Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

created: Friday, May 29, 2009, 11:36:39 AM
modified: June 26, 2009, 2:30:24 PM

This is going to be a round-about way to get my point across here, but try to keep up.

When trying to think through how I was going to start this off, this was my actual thought process:

- I love Michael Jackson, I don’t care who knows it.
- Why would anyone condemn an artist for his personal life when his music is so amazingly funky?
- It’s not personal, it’s business. Meaning, I don’t care what he does on his own time, as long as ‘PYT’ and ‘Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough’ remain on permanent rotation on my iPod.
- That makes me think of “You’ve Got Mail” which was; let’s admit it, a precious movie.
- I don’t want people to think I got my “it’s not personal, it’s business” philosophy from a movie, but it will help to add perspective to the situation.
- I think MJ is a strange person, but I don’t think he is a criminal. Regardless of my vague opinion of his personal life, I will always love him because he is the funkiest human being in the universe.
- I have more memories associated with Michael Jackson than most any other artist, because Thriller came out when I first started obsessing over music.

This last point segue into my original reasoning for choosing Billy Jean as the maidenhead MJ post, they may be more, or I may be able to fit it all in this post, in a roundabout way.

In 1983, MJ released thriller. We were kids; we were obsessed with it, like most everyone in the country at that time. I was in either Kindergarten or first grade at the time. This album was the first of many that I took with me Show and Tell. I brought the vinyl in to show the class the amazing photograph of Jackson lying on his side, clutching the baby Bengal tiger. But mostly I wanted to show off how awesome I was for having this new and exciting release. (This was then followed by Showing and Telling of Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” and The Police’s “Synchronicity”.)

Shortly after I showed off the album (or either it was soon before?) was the Motown 25 special wherein MJ dazzled the universe with His Moonwalk. The next day, we kids were in a frenzy. The entire day was spent talking about sparkly gloves and falling over ourselves in an attempt to recreate this magic backward-ness.
……………
This is where I stop and pause. I have a tendency to start a post for this blog and then stop for a couple days to make sure I am remembering everything I mean to say about a particular song. In this instance, I started this post a little less than a week ago. Last night, we lost our king. I am so bewildered and so unbelievably sad about this tragedy. At this point, no one knows the circumstances surrounding his death, and I doubt I will be deterred by whatever the reasons may be, controversial or not.

Yesterday, I sat with a table of friends, all about the same age as me, some up to 5 years younger and 4 years older than me. We were all, technically, children of the eighties, why was I the only one who was so obviously upset by this? I was watching the streaming report on cnn.com when the coroner made his official announcement that he was gone. I began to cry. Everyone looked at me like I was a special needs kid. I didn’t really care too much about that. I called my one true friend who knew how upset I was and knew exactly why. I tried, very calmly, to explain to my boyfriend why I was upset. This is the paraphrasing of why. These are the things my best friend already knows. This is why I love her.

I started to explain this a few paragraphs up… and the whole purpose of this blog in general should explain, that I was a child who was greatly influenced by music. My entire life has been a “musical journey”. I have a passion. I may not be a musician myself, other than playing a few instruments for personal pleasure, and I may not be a painter or a photographer, or an artist in a traditional sense, but I consider myself a person who takes great pleasure from the aesthetics of life. The main cynosure of my pleasure receptors for the appreciation and obsession of the arts is primarily focused on music. I find the greatest pleasures, pains, passions, experiences, loves, hates, and most significant moments of my life have been a great soundtrack composed by the men and women who created these masterpieces just for me. My heart is in this goofy little blog. My heart is in the songs. My heart is with the artists.

There is the simple beginning. My father was a music nut. We played records, rather than watched Saturday cartoons. Dad would quiz me on bands like Steppenwolf and the Four Tops to amuse his buddies when I was 4 or so. Dad was the one who let a 7 year old me stay up to watch the first ever MTV awards until 11pm. It was dad who helped me buy my first ever vinyl, Thriller, and dad who bought me my first ever CD, Dangerous. I grew up with Michael Jackson. In a long line of musical passionate responses, my first realization that music was more than just a “thing”, was the way my body, my toes responded to Billie Jean. I never forgot that, and I never forgot him. I was never not a Michael Jackson fan. Even through all his personal drama, I always knew his music would never let me down.

I can remember when Thriller (the video for the song) first came out, and the special about its making, came on MTV and how it played all day long. I can remember when the same thing happened for Black or White. I can remember so many performances, so many videos, so many songs I knew as well as myself. So many funky, just technically perfect pop songs. So many people overlook the beauty of pop music. How a good, happy song, just for the sake of hearing a good song that makes your head bob, changes your mood. This all round-abouts into my (and Oscar Wilde’s) argument about art for art’s sake. Just because a song isn’t profound, heartbreaking, life-changing, doesn’t mean it’s not a good song. Some songs are just awesome because they are awesome. This was Michael Jackson’s music for me. He was an amazing artist and performer, and his music was great.

I am sad because so many people forgot this and it took his death for the american media remember that they loved him. So many people forgot how amazing he was and let the media destroy him. I can’t imagine the hell his personal life has been for the past few years. I pray he is at peace.