I was pondering recently: how much do I actually like Michael Jackson? It’s a more complex question than you may think, at least for me. One of my earliest memories is the premier of the Black or White video in 1991, so it’s like asking how much do I REALLY like oxygen? Or clouds? Or bricks? You don’t really think about it. They’ve just always been there, so you just accept them without question.
But, I spend more time complaining about Michael Jackson than I do oxygen, clouds or bricks. So, I was interested to see how highly I actually rate him and his work. I hear people say all the time about how Jackson was “the greatest” in whatever field. But I have questioned that for a long time.
I think most pop music connoisseurs would agree that the work he did with Quincy Jones between 1979-1987 is his masterstroke creatively. Off The Wall in particular, is an astonishing pop album. Thinking about it critically, it seems the reason these albums captured people’s imagination so was due to Jackson and Jones’ differing styles. Where Michael would push for modern grooves, Quincy would pull things back towards a more traditional sound. Therefore, their partnership created a happy medium between the two that appealed to a helluva lot of people, coupled with (mostly) great songs that weren’t trying to do anything but make you feel good.
But things start going wrong earlier than you think. The humungous success of Thriller meant that for the rest of his career, Jackson would basically make albums that followed the same format. Thriller itself feels calculated, but the albums feel even more calculated as time goes on. Sure, Bad is still a great pop LP, but most of the songs have their Thriller counterparts (Bad = Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ / Dirty Diana = Beat It / Just Good Friends = Girl Is Mine / Smooth Criminal = Thriller etc), and this is a trait that would continue. Each subsequent album “needed” a rock song with a famous guitar player (Black or White, Give In To Me, DS, Morphine, Whatever Happens), a duet (In The Closet, Scream), a slight novelty track (2000 Watts, HIStory, Ghosts) and, from Bad onwards, he added songs complaining about the press (Tabloid Junkie, Privacy, Why You Wanna Trip On Me?, Leave Me Alone) and songs about saving the world (Man In The Mirror, Heal The World, Earth Song, Cry, The Lost Children) to his limited pallet.
1991’s Dangerous is the first major example of Jackson throwing himself into current trends at the expense of writing great songs. The album for me is much like Jackson himself in that it was just always there, and I often list it amongst my favourite albums. And yet I don’t listen to it all that often. The first half of the album is obsessed with the then-current New Jack Swing craze. And while some of the songs work (Jam, Remember The Time) others definitely don’t (Can’t Let Her Get Away) and it all ends up sounding a bit samey. To cap it off, the first disc of the original vinyl ends with Heal The World, which is another one of Jackson’s excruciatingly bad habits; preachy “save the world”-type songs that offer too many easy answers and are encapsulated in a Disney-sounding production so that you can’t really take it seriously in the way that you can Prince’s Sign “O” The Times or Dylan’s 60s work.
All of which is a shame, because much of the second half of the album works a treat, from the straightforward pop/rock (Black Or White), to the beautiful (Will You Be There?) by way of the experimental (Who Is It?).
In the middle of the Dangerous promotional campaign, Jackson was first accused of child molestation. We’re not talking about Jackson’s private life or allegations here, but I feel this does mark an important moment in his creativity. You see, for all the faults of Dangerous, there was at least enough there that did work to counter-balance the things that didn’t quite work. The album he made following the accusations is where it all starts to go spectacularly wrong.
First of all, his general attitude starts to stink. Sure, he had marketed himself as “The King of Pop” before but I have no qualms with that. James Brown called himself all manner of incredibly flattering names, so it’s not like Jackson was the first one to do so. But Brown didn’t float a giant statue of himself down the River Thames. Brown didn’t perform at the BRIT Awards by walking Christ-like around the stage healing sick children. Brown didn’t spend the sleeve notes of his albums listing every single award he’d ever been given. This would be stomach churning anyway, but add that to the context that not a few months before this Jackson had received the worst publicity you could ever have via the child molestation accusations. From what I can gather about Jackson’s fan base, they get a kick out of those things. But, the point of publicity stunts and large TV performances is to win over people who are not necessarily your audience. Non-Michael Jackson fans always (rightly) point to these gaudy events as reasons they DON’T like Michael Jackson.
Then there’s the HIStory album itself. It’s waaaay to long, especially given that most of the album deals with the same subject (Jackson’s mistreatment by the press and authorities; Scream, They Don’t Care About Us, This Time Around, DS, Money, Tabloid Junkie, 2 Bad). There’s two covers on there for some reason (although, I would argue his cover of Charlie Chaplin’s Smile does at least serve a purpose, the inclusion of The Beatles’ Come Together seems to only be there to rub the fact that he owns the copyright in Paul McCartney’s face). The guest rapping that flowed pretty well on Dangerous (from the likes of Heavy D) now seems shoehorned in to meet a quota (worst example: The Notorious B.I.G. on This Time Around).
