The Way He Makes Us Feel
On what would have been the King of Pop’s 60th birthday, we look into his music, legacy and what it means to be a Michael Jackson fan in today’s hyper politically correct world
IN ALL OUR lives and in the course of human history, we can categorise our individual experiences as well as the collective experience of the world by two phases of time. Before and after. There is always an incident, an event, a person whose effect on us individually or on the world is one that’s so magnanimous that life or our perspective on life is clearly split into two different parts – before and after.
While writing this I’m listening to
Human Nature by Michael Jackson (MJ). Human Nature was released in 1982, the fifth single from the iconic, record breaking album Thriller. I would venture to say that I’ve heard
Thriller an impossible number of times. A million? Maybe. Along with the body of work by the King of Pop, Thriller is indelibly linked to my childhood and life. Not just for me but for the whole world, Michael Jackson was it – the metamorphic, transformative, mind-blowing, thing – the person. MJ split our world to before and after.
Insta opinions
A few months ago while listening to Human Nature, I was inspired to post some of my favourite images of Michael Jackson on my Instagram account. I posted three images – a black and white promotional photo of MJ for Pepsi in 1984, Jackson on the set of the Billie Jean video clip, directed by Steve Barron in 1982 and a stylised photo of him by the celebrated American celebrity portrait photographer, Greg Gorman. The image is an extremely glamourous close up of Jackson’s face photographed behind an ornate black satin veil. It’s a haunting image. Particularly because of the way he stares out at us. The more I look at the photograph, I realise two things. First, that his eyes are probably the only thing he couldn’t change about his appearance.
Second, none of us actually know or understand the man who left such a huge impact on the world. None of us really know what he was thinking or what he suffered.
When I posted these three images, I used the same caption for all of them – Visionary and icon – I still listen to MJ every week.
I then received a message in my inbox from an acquaintance of mine: You’re forgetting paedophile?
I told the acquaintance that he wasn’t one. He was never convicted. Of the two allegations of sexual abuse against him, one of the boys allegedly later said that it was fabricated.
We went back and forth for a while and I brought up the point on whether or not we should separate the man and his art from the allegation against him. The acquaintance said we shouldn’t. I had no answer to my own question.
I could list out all the reasons why people would falsely accuse MJ of sexual abuse – money, fame, blackmail – I could probably construct a very well- informed argument to paint him as a victim. Equally so, my Instagram acquaintance could easily do the same to prove that he was indeed a paedophile.
Bleaching his skin, oxygen chamber, plastic surgery, his father’s emotional and physical abuse, the truth behind his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley – the list of rumours are endless and the argument for their validity can also be created, verified and certified from a number of sources including tabloids like The
Sun and The Daily Mail or secondhand information from acquaintances and people who knew people who knew him.
Michael mania
I could read everything ever written about MJ. It wouldn’t be hard. I’m a fan and would make time for it. I could also watch all the authorised and unauthorised documentaries, life time movies, and re-watch his interviews with Oprah Winfrey and others. I could memorise his date and place of birth (August 29, 1958, Gary, Indiana, United States) and his date and place of death (June 25, 2009, Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California, United States.) I could also memorise everything he achieved in between.
From being the star of the
Jackson five in the 1960s to his first solo album Off The Wall in 1978 and then Thriller in 1982 which literally changed the world of music. I could write in detail, that on March 25, 1983 during the debut performance of Billie jean at the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever concert Jackson performed the moonwalk for the first time and the world went crazy. The dance move which showed him flawlessly moving backwards while seemingly walking forwards became synonymous with his genius as a performer.
I could document his transformation from the black child, the musical prodigy to the androgynous performer, with the waxy plastic face, shrinking nose and the high voice.
I could also explain his scream. You know the scream. Throughout his solo career you hear the same scream in his songs and live performances. Guttural and raw, it’s starkly different from the soft high-pitched and smooth texture of his voice.
