REMEMBER THE TIME

So, I haven't had time to post many other stories lately, and Michael seems to be what everyone is talking about all over the world. This is the cover of the upcoming issue of Time, and I'm sure in a few days he'll be on the cover of almost every magazine. Everyone has their own thing to say, the best obit I've read is from a guy I used to (sort of) work for, VH1 EVP Bill Flanagan, also a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning (where this is taken from) (thanks to Ben) :

"Michael Jackson presided over the third and final big band of the rock ‘n roll era.

The first explosion was Elvis. That was about sexual liberation, and racial integration, and lasted about ten years.

The second explosion was The Beatles and everything they issued in. Suddenly pop music was all about long hair and experimental sounds, progressive politics and outlaw rhetoric. Rock was about a counterculture. That blast lasted about twenty years, right through Springsteen, Prince, and U2.

The third explosion was Thriller, Michael Jackson’s 1982 album, and the best selling album of all time, the album that invented the pop world we’re still living in twenty-five years later.
Thriller re-merged pop music with mainstream entertainment. After two decades, pop became again what it had been before the Sixties: part of show business. With Thriller, pop wasn’t just about how you sounded, but how you looked, how you dressed, and danced.

Michael didn’t idolize Dylan and Hendrix, he idolized Elizabeth Taylor and Walt Disney. The model has ruled mainstream entertainment for twenty-six years and show no sign of ending. He made the world safe for MTV and Madonna, Flashdance and Footloose, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake.

A student of PT Barnum, Jackson courted crazy publicity rumors. But at some point that hunger for tabloid headlines turned on him. He fed a beast, and the beast bit him. At some point, Michael forgot about being a musician, and got lost in being a star.

But one crucial fact often gets overlooked in all the statistics, hype, and hoopla: Michael Jackson was amazingly talented."

Well said.