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Though I've followed the coverage of Michael Jackson's passing with just as much interest as anyone else who grew up during the 80's, with Off the Wall and Thriller providing the soundtrack to many of my fondest childhood memories, I haven't felt particularly motivated to write anything about it. Part of that stems from the fact that virtually every facet of the man's life has been dissected and analyzed in far more detail than I'm capable of by just about every other music-related site out there; if you've somehow managed to avoid it up to this point, the reminiscings of Weiss and his posse of writers serve as a good introduction to Jackson's contributions to the musical world.
More than my unwillingness to tread over ground that's already been well covered, however, has been my inability to resolve my enjoyment of his music (up until Bad, anyway) with whatever acts were being committed over at Neverland. If one were to believe the media, the man was a modern day version of De Sade, preying on children in some bizarre attempt to reclaim his own lost childhood. Yet this is the same media that has now spent the past two weeks serving as the driving force behind the deification of the man, having realized that capitalizing on everyone's nostalgia for the songs that defined Michael Jackson's career is one of the few ways to sell newspapers these days. The media's 180 degree change in opinion of MJ calls into question their previous coverage of his alleged misdeeds, leaving Jackson's true legacy, at least in my mind, as something that can never be truly resolved.
I have no intention of trying to come to some conclusion on his legacy, at least not today, but I did want to put up this great mashup of MJ and Q-Tip that I found over at Bootie Boston, blending Tip's Breathe And Stop with MJ's Don't Stop Til You Get Enough:
Q-Tip and MJ - Don't (Breath and) Stop 'Til You Get Enough
While we're at it, I saw a video over at buhbomp that is probably the most entertaining MJ-related video that doesn't actually feature Michael Jackson. Instead, it's got a Delorean, a mentally unstable 80's baby, a Smooth Criminal kick to a man's taint and a whole lot of laughs. Stick with it, because things don't pop off until about the 1:55 mark:
Operation Repo - Just Beat It
07/13/2009 10:30:01 PM posted by Fresh