This morning when driving to work I was listening to the greatest hits of Michael Jackson. I wanted to listen to MJ after hearing about his untimely death a couple of days back. Listening to his songs brought back a lot of memories. One of the first memories of listening to his music was back when I was only around 6 years old. I remember putting on the Thriller album which I had on a casette, in the ‘mini compo’ (as they called it) and playing it out loud so that I could drown the sound of music coming from our house mates downstairs. I remember playing the game we used to call ‘Thriller Thriller’ where we used to play out the music video of the song Thriller in a darkened room and pretended to be zombies. From the memories of playing the smooth criminal video game to the playing of Earth Song out loud in the mountains, not to mention the amazing music videos that impressed me as a kid, such as Jam, Black or white and much more…
Michael was a true super star, the likes of which we will probably never ever see again. In this day of digital music, people have shorter attention spans than before. We don’t have to make a special effort to go out to a music store and buy the music. We have so many choices and ease that we just don’t pay attention to artists as we did before.
Usually bands or artists stay around for approximately 5 years at their peak and then fade away only for the die hard fans to stay following them. There are only a handful of artists/bands in the world that have surpassed generations and time such as him. Think about this fact – he was in the public eye performing since he was 6 years old and at 50, he was preparing for his comeback concert tour, that’s more than 44 years in the limelight! I don’t think there are (or were) many that can claim they have done the same.
His fame was phenomenal, everyone I know has heard of Michael Jackson. Even on Facebook when I logged in the day of his death, my entire page was full of condolences and words about their superstar in their status updates.
Not since the likes of Elvis Presley had the world seen such a super star. I read an article after his death that talked about the ‘soft power’ of America. In it, the writer said that it was amazing to see that the icon of Michael Jackson transcended cultures, countries and religions. All across the world no matter where you came from, for once the world was united in grief and shock over the death. One example was the condolences being offered from all over the world. World leaders that hate each other and hate America were offering their condolences to an American singer.
It was a rare sight to see but it was good to see the entire world, for once united if not just for one moment.
The article goes on to mention that soft power is the power of one person to be the person someone else wanted to be. I remember people wearing tight red leather jackets and cutting their gloves to imitate the silver glove of Michael. We even used to have a singer/imitator back in Pakistan who used to pretend to be him and performed on stages all over the country.
In the end, it was a sad day for music and art as a whole. Whether you liked his music or not, whether you liked him for the things he did outside music or not, whether you liked him as a person or not…everyone can agree on one thing.