Furthermore, the album was always going to suffer in that it was packaged as a 2-cd set; a disc of the new material and a disc made up of Jackson’s first Sony Greatest Hits collection. I’m sure 99% of people would much rather listen to Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough than DS (possible 1% margin of error), which means the first disc gets way more listens than the second. It seems it was only there as a marketing ploy - people who wanted a Michael Jackson Greatest Hits CD could now easily get one, but they had to get this other album as well.
Seeing as the HIStory tour was Jackson’s last, it’s as good a time as any to talk about his capabilities as a live performer. Because by the HIStory tour, he was woeful. He lip synched every song on the tour, save for two. Not even re-recording the vocal tracks, he just lip synched to the original album versions, meaning that when performing a medley of songs from Off The Wall the 40 year old MJ is singing with 21 year old MJ’s voice. It is somewhat noticeable. The Dangerous tour fared a little better, though there was still way too much lip synching. I always heard people say the Bad Tour was 100% live. But a Bad Tour DVD was finally released in 2012. And guess what? Though the beginning of the show is live, towards the end he seems to think “fuck it, I can’t be arsed” and lip synchs again. Now, I get that people want to see him dance too, but how can you justify lip synching a ballad like the awful R. Kelly slush You Are Not Alone? The argument I hear is “he was a perfectionist, and he was out of breath”. Well, if he was a perfectionist he wouldn’t have gone out as the sub-par live act he was in the 90s.
Additionally, the format of his live shows became as stale as that of his albums. In fact, mores so. Never changing anything; Billie Jean is performed the exact same way it was in 1983; same hat, same gloves, same jacket. Beat It with the cherry picker, jacket, pretending to beat up a camera man, re-create the knife fight from the video. Shove a Jackson 5 medley in there. AC/DC shows can get pretty predictable, but…jeez…nowhere near this. Not only is the setlist the same, but so is the staging. Even sister Janet said in the early 90s that his tours are pretty similar (although I don’t think she meant it as a criticism necessarily). Apparently he “didn’t have time” to put something new together. Really? Because your last tour was four years ago, so you had no opportunity in those four years to even consider putting anything new together? A lot of acts who tour a lot more regularly manage to put something different together each time (check out Prince’s tours of the late 80s/early 90s for proof, each one was different and even at times challenging for the audience).
This montage was put together by someone on You Tube, presumably to highlight the awesomeness of Michael Jackson. To me, it highlights the laziness of Michael Jackson.
I genuinely believe that The Jacksons were a better live act than Michael was solo. Much looser, much more fun and much more musical than what Michael did on his own. Track down a copy of 1981's Jacksons Live album for proof/pudding.
Which brings us to the nadir of his entire career; Invincible. The dude doesn’t even sound like he’s trying. And then he was surprised when it didn’t sell 30 million copies. In fairness, it did sell close to 10 million, which is a lot in the market of the noughties, and even more for an artist in his 40s. But he blamed the record company for “low sales” and accused them of being racist. Given the circumstances, that's almost as bad as Mariah Carey blaming the reaction to her notorious flop movie/soundtrack Glitter on 9/11 that same year.
Because, good people of the interweb, I ask you a question of logistics; what company wants it’s projects to fail? This album cost over $20 million to make, surely they would want to make a profit on this? Since Dangerous, Jackson appeared to put more emphasis on rhythm tracks and a lot of the time forgot to write a decent melody to go with it. The dance songs on Invincible is the most obvious example of this, and the ballads are the most sickly yet. There are but two saving graces on the album, and both appear to have little to do with Jackson himself; Butterflies, a song written by British songwriter Marsha Ambrosius, and Whatever Happens, a song that borrows heavily from Santana’s mega successful Supernatural album, and features Carlos Santana himself (which suggests it has more to do with Santana than Jackson). The rest is an unmemorable mush. It’s not a conspiracy, Jackson fans; the album just sucked. It seems he expected to be huge based on his name alone. Well, people will only fall for that for so long.
And yet, I can’t argue with his earlier career. As stated above, the Quincy Jones-produced albums are mostly remarkable. The early Jackson 5 records at Motown are abundant with youthful fun and enjoyment. And, while inconsistent, the albums The Jacksons made after Motown are interesting as they show a transition from childhood to being mature, adult artists.
So…do I think he was “The Greatest” at anything? No. It appears that I don’t like Michael Jackson as much as my 8 year old self assumed I would. Despite what his fans insist, popularity does not equal greatness (see: the entire ITV schedule). You’re only as great as the people you work with. He worked with great people once upon a time, but he cut that out in the 90s to try and stay “relevant” rather than “great”. Why does EVERYTHING have to be a huge success? There have been many artists who have gone in directions that they knew wouldn’t be successful commercially, but felt it was necessary for their artistic growth, whilst still keeping their core audiences. Jackson never did this. Ever. If he had, he would likely be much more respected as a musician than he is today, both by critics and by me. Perhaps the reason the press were more interested in Jackson's personal life as time wore on was because it was just more interesting than the music he was making at the time.
Having said that, I’m still likely to buy the posthumous projects that are released, and continue to defend him. And if you start bad mouthing oxygen, bricks and clouds, I'll defend them too. Because they've been a subtle but large part of my life as far as I can remember.
