Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough
People always told me be careful of what you do
And don’t go around breaking young girl’s hearts
And mother always told me be careful of who you love
And be careful of what you do cause the lie becomes the truth
I fell off the grid for a while this weekend. Got off the plane on Thursday evening and every television screen throughout the terminal was ablaze with images of Michael Jackson.
Dead? At 50?
No, scratch that. At any age, it just sounds wrong.
Truth be told, this has been a really bad week for a lot of our beloved media icons. How would Johnny Carson have ever found the stage without Ed McMahon to herald his way? Farrah Fawcett? How can an Angel die? Say it ain’t so, Charlie.
But Michael Jackson?
I said you wanna be startin’ somethin’
You got to be startin’ somethin’
I said you wanna be startin’ somethin’
You got to be startin’ somethin’
Pop music wasn’t part of my childhood. But Michael Jackson wasn’t pop music. Michael Jackson was…Michael Jackson. MJ. The Gloved One. The King of Pop. It was an accolade that no one dared question, because it was fact. Was any artist more pervasive, more talented, more representative of an entire decade? Madonna maybe. But Madonna was not the King.
Michael Jackson was.
That this is thriller, thriller night
‘Cause I can thrill you more than any ghost would dare to try
Girl, this is thriller, thriller night
So let me hold you tight and share a killer, diller, chiller
Thriller here tonight
Pepsi, Disney, MTV. At times it seemed he held the entire world in that bedazzled gloved hand of his. Quirky, eccentric, odd, or just downright bizarre—he was all those things and more. But there was something so heartbreakingly innocent about this man child, this real-life Peter Pan, with the unblemished voice and the body that moved in ways that made dancing seem as autonomic and as simple as breathing. It was only when we tried those moves ourselves that we realized that moonwalking was something reserved for two types of people: astronauts and Michael Jackson. We mere mortals could simply stay here on earth and watch.
As the decade waned, the strangeness increased. While we all were growing up, he seemed forever frozen in a mental Neverland. In reality he was aging, and what was forgivable in youth became damnable with age. The physical changes didn’t help. MJ 2.0 was acceptable. 3.0 was still recognizable. But the alterations seemed unceasing as he sought some form of subjective perfection that apparently no one but he could imagine. That didn’t stop the doctors from whittling away, seeking their pound of flesh in whatever way they could. None of them told him no. Who says no to a King (especially when the King can pay their hefty ransom)?
They’re out to get you, better leave while you can
Don’t wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man
You wanna stay alive, better do what you can
So beat it, just beat it
The world will tolerate celebrity proclivities when they come in waves. Michael Jackson was a tsunami of eccentricity wrapped in increasingly White parchment skin and tied with a baby boy blue bow. And the shadow cast by that level of eccentricity is impenetrable, even by talent unmatched even today. He was just too unusual, and none of us could accept his penchant for being a middle-aged man who surrounded himself with little boys.
Don’t tell me you agree with me
When I saw you kicking dirt in my eye
But if you’re thinkin’ about my baby
It don’t matter if you’re black or white
The King of Pop soon became nothing more than the punchline to increasingly cruel jokes. It was an unspoken yet universally accepted dethronement by fans who could no longer hear the music over the roar of the spectacle that he had made of his life. We forgot his genius. We forgot his humanitarian efforts, his compassion for those we didn’t care about until he put their struggle to song.
Heal the world
Make it a better place
For you and for me
And the entire human race
Untimely death does not wash clean the slate and cause me to grant forgiveness for unforgivable sins he may have committed in this life. I do think, however, that there was within his aging body a broken boy, as fragile as the surgery-damaged face we saw on the outside. If there had been doctors as willing to fix him on the inside as there were to mangle him on the outside, we might not even be here right now having this conversation.
But “if” is the largest little word in the world and in the end, the most powerless.
Well they say the sky’s the limit
And to me that’s really true
But my friend you have seen nothing
Just wait til I get through . . .
I dusted off my Michael Jackson playlist yesterday on the plane ride home. All the craziness sloughed away as those familiar beats washed over me: “Beat It,” “Thriller,” “Bad,” “Smooth Criminal.” They were all there, reminding me once again that he was…he is…he always will be the King of Pop. My generation’s Elvis Presley—equal parts unmatchable talent and controversy, gone too soon but eternally alive through talent that changed the face of music forever.
It took me a while to find the right photo of MJ for this entry. I knew the image that I wanted. It was the image that stands in my mind as perfectly Michael Jackson. To find it, I had to wade through page after page of images that time will hopefully fade into oblivion. But beneath the shallow surface of surreal spectacle, he was there, as he always has been.
Don’t stop ’til you get enough.
