But lo and behold! - Michael Jackson's Thriller re-entered the charts. This is not a surprise, given the premature demise of the King of Pop, but it gives me the brilliant chance to write a bit about Michael in this weekly music column.
This is part 1 - click here for part 2.
My first real conscious contact with Michael's music came through the music lessons in school with Mr. Bolz. Mr. Bolz had the reputation of being pretty easy going and I guess watching the 17 minutes Bad video can be called 'easy going', indeed. Watching this piece and seeing Michael dance and sing did not do much at first. I remember that Tim, Holger and I were walking the school grounds during recess a day or so after seeing this mini movie and we were talking about it being actually pretty boring and the music being so-so. I especially remember this quote from Tim:
Tim: Those blacks can dance, though!
Bad was then one year old, we were 14 and did not bother too much about political correctness.
Something had still fascinated me about the video and the song and soon enough I purchased Bad, which became one of my first CDs. Nearly all of the songs on Bad were great and I stuck by it, although I had to take some mocking from Bernhard and his then best friends Thorsten and Arne. They were making especially fun of the constant "yiehiiiie!" and the smacking "da!" sounds (and I have to admit that some of the group choreographies, especially in The Way You Make Me Feel, where movements were obviously borrowed from sexual activities, felt then quite embarrassing).
If I look at my closest friends, I can say that Volker liked Jackson, too, but he brought in U2 as a counter balance of less choreography and artificiality, while being more handmade and - at least in parts - politically motiviated instead... Alex was not into Michael Jackson, but then again, he could never contribute much for me in this respect for reasons he has suffered of a lot and which I described flowerly in my contribution to his and Silke's wedding newspaper.
Following Bad, I built my Jackson collection, which means I got the Thriller album (as a record), Off The Wall and also Victory (from The Jacksons), both on vinyl, too. Yes, kids - not all the albums back then were available as CD and it was still some time before MP3s would break the music industries neck. But this was the dawn of CDs becoming available for the rest of us and digitalization went mainstream. A time of change and upraise.
Thriller was of course another gem and I would say had an even bigger impact on me than Bad. Listening today to songs of either album reminds me of how much they touched my life then... though now most of them feel flat and there is only a distant echo of that past passion left.
Exceptions are Billy Jean and most of the songs on Off The Wall, an album that did not leave its marks on me at first, but that I hold in higher esteem today.
Later albums like Dangerous, Blood On The Dancefloor and History did not make the same impression on me as the ones mentioned before, which I considered as complete pieces of art, while I saw the new ones more soberly as a mix of poor to excellent pop songs. When the newer ones were released, my musical taste had also developed into different directions. Jackson became a singing shadow to me, and I did not care much about the child abuse trials, his extravagant lifestyle and his weirdo marriages.
There is no question that Michael Jackson was an exceptional talent - and yet he was not a rounded artist in my eyes. His dancing is certainly amazing, but after all, I am still looking more for vocal skills in a singer. Michael was - at least in later years - far from that. It is definitely impossible to sing properly without playback and do all these unearthly dance moves which had become his trademark. Looking at his live performances which vary between amazing show effect and thick kitsch, it would have been nice to hear more often the real voice of the human being. More than a shy and thin "I love you!".
I did not buy his last album.
I would have never gone to one of his concerts.
I did not care for the man in recent years.
Yet the loss of Michael Jackson on June 25 saddens me.
Maybe because it feels like a fairytale creature has died.
Not the pretty one. Not the hero. Not the monster either.
But a significant and unique character who was part of a beloved fairytale world.
One of those characters you thought would be there til the last page of the story...
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