Macaulay Culkin.
I can’t top that Obamageddon!
LMAO
As an artist, the entire Thriller album… one of the best albums of all time (I wouldn’t sit and play it over and over, but it’s hard to argue with how much that one album affected the music industry)
Did I really just post a second post about the Gloved One? Two in two days at MoA, and lecturing about conspiracy theory… I must have fallen through the looking glass!

Posted by: DavidS | Jun 26 2009 12:50 utc | 4

What can you say about a guy who wore one glove and sang “Beat It”?

Posted by: Jim T. | Jun 26 2009 14:04 utc | 6

Talent, he had in abundance. But he traded showmanship for weirdness — and it didn’t work. So sad.

Posted by: ensley | Jun 26 2009 14:51 utc | 8

Human Nature

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 26 2009 16:07 utc | 10

I owned a record store from 1979 until 1992. I made a decent living and never sold one MJ album – punks not dead!

Posted by: Chuck Roast | Jun 26 2009 19:24 utc | 12

Who’ll be the next in line?
Please apply;
for the king of rock
for the king of pop
for the king of rot
from graceland
from neverland
from wasteland
Who’ll be next in line?
For you.

Posted by: anna missed | Jun 27 2009 7:39 utc | 14

It’s so easy to be sarcastic, and cynical about Michael Jackson. I was never a big fan of his music but I have no doubt he was a really talented artist.
For me Michael Jackson’s legacy is a number of things completely unconnected with his music.
For one he was living proof that african-americans are still slaves.
He was born into slavery where he had to perform a child labourer from about the age of 5. When the slave-owners decided there was more money in the Jackson brand having one singer rather than five he was callously separated from his family and mutilated by doctors (still we are told there were doctors in the concentration camps and undoubtedly doctors will have been involved in amerikan torture regimens) to be made to look more like a white person to get on MTV (which didn’t let blackfellas on until MJ). In the end though, the pain and misery Jackson suffered enabled other african american musicians to present their music directly to the audience rather than being interpreted by whitefellas first.
Except that by all accounts his nasty and unnatural childhood (which the media has always blamed on his father, and never on the whitefellas in the music industry who were calling the shots) taught him that exploiting and oppressing young unwhite males was the way of the world.
All sorts of rumours are being offered as to what really killed Michael Jackson but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had topped himself. The thought of having to start all over again at 50, go through all that shit of pleasing thousands of people a night was simply too much and he ended it all.
That is the real legacy Jackson leaves behind. You can be the biggest selling musician of all time selling billions of dollars worth of music but if you aren’t a white male you aren’t secure, you have no power.
I’m not excusing Jackson if he did do those things but do you really think the same sort of treatment could ever have been meted out to a Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan?
Phils Spector imprisoned and abused women for nearly as long as Jackson was alive (Ronnie lead singer of the Ronnettes was a prisoner in his ‘castle’ throughout the sixties) , in the end when his murder of a woman became just too blatant, the authorities had no choice but to act and he goes to jail for a while but he still has plenty of money which he is still allowed to exercise as power, there was some article just last week about him having been put into a kinder nicer part of the jail than a normal crim who was in for taking drugs would get – Spector was obviously, irrefutably, undeniably coked out for decades – nothing happened until he finally blatantly killed someone (but only an unrich woman) so of course he should get a cell with a view.
One thing that has become increasingly apparent is that it doesn’t matter how much money a black man or a white woman accumulates, they are never completely liberated by their money so they can never be 100% certain it won’t all be taken off them by some trick of fate just as Michael Jackson’s was. Hasn’t all of that silly Britney Wasshername woman’s money been given over to the control of her drunken and abusive dad, and her child been given to her equally drunken and abusive ex-husband? No one seriously imagines that would happen to a whitefella as a matter of course do they?
I wonder if Jackson would have appreciated the irony of Oblamblam’s highly qualified message of condolence (delivered by proxy through a press attache to make sure nothing can be turned into a nasty vid clip in ’12 no doubt).
His instinct would have been to say nothing but as thick skinned and two faced as he is he must have recognised that wouldn’t play too well in the african american community so he muttered something about Jackson’s musical ability before qualifying the mesasage with unstated inferences about Jackson’s ‘private life’. Tip toe so as not to offend those who believe Jackson to have been the victim of a whitefella conspiracy, but say just enough to signal to whitefella voters that he despised the freckle puncher.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 27 2009 9:47 utc | 16

