A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song - Maya Angelou
It’s been a little over two months, three adorable "in memoriam" shirts, countless trips to 125th street, even more hours spent on youtube later; still this summer, to loosely paraphrase a Neko Case song, has shaken me deaf and dumb. Oh dear God, say someone's made a fool of me. I'm embarrassed to admit that when I was first told of his passing, I immediately thought of the tabloid casualty he'd become. I was only a second grader when Bad was released, so he was both a performer who could do no wrong in my eyes as well as an eccentric pop star.
"Do you think they'll freeze him?", I asked a former bandmate, whose look of shock as he told me the news I've not forgotten. You haven't lived till you've seen a Caucasian Australian male in his mid-thirties look like his mama just died after learning that a singer who hadn't had a hit on the charts in at least eight years would no longer grace a stadium, the paparazzi, or even the LAPD with his presence. It wasn't till I had gotten home, turned on the tv to one of the many specials being aired and without even thinking, sang along to a "Black or White" lyric that my childhood memories came flooding back. Like most kids in the 80s, I was both scared of and awed by the Thriller video, spent weekends in the family basement sliding backwards on linoleum floors with trouser socks, there was a time where hearing "We Are The World" was akin to hearing air, and to this day, I think anyone spending only four minutes of their lives watching the Smooth Criminal video is getting seriously ripped off. Moonwalker damn sure wasn't Oscar material, but boy did that man make the roaring 20s, (or something like it anyways), look wayyy cool! Personally, 1992 was a year swirling with change, my love for "Remember The Time" was one of the few constants.
I still marvel at the fact that while being enthralled by records by PJ Harvey, At The Drive In, and Jill Scott back in college, I still remembered to add the Thriller album to my collection. A Brooklyn cabbie taking my mother and I to what else, a funeral for a beloved relative who'd passed last month felt the need to blast it with the windows down, and I didn't mind. The chorus to "Wanna Be Startin' Something" (“Too high to get over/too low to get under...”) was exactly how I felt at the time. I had already realized how dark the entire record was. What I once just thought of as plain good ol’ r&b, has now provided some incredibly haunting, and fascinating listens.
I've tried to separate the art from the artist, but no such luck. I think the man always found new and interesting ways to sing about his pain, and that really, is what elevates the frivolous tracks like "Dirty Diana" (possibly sung from the point of view of an abused child who didn't want to be touched by anyone in any way,shape,or form) and "Bad" (this one just screams "Look at me now,Dad!") and adds even more to the Stevie Wonder styled “Leave Me Alone”, his far more sharper rock hybrid “Beat It”, and of course, “Billie Jean”, where he predates artists such as Notorious B.I.G. by putting his own special kind of paranoia on tape. The song he will be most famous for is a song essentially, about the fallout that occurs after he gets into bed with the wrong person. Boy, that's more than just serious foreshadowing. At first, I was amused when I learned that he'd written "Muscles" (supposedly on a flight after having recorded "The Girl Is Mine") and "Centipede", but since I definitely belong to the Hilton Als camp, it just saddens me even more, thinking of who he could have been had he really lived in a post-racial, post-sexual society where he didn't spend his life being a color. We the public were equally transfixed and repulsed by what he'd done to his face, and by what he may or may not have done behind closed doors.
Peaking at 25, and dying at 50 has solidified his now permanent association with childhood. Perhaps it's for the best, but I don't think the boy with the purple hat, the excited 21 year old in the tux, or the glitter clad wannabe cad who kept his fans on his toes by standing on his deserved to leave the earth like this. Not even being given the dignity or the courtesy of being laid to rest with his own brain intact, a brain that created songs that have come to define not one, not two, but three generations of people.
I understand that he hated doing the family variety show in the late 70s, but I'm quite glad it exists, since not only was he still biologically himself, but because his dancing truly was, as has been stated repeatedly, electrifying. This particular face (in addition to a few other ones), and more importantly, those incredible feet are still sorely missed.
Just look at him hold his own against Hollywood's finest.
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