being shown. A funny story I remember hearing at that time was the story about how much she loved the song "Dirty Diana" and how when she attended a concert by MJ and she was informed the song would was taken off of the list in order to pay her respects, she asked MJ personally to perform the song. That blew my mind at the time somehow.
His "Invincible" album was such a mature and relevant album that I think it went under the radar for that reason. It was mellow and R&B instead of being the Pop extravaganza he was known for. I absolutely loved that album and listen to it even now. It was so unfortunate that it became his last album but when I think about it, he went back to his roots in many ways by making an album that appealed to his original audience, some of whom he'd alienated over the years. It went double-platinum and was therefore considered a flop compared to his other albums but I think that showed that he went back to his base, they bought it, and they liked it.
His televised concert special that aired around the time of the release of "Invincible" was really great. While I believe he lip-synced through all of it except the ad-libs I found it to be exhilarating to watch! It was so great to see him performing and to see the people who outright loved him. I didn't care about the first half, though I liked the idea of those performers paying homage (and Marc Anthony tore it up). Seeing the Jacksons and then Michael himself perform just blew my mind. To this day I clap when I watch that special. I had really hoped his London concert would be televised so I could catch that too, but when I look back on it, seeing him perform with his brothers and his solo performance on that special was probably the best. His brothers weren't going to perform in London and that would have made it a little less special.
All of these disjointed stories have a larger meaning to me. Michael Jackson was always in the fiber of my life, like he was in the lives of so many. I took him for granted because I always expected him to be there in some way, forever. During the BET awards show Janet Jackson said that Michael was an icon to us but a member of their family (and in that sense, human). While I understand her intent I disagree with her. MJ was probably the only star many of us felt that connected to and was therefore, quite human to us. He pushed so hard the idea of a global family too that he was a brother to many people other
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