MUSIC

Michael Jackson: A one-of-a-kind pop culture phenomenon

The world - and the music business - have changed, and there will never be another King of Pop.

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN MUSIC WRITER
Friday, June 26, 2009

There will never, ever be anyone like Michael Jackson again.

Let's start with the numbers, which are almost beyond comprehension.

Thirty-seven Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Twenty-nine U.S. Top 10 singles, 13 of them No. 1's, nine of them platinum sellers, 16 gold.

Thirteen Grammy Awards and 750 million albums sold worldwide.

Seven-hundred-and-fifty-million.

Owning a Michael Jackson record is a bit like having a phone or a stove.

Let's talk just about "Thriller": a No. 1 album for 37 weeks, 80 consecutive weeks in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200. At 28 million copies, the second-best-selling album in U.S. history (second only to the Eagles' "Greatest Hits"). Still the only album to top the charts in two separate years and featuring seven Top 10 singles. It appealed to black and white audiences as no other album ever had. As showcased by MTV — which he was about to show to be far more important to how music was consumed than anyone yet realized — Jackson was probably the most electrifying dancer ever.

And on and on and on.

There can't ever be anyone like Michael Jackson again.

Nobody can so completely dominate the pop conversation. Our culture is too atomized, too specialized, too niche-oriented for a pop juggernaut like that.

These days, recorded music isn't just in record stores; it's easy to find on the Web for free, so sales figures like Jackson's seem so distant and mythic as to be beamed in from another world.

Which they sort of are.

'Those pretty faces always made you stand out in a crowd'

You want an instant lift to your spirts? Spin up "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5, released in 1969 and one of pop's perfect songs. The flickering guitar, Jackson's soaring preteen voice, chords that make your hair stand up.

"ABC" ("Reading, writing, arithmetic/are the branches of the learning tree") followed and then "I'll Be There" ("Look, over your SHOULDERS, honey!"). Spotless songs, led by a kid you couldn't take your ears off of.

Jackson wouldn't let go of our ears for most of the next 15 years. A turn as the Scarecrow in the film musical "The Wiz" set him up with Quincy Jones, the musician from another age who became Jackson's musical partner and producer. Jones and Jackson produced the 1979 stunner "Off the Wall." Songs like "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "Rock With You" are disco classics, anchored by glittering beats and Jackson's bouncing falsetto.

But he hadn't even really gotten started.

'The one who will dance on the floor in the round'

For a little more than two years, starting with the release of "Thriller" in November 1982 to the release of the "We Are the World" single in March 1985, Michael Jackson WAS pop music. Kids across racial lines went nuts for the guy; moms and dads who hadn't paid attention to the radio in years suddenly did.

"Thriller" was a one-man stimulus package for an industry on shaky ground, giving the business a jolt it rode for the next 20 years, all the way through the CD boom and into the Internet era.

And then there was the music: "Beat It" with Eddie Van Halen's solo to sell it to rock radio. The weird sexiness of "P.Y.T." The sweetness of "Human Nature."

And the still-gripping "Billie Jean" with its hypnotic bassline, its strange air of dread that he was able to translate into a song the whole world sang, and a dance the whole world did.

Just take another look at his March 25, 1983, performance of "Billie Jean" on "Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever." The whole clip is five jaw-dropping minutes, Jackson revising and updating and smashing together Bob Fosse's jazzy intensity and breakdancing's snap with a liquid smoothness.

But the sound the crowd makes around the 3:38 minute mark, when Jackson breaks out the moonwalk, is amazing. It's not the scream of girls watching the Beatles or Elvis. It's an almost shocked sound, the gob-smacked yell of the entertainment elite seeing a game-changing moment they didn't know the guy was capable of.

He owned '83 and stayed in charge for much of the glorious year of 1984, a year that gave us "When Doves Cry" (Prince) and "What's Love Got to Do With It" (Tina Turner) and "Jump" (Van Halen) and "Dancing in the Dark" (Bruce Springsteen) and "Time After Time" (Cyndi Lauper), a moment when radio couldn't stop handing out manic pop thrills, thrills that felt possible because of the success of "Thriller."

In 1985 came "We Are the World," a song Jackson co-wrote with Lionel Richie. The recording session was probably the only evening Paul Simon, James Ingram, Kim Carnes and Bob Dylan ever spent in a studio together. (When Jackson and Quincy Jones call you to record a song in which the profits will go to African famine relief, you show up.) Check out the video for that one, too, for a tiny slice of Jackson's smarts. All the singers look as if they just came in off the night out with pals (it was actually the day of the American Music Awards). But Jackson, the founder of the feast, has his glove and sunglasses and gold-brocaded jacket in full effect — genius!

'The man in the mirror'

It's not quite correct to say 1987's "Bad" was nothing but diminishing returns, but 1982 and '83 and '84 happened just once for all of us, and Jackson wasn't an exception. Jackson still put up crazy numbers — 30 million copies sold worldwide, five Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles — but he wasn't the cultural force of nature he once was. Kicking open the door with "Thriller" meant the door was now wide open; pop radio meant everything from hair metal to hip-hop. Jackson was no longer pop's most important innovator and the biggest fish in the sea.

"Dangerous" followed in November 1991, and it sold slightly better than "Bad" and featured a nifty video for "Black or White." But everyone was looking toward Nirvana by that point. 1995's "HIStory" was a hits package teamed with a strangely grouchy album of new material with an eye-popping video for "Scream." 2001's "Invincible" was sadly vincible, selling a mere (!) 10 million copies.

'The King of Pop'

There's a lot that's impossible to imagine without Michael Jackson. The career of Justin Timberlake, for instance. The way that MTV was once the world's go-to channel for music. Or the idea that an African American man could be the most culturally influential and imitated and listened-to human alive.

When Elvis Presley died, the great rock critic Lester Bangs wrote, "I can guarantee you one thing — we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis."

Bangs died in April 1982. He didn't live long enough to see all of us agree on Michael Jackson.

I'm glad I was around when we did. You should be, too.

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926