A Word on MJ
Now I know SO much has been written on blogs, newspapers, magazines (on top of the wall to wall TV coverage) about Michael Jackson since his shocking death, but I just wanted to give my 2 bits worth. Firstly its amazing how all these people are coming out to mourn an artist who really hasn’t done anything of real note since the Bad album which came out in 1989 (except maybe for The Earth Song, but more of that in a minute). The truth is we lost the real MJ 10 years ago and maybe the sadness is that we were all hoping he would make a real comeback and remind us of how great he was. Obviously 50 live shows was way beyond him, given his mental and physical condition and I’m sure the stress from that contributed to his untimely death.
To me MJ from the 1980s is an iconic figure probably only matched by Elvis in terms of his world wide impact. I was in England when his death happened and they were showing all his videos the following day. The guy was 20 years ahead of his time, in terms of the dance routines and the videos he made. Billie Jean still sounds amazing today and the video for Smooth Criminal still has the best dancing of all.
Five interesting things I learnt about MJ.
1. His best selling song in UK is The Earth Song would you believe which sold over a million copies! Considering its about the environment I wonder how MJ would feel about all the paper used to write about him these last three days!
2. He actually invented (patented) a dance move or more specifically a type of shoe to do the dance move (the famous forward leaning move from Smooth Criminal - check out the clip below !)
3. He bought the rights to the entire Beatles back catalog of songs for $47m. The rights are now worth $500m.
4. He was obsessed with military uniforms after visiting a small specialized shop in London in the early 80s which explains why he often wore glitzy military style jackets.
5.Billie Jean was the first video by a black artist to air on MTV.
Above : Michael Jackson’s Anti Gravity dance
