Forget about the weirdness. Forget about the facial changes. Forget about the court cases.
Michael Jackson was one of our world's most influential and important artists. Yes, ARTIST. He was an artist in the truest since of the word. And I will miss him. Just as the title suggests, he helped to write the soundtrack to my life. You hear people say that about their favorite artists all the time. But the cliche' is true. Give me a Michael Jackson song title, and I can tell you where I was the first time I heard the song, or something significant that I was doing while it played on the radio or on my cd player.
As I type this, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm tearing up. Michael and his music meant something to my life. Watching him perform with his brothers as a member of The Jackson Five when I was a little boy, he inspired me to dream. I can still remember holding my mom's dinner bell hammer in my hand as a microphone while lip syncing to Dancing Machine. As a solo artist, he inspired me to be a better musician. My sister and I analyzed Off The Wall until no instrument or vocal part was left unturned. That album is the reason that I can pick instruments out of an ensemble today. And I could cite more examples.
So you see, this is no small deal to me. His death leaves a very real hole for me, as though he were a family member. And I know that I'm not the only one.
Incidentally, Prince better live SEVERAL more years. I'm not sure I could take it.
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to be honest, i only have vivid memories from one song, and it was a jackson 5 song, "i'll be there." i was in 8th grade and we'd go of school grounds for lunch to a store that had a soda fountain kind of deal in the back, and i was in (unrequited) love with a girl named kathy o'gara, and every time that song would come on the jukebox, it did things to me.
of course i remember the later stuff... thriller, billy jean, beat it, but at that time of my life, i was a ginormous bruce springsteen fan, and "born in the USA" was out around the same time as "thriller" so my attention wasn't really on michale's stuff as much.
there was no doubt about his talent.
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