The Chris Moeller Archives

The boy in the mirror

In the spring of 1983, I was in 3rd grade in a rural two classroom school in Iowa that educated fewer than 40 children. My musical background was three years of piano lessons, and the only black people I knew were the ones on television-- a fictional radio DJ, Arnold and Willis Jackson, and the shortstop and several outfielders for the St. Louis Cardinals. Sinatra had long ago stormed the Paramount, Elvis and The Beatles had both played Ed Sullivan, but the world had never seen anything like the force of nature that was becoming Michael Jackson-- that is, until Monday night, May 16th of 1983, when "the gloved one" walked away with the show during the Motown 25th Anniversary TV Special. By the morning of May 17th, all 40-some kids in my school were "moonwalking" their way to recess.

Is it too audacious to suggest that Jackson's musical and social impact has surpassed that of "early Elvis" or the British Invasion that came before him? Not if we consider that 47 million TV sets were tuned in to watch the new King of Pop that night-- not just the white kids, but the black ones too. Not if we consider that Michael's album released that year, "Thriller," has since gone on to sell what might be as many as 109 million copies, more than any other album in global history. "At one point," one biographer wrote, "Thriller stopped selling like a leisure item-- like a magazine, a toy, tickets to a hit movie-- and started selling like a household staple."

Elvis and the Beatles may have hoisted rock-n-roll music onto the world stage (and they had the entire consumer power of the Baby Boom to help them along), but it's the soulful, funky, dance-pop tunes that Michael inspired-- those of Madonna, Prince, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Boys II Men, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Usher, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, R. Kelly, Kanye West, John Legend, Alicia Keys, and Janet Jackson-- that have run roughshod over the Billboard music charts for the last quarter century.

His music stayed on top, but, of course, his personal life didn't. Reaching the highest peak of American celebrity made Michael an attractive target for tabloid media. A highly-injurious lawsuit marked by bizarre claims and the strange court outbursts by his accusers forced Michael off the public stage during the last years of his life. Despite the fact that the legal suit was sweepingly rejected by a California jury, the lies became the truth. He lost much of his marketability, and his overspending caused creditors to vulture on high as if his was the estate of Sammy Davis Jr.

Michael Jackson was a genius of music and dance, and of that mysterious art of connecting with people. Upon his death, the controversies that seemed to swallow him whole near the end distract from his extraordinary cultural legacy, but it's a rich irony that it was this unparalleled fame and cultural impact, and his struggling to cope with it, that ultimately caused so many people to lose their human connection to him. Nothing changes the fact, though, that Michael Jackson is the artist who lit the brightest flame in music today. A blowtorch, really. And I'm proud to call myself, now fully-grown, a member of the Michael Jackson generation.

Now I'm off to enjoy a nice long cry over a lovely childhood memory from 26 years ago and for one of the world's gifted, gentle, and beautiful souls lost today. Rest in tranquility and peace, Michael.


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Michael on the Motown TV special.

posted by CM @ 8:29 PM