MJ is no more- no, its not Mary Jane of the Spiderman fame....kids of the current generation, in this age of the ubiquitous digital music and piracy, may not know who Michael Jackson was - but for those like me who grew in the '80s and '90s do not know of a bigger phenomemon in the world of pop than Wacko Jacko. I cannot forget how my sis used to drive us nuts day in and day out playing Bad all the time - Dirty Diana, The Way you Make Me Feel, Smooth Criminal..I hated those shrieks and grunts that she swore by. They, and George Michael's Faith were the flavor of the season in the summer of '87-88 in Delhi. We were after all a family raised on a staple of Indian classical, old Indian film music, western country (basically Jim Reeves, Glen Campbell, John Denver and Merle Haggard) and The Beatles, our musical gods. Every school used to have a Michael Jackson look-alike breaking into a breakdance in every Annual Competition those days. Later, through radio and hand-me-down cassettes, I got to hear some older Michael Jackson albums, and also some Jackson 5 numbers. And then I realised that this weird guy was a precocious kid who had thrilled the world many many times over than a lot of pop and rock icons before him. I loved Off the Wall and Thriller. It was such an original sound from the noise of punk rock that the early '80s was all about. That, or the spillover of the music of the '70s that passed as music of the early '80s - the Olivia Newton Johns, Sheena Eastons, ABBAs (though one of my faves), etc. MJ and Madonna were the colossi of the '80s. 41 million copies sold of Thriller - go eat your heart out!
MJ's '90s was not very hot. Dangerous, History, Blood on the Dance Floor...only the ardent MJ worshippers could take all that. It was not original. There were a lot of new genres available and thanks to the opening up of the music market in India, we could access a lot of world music. Even in his home turf, his heydays were all but over.
The last decade was very tragic indeed for the ageing celeb. It is something the kids of today's generation may be aware of. The notoriety, the shame, the fall. Allegations of pedophilia, of hideous facial transformations...everybody took potshots at the "King of Pop". His friends that pockmarked his Dangerous album jacket - Liz Taylor, Macaulay Culkin (who Macaulay, by the way?) - everyone knowing him started distancing himself or herself from him and his now infamous Neverland ranch. Then the once in a blue moon news of his trial, his selling his estates and moving over to Bahrain, his conversion to Islam, his n'th breakup/divorce.
The most tragic thing that I read today, as I read the numerous obits on the net singing paeans on that guy (after assassinating his character a zillion times over in the past few years), was that the poor ol' weird guy was living in a rented place. A person who was almost a billionaire a few years back had lost it all.
Its sad. But then, thats the way it is. RIP Wacko.
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