
I was born in 1974. So I was, in every way, a “child of the 80’s”.
When I was a kid, popular music was in a strange place. The birth of MTV brought about a lot of different sounds- new wave, heavy metal- music completely different than anything that had ever been played on mainstream radio before. The music my friends and I listened to was REALLY alien and strange to our parents. And the music they listened to… well, let’s just say the golden light hits of the 1970’s AM radio didn’t do anything for me, or any of my friends.
So all of us argued with our parents over radio stations, snuck MTV at each other’s houses when our own parents forbid us from watching it, swapped cassettes with recordings made from radio. Since we didn’t have cars or money, we relied on each other for our music fix.
Then came Michael Jackson.
To kids, his music was like nothing we had ever heard. It was electrifying and raised goosebumps on our arms. We were addicted- we listened to “Thriller” over and over and over, loving a different song every week until we loved them all and then started over again. We watched MTV constantly, hoping for one of his videos to be played so we could see him and learn the dance moves. There were no VCRs, no DVDs, no YouTube so we were at the mercy of the VJs and our memories. We tried to emulate his dance moves, his voice, his whole style. He was completely unlike anything we had ever seen, and we wanted some of whatever magic he had.
To our parents, Michael Jackson was one of their own. The Jackson 5 and the Motown Sound were both huge parts of their own musical history, a sound they thought had been forever abandoned in favor of electronic blips or headache-inducing screaming guitars. When we started talking about Michael Jackson, they finally started listening.
Michael Jackson made music a common ground for parents and kids. It was the first album that was a favorite of both adults *and* their children. The first album our parents got for us without us having to ask for it. The first album that made us start sifting through our parents collection of LPs, hoping for something else in there that might be half as good. The kids started asking our parents about the Jackson 5 in our desperate search for information on Michael Jackson, and then our parents started playing us other things we might like, music they loved but that we didn’t know existed. (For me, it turned out to be Simon & Garfunkel and the Hollies- bands that the radio stations my parents listened to never played.)
Michael Jackson brought back an obsessive passion about music, a passion that bridged generations. Music has ALWAYS been an integral part of my life, and it was an integral part of my parents’ life, too. The mutual admiration of Michael Jackson allowed parents and kids to recognize that maybe we were all more alike than we thought.
Yes, this sounds hokey, but I don’t care. For most people my age (mid-30’s), Michael Jackson’s songs are the soundtrack to our childhood. To us, he wasn’t a strange recluse with legal problems and pale skin, he was the stellar performer who shocked and awed us with his ability to moonwalk, something we spent hours trying to emulate. And as his life grew complicated and controversial, as his behavior grew puzzling and disconcerting, our Michael would always be, first and foremost, the guy who danced with Zombies, the guy who sang about Billie Jean, the guy who changed music for everyone we knew.
Although I no longer count Michael Jackson as a “favorite” (“Thriller” marked the beginning and end of an obsession with him- Duran Duran was the band that stood the test of time for me…), it breaks my heart that he died. I truly believed that he had a tremendous comeback in him, that he would redefine himself as a talented musician and awe-inspiring dancer/performer and not as a weird guy who hid behind surgical masks and compound walls. I can’t believe he died before it happened.
I just hope he passed with some sense of how important he was to *so* many people. I hope he knows there were still a lot of people who still loved his music, who were anxiously awaiting for him to return to the spotlight and astonish us all once again.