Why is he so angry?, I used to wonder when i was a child. He’s Michael Jackson he doesn’t need to be angry. I could also say that, despite still creating timeless pieces of music, the world became more fascinated with his eccentricities, his obsession with Peter Pan and Neverland, his family, his skin, his gentiles, his mentality and his death.
Fame and circumstance
I could write all these things and weave in a moral lesson for us to take away. Isn’t he a cautionary tale of fame? Couldn’t we all learn something from the tale of Michael Jackson? He reached a level of such extreme fame from the age of nine onwards that it was impossible for him to ever really conform, to operate in a world that we perceive as normal. But despite “knowing” all these things, we don’t actually know anything. I think again of that portrait of him, behind the veil. It’s such a of haunting stare.
It wasn't only his brand of fame that made Michael Jackson an anomaly in the world. It was also the circumtances, particularly, if you choose to believe it, the barbarism of his father.
The patriarch of the Jackson family, the man who created The Jackson Five was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2014 and passed away at the age of 89 in June this year. He was also, by many accounts, a terrible person.
Dr. Conrad Murray was the personal physician of Jackson at the time of the singer’s death in 2009. Murray was implicated and then subsequently charged and convicted for involuntary manslaughter, serving a two-year jail sentence.
In his book, This Is It! The Secret Lives of Dr. Conrad Murray and
Michael Jackson, Murray claims that MJ was chemically castrated. This was allegedly done to a 12-yearold Jackson to cure his acne and prevent his voice from deepening. At that age, Jackson’s voice was already iconic and Joe Jackson was ruthless. Why wouldn’t he want to preserve the voice that was already defining an era?
Chemical castration stops your body from creating testosterone. From all the rumors that have circled around Jackson, this one not only seems the most plausible to me but one that explains a lot. Compared to his brothers, Jackson never really got big physically. He had no muscle tone on his body, he never had scandalous affairs, there are no women claiming to have slept with him. Then there’s his voice. Both his speaking and singing voice might be thought of as feminine. But really listen to it, pay attention and you’ll notice, it’s neither. Especially in the song Human Nature, his voice is impossibly smooth, impossibly warm and affectionate despite being so very high. It’s not a man’s voice, nor is it a woman’s voice. It’s eerie, ethereal, bizarre and beautiful all at the same time.
The legacy
Other than fame and circumstance, the third facet that made Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson is what people know and take for granted about him. The King of Pop really wasn’t normal.
“He was the most remarkable person I’ve ever met in my life and when I tell people how remarkable, they don’t believe me,” Howard Bloom, Michael Jackson’s former publicist, said on the Joe Rogan podcast earlier this year. “You know, you and I, are on a certain level. And we don’t know that we’re on a certain level because we figure this is the range of humanity. If we go out and meet anyone on the street or anyone famous, what we are going to encounter is pretty much someone else like us. Sorry, in Michael Jackson’s case, sorry, he didn’t fit on this normal plane at all. He was on a plane somewhere where you’ve never seen a human being before.”
Bloom went on to give examples of Michael Jackson’s attention to detail, what he saw in the world, in music, in art that most people couldn’t see. This makes sense to me when we think about how despite everything, his music is timeless and incredibly relevant today when we look at what’s happening around the western world.
When we think about the world’s most famous performers since Michael Jackson, it’s mind boggling how much of their music and acts are directly influenced by him. From dance moves, lyrics, music videos, themes, fashion and even how they conduct business – people often forget Michael Jackson was a shrewd business man. To this day, Thriller, thirty-five years since its initial release, is the world’s best-selling album, having sold an estimated 66 million copies.
Yes, I sound like a manic fan. Maybe I am. But how can you not be a manic fan when you as a boy in Dubai were listening to Michael Jackson and when you visited your family in Baghdad, Iraq, they were also listening to Michael Jackson and then when you found yourself living across the world in New Zealand they were also listening to Michael Jackson. Whatever your thoughts are on the King of Pop, I want you to forget them. In fact, forget everything I tried to tell you in this article. Forget his interviews, the blogs, the second-hand information about the man everyone was and still is obsessed with. I believe that if you really want to know who Michael Jackson was, you need to listen to what he left behind.