Well whatever the thinking behind that being white was more feminine or being white, it was to overcome an equally unjust music biz prejudice. Before MJ lightened his skin and reshaped his features to a thinner less african visage, MJ, just like other unwhite popstars, didn’t get a run on MTV. This was the beginning of MTV dominance – MTV no play, album no sell. After the ops and skin lightening MJ was the first african american musician to get regular rotation on MTV. After MJ became an MTV hit, other african american musicians were also allowed on.
To me arguing that it was to make him more feminine and less threatening not to make more white and less threatening is really just splitting hairs, the cause was as perverted as the industry no matter which.
All his power had been removed from him, but now sony-bmg are now trying to argue they only had him go on tour at his own insistence, that it was all MJ’s idea to go back performing.
The fact that every music industry lawyer, ten percenter, and dead set bludger had separated the bloke from his wealth and forced him back to performing is skipped past, remember Thriller alone sold in excess of 50 million copies.
In all the articles about his poverty there is a carefully placed sub-text which reads something like “what else do you expect? The bloke was a stupid blackfella, it is perfectly possible that he spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year”. yeah right. I imagine he woulda given up in the end. Every time he hired a lawyer to prove the last lawyers and financial advisors robbed him blind all he would have done his give more thieves the keys to his strongroom. How could he fight that.
The hollywood entertainment cabal is utterly ruthless especially with those they perceive to be outsiders, none are more outsiders than schvartzers.
When the Jackson bloke from this part of the world made some movies that made a particularly crooked Hollywood mob more money than they ever made before, they still robbed him for over $50 million. Even so the Jackson from here caught them at it and held them to task, but he ended up having to hire hollywood lawyers to sue it back, in the end realising that the money would be lost either way Jackson announced he wouldn’t make the hobbit unless this theives paid up, after a couple of months bluster during which alla the silly Tolkien websites swore they would boycott the flick without Jackson and some of the stars of the other flicks saying they wouldn’t participate either, newline agreed to pay up.
I guess P Jackson knows that they will rort him on the hobbit too and he will have to watch the assholes closely. Somehow I doubt MJ was capable of such hard nosed tactics and as soon as the industry thought they had wrung him dry ie his music stopped selling so well, they cast him aside, making the only way he could get outta the shit was to work for them until he died.
Even so the theft hasn’t ended with his death. His children are being fought over in a vicious tug of war, prolly in the hope that any MJ money will go to them. It will be a vain hope even though MJ albums are currently 15 of the top 20 best selling articles at amazon and most other music outlets.
Sony-BMG are gonna extort every cent they can outta the MJ estate, apparently because he broke his performance contract by up and dying at such short notice. “Fuck the kids we don’t care how much he’s already earned us. He owes us for dying like that.” Aint amerikan corporate capitalism grand!

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 27 2009 12:21 utc | 18

It all just makes me sad.
[Thriller]

Posted by: beq | Jun 27 2009 15:36 utc | 20

[Michael Jackson was] made to look more like a white person to get on MTV (which didn’t let blackfellas on until MJ).
That’s utter bullshit, Debs is dead.
Where the fuck do you get this stuff from?
MTV had no anti black policy. They were just focused on Rock music.
Still, I recall them playing Tina Turner, Grand Master Flash, Africa Bambaataa, Prince (remember 1999?) and some disco crap from the Pointer Sister and another fading ’70’s star.
I also remember when “Billie Jean’ was first played on MTV, and I guarantee you that it was not the first time “Black” Americans were featured on their rotation.
Also, you’ll find that back in ’83, when Jackson first got onto MTV, he was as black as he was ever going to be. It was only years later that he started bleaching his skin and getting surgery so as to look like his hero Diana Ross.
Perhaps you should stick to facts rather invent feverish conspiracies of racism.

Posted by: Marek Bage | Jun 28 2009 9:30 utc | 22

dunno why the first link went haywire, I was using Chrome and the preview did not want to work. Please delete previous post.
I do not agree with Debs that Jackson turned his skin white to be more marketable nor with tangerine to become more effeminate. It is most likely that he had a common skin disorder called vitiligo
I do agree that there were many sharks after his fortune and the whole sordid mess concerning his supposed irregular relationships with young boys was about developers wanting the land he owned and had his Neverland Ranch
never a fan of this kind of pop, or Prince for that matter, I know a lot of girls really liked his music. it is a tragic story and hopefully he will get some peace now.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 28 2009 9:41 utc | 24

jlg is not dead

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 28 2009 16:32 utc | 26

Eh.
I’ve seen a lot of people with Vitiligo here in Taiwan. Vitiligo is far more common among Asians, and in the extremely dense population centers we’ve got over here, it’s not uncommon to go only three or four days without seeing a new case of it walking past on the street.
Not a single one i’ve seen over the years had even the slightest similarity to MJ. Vitiligo has an easily recognizable appearance.
What’s far more likely is that he was taking “treatments” to bleach his skin. The excuse given about Vitiligo regarding MJ is that he had a case of Vitiligo on his fingertips (!), and that his face whitened as a result of the treatments.
Except that the way such treatments go is that one takes what is essentially a skin graft and transfers it to the affected region, thus replacing the genetic info in that part of the body and re-invigorating the melanin balance.
Every viewable portion of Michael’s body was whitened, including his face. If one were going to take a skin-graft for the fingertips, would one take it from the face??
Vitiligo was an excuse MJ used to justify the whitening process he underwent.
He wanted to be loved and accepted, and it’s more than obvious that he was from that very class of tragic celebrity that is most willing to self-destruct in pursuit of success. Among his best friends and mentors were Liz Taylor, Priscilla Presley, and Diana Ross.
I am sad that he had to suffer so, but MJ’s soul was sold to fame long before he ever had the chance to make the decision for himself.
He’s a tragic example of the obscenity that underlies white American culture, and though i was never a fan, i do mourn his suffering.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 28 2009 17:42 utc | 28