I've struggled with this a bit. I generally don't imagine meeting people who are famous, or even wish I could, really. Maybe it's because I prefer to think of them as these legends in my mind; performers, achievers, geniuses. maybe meeting them or speaking with them would be a let down. I know that's not particularly fair. But I heard from some people who met him and a family member who worked with "his people," and many say James Taylor is a total asshole. Ahh! Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love attending live concerts, going to the theater, and listening to a reader or speaker. I just can't wrap my brain around sitting face to face with someone I think of as celebrity. My husband says I'm too logical, that I can't suspend disbelief. He accuses me of this when we watch outlandish movies with special effects or wild stories. Maybe he's right.
But I want to try, and I think I decided on a celebrity I would like to think about meeting. Understand, he's no longer alive so I know this isn't even possible. But here it goes...
I was about ten years old when the song "Billie Jean" came out. I was drawn into the music right away. "Beat It" soon followed, and of course "Thriller." The entire album was genius, as was the slew of music videos that came with it. Michael Jackson and the Thriller album were made for the MTV generation. The songs were great for dancing, and if you weren't into dancing yourself you were plenty content to watch MJ float on air. The pelvic thrusts, the glitter gloved flick of the wrist, and of course the moonwalk all contributed to the "King of Pop" persona.
Thriller was chick full of perfectly crafted hits. I know every word of 7 of the 9 songs. I can think of very specific moments of my childhood to match each one. I remember "Wanna be Startin' Somethin'" was the most popular hit in the jukebox my parents rented for my sister's Bat-Mitzvah that year. I remember one of my favorite camp counselors Karen Cingiser or Randy Gold-something singing the song "Human Nature," and I remember all us PYT's repeating after MJ, "Nah-na-nah, nah-na-nah." Most powerfully, I remember countless afternoons when we got out of school or Saturday mornings during sleepovers, singing and dancing the whole album with my best friend Gillian. She had a wide open "great room" before that was even a thing (at least as far as I know). We swore we were the biggest MJ fans out there (from some of the crazy shit I later saw on TV, I now know this to be untrue).
A little later came "Say, Say, Say," the duet with Paul McCartney that produced one of my favorite music videos. The song kind of makes me sad now, as does "The Girl is Mine," which was the first release off the Thriller album. The legend was that Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney were really great friends and all of that went awry when MJ outbid PM for the Beatles catalog.
Anyway, I continued to listen to Michael Jackson into middle and high school, as he pushed out additional albums. I never loved any of them as much as Thriller, but I remember a competition cheerleading dance in high school with parts of "Smooth Criminal," Weird Al's "Fat" that parodied "Bad," and the two soft songs "Man in the Mirror" and "I Just Can't Stop Loving You." These were all great songs, but my favorite off the Bad album, and one I still love today is "The Way You Make Me Feel." It came with another epic music video with Michael Jackson chasing after a beautiful woman I had never seen before. There were other songs too, but most notably, "Black or White" which was a jammy little tune with embedded wrap and another cool video with computer morphing singers of all different ethnicities and of course, Macaulay Culkin.
Sometime in the 90's things went really south. There were controversies over his skin color and possible pigmentation disorder, marriages, divorces, children. I still can't get over the fact he has a child whose name is actually Blanket. That's just weird. The worst of everything was the allegation of child molestation. I wanted so badly to believe this was not possible from him. I don't know if these horrible things are true. I do know that if nothing else, MJ's behavior was wildly odd. However, I also think the star-struck unorthodox behavior of those who seemed okay enough with his celebrity to allow their children to "hang out" with a grown man as though he was playmate is strange too. That being said, no behavior no matter how strange, authorizes a grown man to molest children. The sad thing is, we'll never know the truth. The parties involved will never be completely truthful because there is so much money involved, and Jackson paid the highest price of any for all his physical and psychological problems.
It's all very sad. And it's all unclear. I suppose if he was alive and I had the occasion to meet with him, I would just want to know everything. Instead, I know only one thing. Michael Jackson was talented and his music was magical. For this child, the radio and TV version were just enough.
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| Photo Credit: USA Today |
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