Jackson's music, legacy will endure despite tabloid life

The King is dead.
Actually, the king – the self-proclaimed but justifiably correct “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson, to be more specific – died years ago, drowned in a sea of tabloid headlines, scandals and late-night comedian jokes. Regardless of whether or not any of them were true, Jackson was never the same person he was at the height of his fame in the 1980s and early 1990s.
That’s the time period I’ll remember him; when he was a dazzling artist who electrified the stage and dominated the charts more than any person since Elvis Presley did so in the 1950s and the Beatles in the 1960s. For people in Generation X who weren’t alive to witness Elvis and the Beatles in their heydays, Jackson allowed them to vicariously see, through his success, someone reaching the ultimate pinnacle of success. It’s a height no one has reached since then.
I was only 8 when Jackson’s “Thriller” album catapulted him from stardom to mega stardom, his face gracing every other kid’s lunchbox at school, his music playing from nearly every radio and boom box, and his videos for “Thriller” and “Beat It” dominating not just MTV but also network television on Saturday mornings.
Jackson broke color barriers; MTV refused to play videos by black artists until it decided to put “Billie Jean” on the air, a decision that would soon pay big dividends for the network.
He also defined an entire decade, much like the Beatles had done in the 1960s. To this day, the 1980s can be summed up with his white glove and red leather jacket.
I didn’t own “Thriller” when it came out – I was still four years away from owning my first album, Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” – but I still knew it fairly well, as all my friends owned it. I bought it later, in college, when I had a job and had a budget for such expenses.
I owned his next album, “Bad,” when it was popular in 1987, making my mother purchase it for me through one of those now-extinct Colombia record club deals. I had it on cassette and remember listening to it over and over on the daily one-hour bus ride I had, as well as during family trips when my parents went to see friends and I was left as a bored 13-year-old with nothing to do at their house but to listen to music on my Walkman.
By the time of his 1991 album “Dangerous,” Jackson was more tabloid fodder than superstar talent. Nonetheless, I still purchased the album. I wasn’t as fond of it at first, but a year later, I found myself listening to it on a regular basis; it got better for me as time went on and I heard other singles from it on the radio that made me appreciate it more. Most albums today don’t have such a slow-burning appeal; if it’s not popular immediately, chances are the record company will give up on it.
Some say the best mark of true genius is when others imitate you. Judging by the millions of people who tried to imitate Jackson’s sleek dance move, the Moonwalk, from 1983 to 1985, as well as the countless pop musicians who are still copying him today, people will have a hard time saying he wasn’t one.
But in the latter half of his career, Jackson made it easy for the people who didn’t like him to target him and reduce him to nothing but a big joke, or even worse, a child molester.
Perhaps we’ll never know the full extent of his eccentricities or whether or not he actually crossed the line in his dealings with children, but that doesn’t matter as he put himself in that position by looking and acting differently than what is generally accepted by the public. If he had taken advice from a sensible person he could have trusted, maybe he could have avoided such a career and personal-life free falling.
The same could have been said for Elvis.
It’s ironic Jackson and Elvis shared so many similarities. Maybe that’s what happens to people when they reach an Everest-like summit few ever reach. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, who reached a peak at a lower level, shot himself because he couldn’t handle it. Bob Dylan had a motorcycle accident. Brian Wilson got fat and became a recluse. Eminem popped pills and threatened retirement. Britney Spears went crazy.
This list could go on and on.
Although I liked the two albums he released after “Dangerous,” neither of them holds a special place in my heart like the previous three. By then, because he was more tabloid than talent, the king was already dead to me. He was hoping for a comeback with a series of concerts he was scheduled to start this month. He may have staged an even bigger comeback by dying, though.
Long live the King.