I think Jackson's inability to handle celebrity and adulthood makes it easier to think of him as a tabloid freak. Most people I encounter don't seem to have a problem separating Roman Polanski the sex criminal from Polanski's body of work. Those who argue for his extradition recognize his value as artist (they just don't think that he should be above the law). Mick and Keith's adventure with underaged drinkin' and sexin' seem to have been wiped from public consciousness. It's just that Jackson's physical transformation and his disconnect from adulthood made the molester label easier to stick and harder to separate from his artistic contributions. I've said this before, but I'm not entirely convinced Jackson is a child molester, or at least a predator - I find it just as likely that he's so out of touch with the real world that he simply saw nothing wrong with sharing sleeping arrangement with children.
Err not really. You should stop talking about things you don't know anything about. Modern music? These are the top 10 song currently on the Billboard Hot 100 singles: 1) Britney Spears - 3 2) Jay Sean feat. Lil Wayne - Down 3) Miley Cirus - Party in the USA 4) Jason DeRulo - Whatcha Say 5) Jay-Z, Rihanna & Kanye West - Run This Town 6) The Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling 7) Lady Gaga - Paparazzi 8) Taylor Swift - You Beling to Me 9) Owl City - Fireflies 10) Kings of Leon - Use Somebody If you don't see MJ's influence all over most of those songs and artists then I don't know what else to say.
Absolutely. He was, in a word, weirder than the others you mentioned- certainly in his outward appearance as he matured (or didn't). He was guilty of extremely poor judgement, if nothing more. Sometimes, that's bad enough.
Im not sure, but I dont think cassetes existed when the Beatles were an active band, and there is a big difference between the exposure --both good and bad--that the mass media gave to an artist in the 80's as compared to the exposure that it gave to an artist in the 60's. When I was a kid in northern Mexico, the tv programming started at 2:00 PM, while in the 80's there was 24/7 programming.
I must admit Im disconected, but U2 and Nirvana cited the Beatles as their influence...compared to those Im sure Michael Jackson, Britney Spears,Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus are very poor examples. Im sure is very much a matter of taste, and probably you are a big fan of Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears, but is very likely John Lennon would have been extremely happy he WASNT and influence on those numbers.
When I think of contemporary music, I can't think of anything more contemporary than a band whose lead singer died 15 years ago, in a genre that fizzled 10 years ago. Also, if I can't see Michael Jackson's influence in modern music, including rock or country, I'm probably either not knowledgeable or thoughtful enough to make any sort of judgement about music.
+1 I never really thought of grunge as a separate genre anyhow. It's just rock. Rock doesn't need or deserve breaking up any further just because some twentysomething falsely believes s/he has something to contribute that hasn't been touched on before. It's all been done, stopped being creative probably somewhere in the late 90s and nothing new is coming down the pike. OTOH, just last week I replied to a post from a guy on a bass guitar/double bass site I frequent who complained that any 12 year-old with a computer and 5 blank CDs could create his own genre of metal (the thread was about Funeral Metal, whatever that is, and he was saying that it did not merit its own genre). I had to be the one to tell him that if he was old enough to be posting on an Internet messageboard, he was too old to be caring about metal anyhow. This, too.
Exactly. It's incomprehensible to downplay the influence of Michael Jackson. Sure, it's easy to dislike him. But it's impossible to deny him. From the Jackson 5 years to his solo work all through the 1980's... even groundbreaking music videos as well. I still have an old 'Thriller' VHS somewhere with "The Making of Thriller" on it. I also agree with Royalstilton with regards to record sales and maybe more importantly, the role of Quincy Jones and the producers who helped Michael Jackson reach the stardom that he did. And with that in mind, I think there's a difference in Jackson's influence and, say, someone like Jimi Hendrix. Differing more, there's a difference between Jackson and Stevie Wonder. Both artists were listed above him on that list. I don't think it was racist that Rolling Stone placed him so 'low'. To be honest, I think that because he wasn't on stage playing an instrument that hurt him the list. But at the same token, for heaven's sake what about his dancing and shows?! Influencial indeed! Either way, it's a very subjective list. I wouldn't take it too seriously.
Metal has a truly absurd amount of sub-genres - probably more than any other type of music barring electronic music - precisely because its fans are so obsessive over minute details.
Didn't realize that- thanks. I went a bit overboard with that poster (never done that before ), meaning that I do understand that metal has its mature fans as well as the young ones, but he was really put out about it, and I just found that funny. Why do you think are the metalheads so much more obsessive than fans/musicians in other genres?
If I remember well, it was John Landis who directed and co-wrote the screen play for "Thriller", and I have to check wikipedia, but Im sure he directed some other MJ videos. Actually I think he's in one scene at the end of Black and White, so if somebody influenced the music video, must be Landis himself.
I think it's risky to go the route of downplaying Michael Jackson's relevance/influence due to the contributions of others because realistically, there are several individuals that contribute to the works of many of the greats. He was a remarkable performer and artist and was around in a significant transitional year between the music and media industries. His success and failures there were extremely important and influencial - and maybe different from a lot of the others on the list. I think we get it - you don't think Jackson was particularly influencial & probably don't like him. Just that... I don't agree with that take. He's done too much and been involved in too much IMO, even if I don't always like his work. And besides, looking at that list it's too subjective to really use as a blue-print (for reasons listed in m yprevious post). "Influencial" can be defined or looked at in a number of ways. To be perfectly honest, I don't know how much higher I'd have ranked him. Those in front of him were pretty significant artists in their own right that layed the foundation for many other artists as well - sometimes including MJ himself. But that's the evolution of music, the industry etc. Someday someone may make the same argument about someone popular now and their influence over the next 20 years or so.
Sean and Julian Lennon described their dad as a real macho @sshole, and the crew filming "Help" complained that the Beatles were continuously stoned, making the filming process very difficult, the difference I guess is that people overlook those little details, or take them for granted from rock stars, plus over the years the Beatles had been "sainted" by the popular culture. Such is not the case with MJ, his "sins" were of a different nature,and a lot weirder. Is not that I dont like MJ, is just that I dont consider his career as relevant and influential as the Beatles, which goes beyond discusion for most people, what surprised me was that some people vehemently disagree and some were so far as to post that HE influenced the Beatles (which would have been kind of hard, since he was a little baby when the Beatles were an active band). But at the end you are right, is very subjective. My supervisor argue that I dont really like classical music because I limit myself to Bach, Vivaldi and Beethoven, he says that to really LIKE classics, I have to listen to Stravinsky,Mussogorsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and some other people who will put you to sleep in 5 minutes.
You have to be more specific about what type of influence you are talking about. There are tons of musical genres out there and The Beatles' and MJ's influence obviously varies depending on which one you are talking about. If you are talking about pop music right now MJ's influence is stronger and much more obvious.
The way the OP puts it, you'd think Jackson was a musical Forrest Gump, someone who, through sheer dumb luck, just so happened to be present at some of the greatest musical achievements of the last 30 years.