In memoriam: Michael Jackson

The Jackson 5 landed their contract with Motown Records the year I was born. When I was four years old MJ had his first solo-hit, a song about a friendship between a young boy and a rat (Ben). There would be many rats in MJ's life. In 1977 I watched the Wizard of Oz, in which MJ played the scarecrow. In 1979 the dutch tv-show "Avro's Toppop" (with Ad Visser) played "Don't stop 'til you get enough".

In 1982 the world was hit by "Thriller". Admit it, we ALL wanted more of that! But MJ was a perfectionist and he took his time to select the right songs for his new albums. Maybe he should have published all the songs (hundreds of them) he wrote between albums, even if they were sub-MJ-standard. Undoubtedly, they still would have been better than alot of the crap that made it into the hitparades in the eighties. Instead, he waited until his work of art was goddamn ready. That was in 1987, with Bad. Five number one hits all over the world. Bam! We wanted more of that too!

But the King took his time again and the nineties had started, with it's more and more hectic market dynamics in music. If a band didn't put out at least one great album every year they were forgotten. Impatience lead to speculation. Bored fans and bored press were shouting: here we are now, entertain us!! MJ was never ready for this nihilistic entertainement-consumption-oriented generation. He had been around too long to give in to the demand for cheap entertainment. Yet that is what the market wanted. The albums MJ made in the nineties were still popular, but the crowd had moved on to other things. I have to admit, so did I. When I think about the nineties I think about The Smashing Pumpkins, The Breeders, Porno for Pyros, Jeff Buckley, not MJ.

But I never forgot the King of Pop. He was the King of Pop. And don't you ever forget that!