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Tag: Michael Jackson

  • Thinking About Michael Jackson: One Year Later

    MJ
    Just the other day, I reminisced about Tupac Shakur on what would’ve been his 39th birthday. That post was much easier to write than this one. It’s still too soon.

    I was a fan like everyone else when I was younger. Thriller came out when I was six years old and I had the flea market glitter glove like every other kid. But I fell off as a fan. I’m not really sure why, other than it probably just wasn’t as cool to be a MJ fan anymore. I still knew the music and I still enjoyed it, but I was nowhere near the fan that I am today.

    Right around my late high school and early college years, I just started to buy everything in site. I bought a J5 four-CD set, all the Jacksons albums, and all of his back catalog on CD. And today, while I won’t say I have everything the man put to wax (or plastic), I do have most everything he’s done. Now if they’d only release all the old J5 and Jacksons’ TV footage.

    What’s interesting about Michael Jackson’s death to me is that he was so much larger than life when he was alive that it was almost like he wasn’t really alive. He was a living legend. And by that, I don’t mean the cliched way that the term is used. He was like a fairy tale that we lived through. Michael Jackson the real person was almost like a character from a book. He was a surreal celebrity who was hard to relate to.

    So to me, I still think of him in that way. He was never someone I could touch. I could only see him and hear him.

    Rather than look back at how I felt when I heard he passed (sad), where I was when I heard (work), and how I followed the situation (Twitter), I wanted to point everyone to some of the cool things I’ve read and seen in the past few days.

    Our previous editor and lead writer and friend of SC, Big Money Mike, wrote an exhaustive four-part series on Michael’s music at Popdose which you can read here, here, here, and here. It’s a fantastic read.

    Nancy Griffin writes a stellar piece for Vanity Fair called The Thriller Diaries, which studies Michael during the filming of the Thriller video just as his superstar status was entering white hot mode.

    Last month, the New York Daily News posted an interesting photo of Michael that was being considered as album art for his 2001 album Invincible.

    The Beautiful Struggler deals with Michael’s death with one year of retrospection.

    Lastly, I wanted to showcase a few videos that I’ve come across and also my favorite video that wasn’t actually a performance or music video.

    Someone Put Your Hand Out was recorded during the Dangerous era and was actually released in Europe through Pepsi to promote the Dangerous World Tour. It was released in the US several years ago as a part of MJ’s The Ultimate Collection. It’s one of the better previously unreleased tracks that have come out.



    This next video isn’t really all that ground breaking. It’s just him rehearsing for We Are The World. I’d never seen it before until recently. It’s kind of interesting to see him bide his time and try to figure things out with the song. And for whatever reason, he breaks into a dance step for 2 seconds, which I found pretty funny.



    This is my favorite non-performance, non-music video piece of footage out there. It’s actually for a Pepsi commercial, but you get to see Michael play an instrument and it seems like he’s truly happy in that moment. For whatever reason, I’ve just always been fascinated with this short piece.



    Edit: I added one more that Questlove tweeted out. Michael is literally a dancing machine.



    Lastly, if you can find it, go download DJ Jazzy Jeff’s mixtape, He’s The King, I’m The DJ. By the looks of it, people are having a hard time finding it though. It was released shortly after MJ died last year.

    From Jazzy Jeff’s Twitter:

    Miss u Mj…He’s the King….I’m the Dj….find it if u can…for real Mj Fans


    Photo of MJ shared via Wikipedia and licensed through Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

  • Gaga Says She May Have Opened For Michael

    Lady Gaga says she was asked to open for Michael Jackson on the singer’s 50 date London concert series.  Speaking with CNN’s Larry King, Gaga looked beautiful, sounded charming and probably won over more middle America fans than if she had played a shopping mall while scarfing a smoothie.

    “I guess I can speak about it now,” Gaga told King. Later she told King there was talk about different opening acts doing duets with Michael.

    The singer also said that some of her fascination with death and other macabre images comes in part from watching iconic performers like Jackson be “destroyed” internally or “by the media”.

    The comparisons to Madonna are inevitable, but Gaga is accomplishing what Madge did at a much younger age.  She is in that magic zone of age–still only 24–and seems to handle all audiences well.   Theatrical and witty, she has charmed Queen Elizabeth and Larry King, two paragons of established oldsters, while retaining incredible popularity and credibility in music circles.

    Just 22 when The Fame was released, she mixes musical and marketing skills like few ever have.   There’s every reason to believe that Gaga could still be a relevant entertainer in 2040 or even 2050.

    How’s that for today’s deep thought as you ponder what a Gaga / MJ duet would have sounded like?

  • Michael Jackson’s Estate Signs A Record Breaking Contract

    Michael Jackson’s This Is It promo poster

    Michael Jackson hasn’t been gone for a year yet, but Sony has already inked his estate to a contract that allows them to release ten albums over the next seven years. MJ’s estate will receive at least 200 million dollars and up to 250 million dollars in the deal.

    This was reported in the online version of the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

    There are a few other interesting tidbits in the article about possible future MJ releases.

    – An album of unreleased material is scheduled to be released before years end, with another one due out “later”.

    – It’s possible that we’re going to see more extended versions of his previous albums.

    – Expect more remix albums and a DVD release including all of his videos.

    One of the more interesting ideas according to the article is the possibility of creating a Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show based on Jackson’s music.

    I wonder if Jermaine gets a piece out of any of this. Maybe they gave him some hush money to stop sticking his foot in his mouth, especially on television.

    There’s much more in the financial details of the deal included in the article.