Michael Jackson

The 'King of Pop', seller of over 100 million albums, creator of some of the biggest and best tunes of the last 30 years.

Dead at 50  

I just posted the Thriller video a few weeks back. Hard to imagine and so very sad. Michael was The Beatles / Elvis of my generation. I ADORED him and this world seems much smaller without him. I'm still in denial as I just cannot believe it. I wish his family the very best and pray that Michael is in a better place.

When I read about Michael's passing on MSNBC it literally left me speechless. I was totally stunned.

When I was younger, he was the face of music. He had all of the most popular songs, most popular records, set fashion trends and musical trends...Michael Jackson was music in the 80's. I remember all the boys in my class the year Thriller was released came to school wearing the zipper jacket he wore. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing a song from that record.

He made some wonderful and timeless contributions to music that changed music.

He will most certainly be missed.

Adric wrote:I just posted the Thriller video a few weeks back. Hard to imagine and so very sad.

Yeah, I skipped ahead to put in the chart for Billie Jean getting to #1 in the UK. Going to be weird following the story of these charts through the 80s & beyond with one major player now no longer with us.

I can't help feeling that with even 1 solid sensible friend around him, he'd still be with us.

misery guts wrote:I can't help feeling that with even 1 solid sensible friend around him, he'd still be with us.

I agree. If he would have had fewer "yes" people around him and more people who had their feet on the ground and heads out of the clouds things might have turned out differently. It couldn't have hurt to have had less of his fathers influence in his young life, either.

It seems like there were so many factors that led up to one horrible ending.

This may have been my favorite MJ song, though so many were just without flaw. They Don't Care About Us I will miss you Michael!

He disappeared from the US pretty much, though was never forgotten by fans. That's the whole problem. With everything he was being accused of, he was practically kicked out on his butt. He was likely scared for his life in the states. Some jerk likely would have decided to play judge and jury and take a hit on him. He was treated like crap by the media. I feel the media drove him out of the country. It's sickening to me that he was so convicted by everyone here until his death. Now the media are making him out to be a saint. If he were still alive today, the media would still be hiding behind bushes waiting for him to make the slightest contact with a minor. It wouldn't have stopped until he was either guilty or commited suicide. A name as big as his being accused of molesting children ... I'd have left the country too. I never believed for a minute that he would hurt a child, yet the media may as well have been the judge. Whether or not he was into young boys will never be proven, but even if he were I don't believe he would have hurt them. I think Michael saw adult a$$es for what they are and lived a living nightmare as a result. In ways, I feel Michael thought like a child and needed children as friends. Children weren't cruel to him as the media / adults were. Some of the comments I've seen people make about him on youtube are sickening. As far as preference goes, I think he was asexual. The smut being said about him broke his heart and that's what I believe killed him.
Yes, he brought some of this on himself, but it wasn't intentional imho. He just adored innocence and felt safe. Shame Michael was taken from us rather than every flipping media individual that slandered his name. We'd still have a musical genius and some of the world's filth would be gone and forgotten. It really boils my blood. I swear, if "The Nanny" were a flamboyant man (or even just a man), she'd likely be on trial by now too. People can be so cruel and Michael was a victim in the worst possible way. I'm amazed he lasted this long. People can call it a heartattack all they like. I call it murder and blame the media. Michael should have been born 100 years from now. The world is still too far in the dark ages to be ready for a person like Michael.
Children are cute and don't think like we adults who are out playing war and killing every day. Children are compassionate unlike adults who are solely obsessed with money. I certainly understand why Michael chose children over adults. That didn't make him a pedophile.
The prime reason he is dead now - listen to Don Henley's Dirty Laundry . That would pretty much sum it up. My heart just breaks for him.

What an awful lot of people don't realize (thanks to the tabloid rags) is that Michael wasn't on a mission to become white. He had a severe skin disorder that started some time after the "Thriller" album. His skin started to get white blotches everywhere. You can hear it straight from Michael himself HERE . Let me say, it's very hard for me to watch that short clip he made. He is so incredibly sad and he just breaks my heart.
There is also a WONDERFUL documentary HERE from 1993. It is an interview he did with Oprah. He gets into detail about his skin disorder and how his nutjob father mentally and phsically abused him as a child. He confronts all of the things said about him head on. I hadn't seen this until the other night, but it is truly tear jerking.
When his hair caught fire shooting a pepsi commercial he had to have reconstructive surgery on his scalp. I've heard so many bad jokes about that incident. In reality, that must have been extremely painful. I believe that is the point when his addiction to pain killers began.

I quite like one point MJ made in the Oprah interview. She asks him about wanting to become white. After he explains a bit about his skin disorder, he says, "Let's reverse this scenario." He says, "How many millions of white people lay out in the sun every day to change their skin color to tan? No one says anything about them, do they?" I wanted to applaud him right there.

