I completely understand your point of view. As I said above, I'm not hating on Michael Jackson. I'm merely questioning the praise thrown his way.
And yes, you can't objectively argue music. I know that. I do think you can fix somebody's place in the history of pop music, though, and on that score I feel pretty strongly that Michael was great for a span of time that wasn't a whole lot longer than many pop stars' brief, flickering eras of popularity. I realize the Jackson 5 were popular in the Seventies, and he deserves credit for that, but in reality when people talk about Michael Jackson's "genius" they're talking about "Off The Wall" and "Thriller", with "Bad" and "Dangerous" coming in as solid, occasionally great, but generally inferior efforts that mark a downward trajectory.
Four albums. Four. Only two of which are considered true classics. Over a span of about one decade.
(That's about the same legacy as The Smiths, but never mind.)
There are so many other performers, before Michael and since, who have a better track record as artists. Not commercially: none sold as many albums as "Thriller", but that album, deserving of its status as one of the all-time classics, was still kind of a fluke. Artistically speaking, trying to take the widest possible view, he's second-tier, in my book. I wouldn't even rate him as high as (say) Kraftwerk or Bob Marley. Compared to Elvis, Lennon/McCartney, Dylan, Springsteen and others, he's not even in the conversation.
As a cultural phenomenon, he was perhaps unequalled, or at least as "big" as Elvis or The Beatles, but you can just as easily put that down to random fluctuations in consumer spending, no different than sales of Cabbage Patch Kids, Rubik's Cubes or-- ahem-- Pepsi.
If you take away the hype, he was just another megapopstar who shone brightly for a few years and fizzled out. We should give the man his due, but let's not go overboard and call him a transcendant godlike figure. I know you aren't saying that, but lots of people are.
I was going to say about The Smiths, but you said it yourself so I won't
The thing is, these things are never rational, are they? When a star dies people are going to put them on a pedestal and give them far more credit than they "deserve" (I still think being popular with Jackson 5 throughout the 70's and then making four great solo albums, one of which was the best selling album of all time, is pretty good). It's just human nature to go a bit over board when someone dies.
Anyway, I don't really see the adoration so much here in the UK. On every single comedy quiz they insist on making nasty MJ jokes and I find myself not able to laugh at them, even if they are funny.
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