Michael Jackson

Dead Celebrity Messianism Vs Tarnished Reputation aside, I'm a much bigger fan of the man's music than his music videos. Except maybe Thriller and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, because Moonwalker has Smooth Criminal and most of the music videos of his I like that aren't Thriller smooshed together in a campy funfest music video reel.

The only album I've ever heard of his in its entirety is Thriller, but now the new Bad remaster came out I'm tempted to check that out. But I heard in another thread the Thriller remaster was bad, which wasn't the version I heard. So I'm a bit confused about where to commit to an MJ binge.

That said, I'm not one of the people who thinks everything about the man is magical. I'm still trying to find the right dead rock star to hang on my wall, and apart from Kurt Cobain giving him some stiff competition, my MJ "shrine" begins and ends with the possibility of some C Ds, my Blu Ray of Moonwalker and the twelve inch action figure I have of MJ in his Thriller outfit.

Because after hearing about when my brother was a door to door salesman and he had to sell some telephone service to a woman who had this intense MJ shrine in the back of her living room, I started to question whether I couldn't do without the whole dead celebrity worship aspect of MJ fandom. I just like his music, and that one movie he did and that really cool action figure Hot Toys made which I have in my room.

What say you, TV Tropers?

Well, I'm not gonna comment on the sociopolitical aspects of the Michael Jackson fandom, if that's okay, but I will say that the sound of the Thriller remaster was fine to be. They just made the idiotic decision to have Akon, will.i.am, Fergie, and Kanye West make horrible remixes of some of the songs to tag onto an extra disc. The album itself is fine. The remixes just suck. You truly haven't lived until you've heard will.i.am ''replacing Paul Mc Cartney on "The Girl is Mine". The original version of the song is really, really hokey, but it's still fun and nice to hear two legends on the same song. This version? Removes all of the charm.

I've listened to all of Bad and I can tell you that in some ways it even surpasses Thriller—dare I say it, I think it's a better album by leaps and bounds. You've probably heard most of the songs off it anyway, since most of the tracks were singles. Lemme see, those include:

• Bad
• The Way You Make Me Feel (my personal favorite Michael Jackson song)
• Speed Demon (not a commercial single, but a promotional one, and you probably heard it in Moonwalker anyway)
• Liberian Girl (apparently it was a single, but I've never actually heard it on the radio myself)
• Another Part of Me
• Man in the Mirror
• I Just Can't Stop Loving You
• Dirty Diana
• Smooth Criminal
• Leave Me Alone

Also, somewhere in between those is an uncredited duet with Stevie Wonder called "Just Good Friends", which is one hell of an earworm.

edited 25th Oct '12 12:31:43 PM by 0dd1

Can't say I've ever been a fan or follower of the man. But he did leave an impression on me from early on, possibly because he was the first singer I saw on TV when I was little. And we sang one or two of his songs in music class back in school.

He had some pretty melodic and nice songs that are always a pleasure to hear. And he sang well.

However, I've always mostly appreciated him as a dancer, because his dancing seems very difficult and also very amusing and effective to captivate the audience. So, in general, I think he was a fine performer.

I've been a huge MJ fan for nineteen years.

I didn't pay much attention to Michael Jackson until I heard 'Black or White,' which instantly got me hooked. I bought Bad soon after, and Thriller and Dangerous followed.

Does anyone have Xscape? Is it worth it? My interest in it waned a bit after finding out it was only 8 songs.

I got the deluxe edition, which comes with the original working versions of the songs as he originally recorded them, so I'd say it's worth it to get that. The music's not bad, but I still question the ethics of releasing tracks that have been touched up like that without the permission of this dead man.

I've somehow managed to almost entirely escape him. Popular music tends not to be a thing here. I tended to deliberately ignore anything that wasn't country in my formative days, and by the time I got older, I only ever tended to hear country or the "boring" 70s/80s pop on classic stations.

To answer the very first troper, New Geek Philosopher, who started this thread:

Michael Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century. His 1970s and 1980s output was excellent, but the dance material is often more exciting than the emotional ballads, which tend to be a bit Tastes Like Diabetes sometimes. That said, he was definitely fantastic until the music videos became a greater focus than his music and everything became a bit too calculated. From the 1990s on too much songs became overpretentious and schmalzy Messianic and/or about his paranoid fears/digust toward predatory females or paparazzi. He could still churn out good tracks, though, but the press was more preoccupied with his private life and the general public became increasingly more fascinated/repulsed by that. And it must be said that Jackson became more and more isolated from the real world after Thriller, surrounded by "yes" men, which didn't always lead to the best artistic/commercial choices.

I also don't get why you question on becoming a fan, only because you don't want to be associated with the celebrity worship around him? Every artist, even Kurt Cobain, has both normal fans and people where the idol worship reaches fanatical, almost religious levels. That doesn't mean you can't like the music. I enjoy Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Bob Marley,... right, but I have nothing in common with people who buy every single record by these people, build shrines to them and see them as some sort of demigods.

edited 13th Dec '14 12:16:51 AM by Patachou

Hey, I'll have you know that I see the Beatles as gods, not demigods.

Not my cup of tea. He's a better dancer than singer imo.

I like Smooth Criminal. That's about it. And 90% of that liking is due to the guitar part that starts after the break (so damn funky). But yeah for a guy produced by Quincy Jones he always sounded very "thin" to me. Drained, lifeless delivery, squeaky clean production, nothing beefy in the synths, nothing too offensive neither here nor there.

I'll take anything in Quincy Jones' canon over anything MJ has done any day. I mean his soundtrack work is amazing. His solo albums are amazing. Ever heard his score for "The Lost Man" ? What about the one for "The Anderson Tapes" ? Or "The Split" ? What about any of his solo works ? Or what is undoubtedly one of the best and most well known theme songs in the history of television ? Can't we talk about Quincy Jones instead ?

Where's the Quincy Jones thread ?

(sorry, lost my train of thought)

The Quincy Jones thread is back on the block.