So I read there's a petition to try and get him awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.I think that's going a bit far, really.

Autopsy results delayed until next week.

Going to finally be buried on what would have been his 51st birthday.


And Jermaine is organising a memorial concert in Vienna, on September 26.

In the end, he was buried a week later.

And the Vienna concert has been postponed until next year, and will take place in London.

Both Madonna and Janet Jackson paid tribute to him at this weeks' MTV Awards in New York.

Just see this .... Michael, I am so sorry and I think your father is a shameless SOB.
michael interview

Yes, if you need to point the finger at anyone in this sad story, Joe is #1 on the list.

Following posts further up - he obviously didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize

The 'This is It' documentary film cannibalised from rehearsal footage has gone on release this week, and the title track became a download shortly before. Some people were surprised that it was a 26 year old track co-written with Paul Anka. Not quite sure why that would be a surprise, if the tour were celebrating his whole musical life, which covered a few decades.

I just want to send some praise out to a musician that was just irreplaceable. Do you have any special memories or special songs that you want to discuss?
I met Janet Jackson backstage in the mid-90's and she was larger than life as one can imagine. I didn't get much talking in, but she raved about how Michael was such a sweet soul. A year later I still cannot believe he's actually gone. Oh, I hope he's found peace.

When I was 10ish or so, I first discovered my love for music. This was during the reign of "Thriller", the album. Such wonderful times and music. I simply can't pick a fav song because they were all fantastic.
When I first started on as a DJ at a local dance club, "Scream" was just coming onto the charts. I look back and realize that I really must have thought Michael immortal. The thought of his passing still seems .... like a bad dream and makes me feel old. I believe I have that in common with Michael. We both wanted to be young forever.

Strange to realise a whole year has passed since his untimely death. Alas, like Elvis Presley, there are those who look on this purely from the perspective that he's made an incredible fortune since his death (although that stands to reason). Also an indignity to see the people trying to advance themselves in any way off the back of this tragedy.

Certainly the most talented member of his family, and far from the nuttiest.

After a short preliminary hearing, his doctor is being committed for trial.

And last night, Dr Conrad Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, by a unanimous verdict

Michael Jackson's family tried to sue AEG Live for damages. But they lost:

Court Case Lawsuit Fails

Seemed a long shot, really  

Now it's Quincy Jones' turn to sue, as he thinks he's been edited off some of MJ's works  

And Dr Conrad Murray is being released early, too  

Meanwhile, Michael will be releasing a new album in May    'Xscape' has been put together under the guidance of LA Reid, who's been working on his catalogue apparently, and zhushed up some unreleased tracks of his   

'Xscape' is out Monday in the UK, but looks a pretty desperate idea to me, just 8 tracks cobbled together. In the scheme of artists trying to prolong their career in the next life, he seems to trail badly to Eva Cassidy, Johnny Cash and of course Tupac Shakur.

I truly wish the dead could rest in peace. It's bad enough we can now see Tupac, Elvis & Michael in hologram form for an overpriced sum. While I adore so much of Michael's music and welcome unreleased tracks, it's all to hype up the other artists that would have never been included to begin with. Nothing special about Xscape comes to mind. Justin Timberlake doesn't add anything to Michael's first release. I just thank goodness that we don't have Justin Bieber in the mix of this .... yet.   

I begrudge this more because it appears to be Michael + others, rather than say, lost and untouched tracks. It then becomes more about the added artists rather than Michael himself. Since Timberlake basically made his name by stealing Michael's act (cf 2003's Rock Your Body), it seems rather twisted to have him still leeching, even now.

misery guts wrote:I begrudge this more because it appears to be Michael + others, rather than say, lost and untouched tracks. It then becomes more about the added artists rather than Michael himself. Since Timberlake basically made his name by stealing Michael's act (cf 2003's Rock Your Body), it seems rather twisted to have him still leeching, even now.

Well said and couldn't agree more. Adding insult to injury here, when Michael died, he didn't even manage a Top 40 hit in the states. I believe Beat It and Billie Jean both came very close, but nada. At least Whitney Houston had a score of her original best return to the charts for a brief period. All poor Michael got was "We Are The World 25" which only included his original singing.

Having mentioned that, I would safely assume that if the likes of Timberlake and Xscape weren't merged into these singles, they wouldn't have a chance of being chart-worthy by today's standards. I didn't care for Xscape in the 90's, much less now. I can only assume whatever tracks will be released will be ruined by today's artists (and I use the term artists loosely).

I suppose if this trend takes, before long we'll have unreleased Whitney tracks released only to have the likes of Bobby Brown mixed into it. It's insulting to the deceased and can only imagine what Michael would say if he were still here.