Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough

There’s been a lot of fine writing about Michael Jackson’s life and death in the past twelve days, and some of the best of it has been by friends of Rule Forty-Two. I have a few more MJ-related posts to make, but before I cut off this skein, I wanted to steer you towards some other Michaelania:

Chris Molanphy on Michael’s chart achievements.
In the same month “Beat It” topped the Hot 100 and R&B lists, it peaked at No. 14 on the Rock chart, making Jackson the first African-American to score an honest-to-goodness AOR hit until guitarist Jon Butcher broke into the Top 10 with “Goodbye Saving Grace” four years later.

Tom Nawrocki on the Jackson 5.
The Jackson 5 were so good, and so popular, that MGM had a bunch of Mormons from Utah do a note-for-note imitation of the Jackson 5, and that went to Number One, too.

Robert Rossney on fashioning meaning out of the incomprehensible (plus a followup).
The terrain of his personal landscape was unrecognizable. I can understand the choices that my cat makes more deeply than I could understand the ones Jackson made.

Rob Sheffield on the brilliant music.
I went to a high school dance, drove home to watch the “Beat It” premiere, then drove back to the dance so I could tell everyone how awesome it was and make my first attempts to copy that dance at the end.

posted 6 July 2009 in Links and tagged . no comments yet

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