On the occasion of the release of This is It, some brief thoughts about Michael Jackson's music and not his personal freakishness and alleged pervitude.
1.Certainly he was a genius performer and singer. Not a genius songwriter, though. Why do all his most beloved solo songs come from the albums produced by Quincy Jones? Possibly because after 1987 was when he really went off the rails on a crazy train. Or possibly because there was a musical genius at work on Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad, and his name was Quincy Jones. Post Q= mostly unlistenable crap.
2. Only a handful of former children will ever really know for sure whether MJ's incredible self-hatred was justified, but here's something I haven't seen anybody else say: the surgeries showed such a reckless disregard for his gift that they could be seen as trying to destroy it.
I learned a couple of things about singing when I took lessons with the most excellent Pam Wolfe, and here's one: your voice resonates in your nose. This is why Barbra Streisand maintained her famous honker despite the fact that a nose job might have led to more movie roles. And this is why Michael Jackson's voice, one of the best in modern popular music, was nearly destroyed by his desire to erase all traces of his blackness.
Don't believe me? Listen to the vocal tone in these two hits, only four years, but at least one rhinoplasty apart. Michael's voice in "She's Out of My Life" is incredibly rich, and his singing is unadorned--except for the fake crying, there aren't a lot of gimmicks--the beauty of his voice sells the beauty of the song.
And now, from Thriller, "Human Nature"--notice how he's already relying on the whispering, the grunting, and all the other vocal gimmicks that would make his singing a parody of itself in the 90's and beyond. He comes up with all these tricks to sell songs because his best trick--that amazing voice--is gone by 1983.
It's really striking to listen to these songs back to back and compare the thin, reedy 1983 voice with the rich, buttery 1979 voice. Especially considering these are studio recordings, so we have to assume that the best studio trickery of the day was used to make his voice sound better.
I think you know my thoughts on what kind of human being Michael Jackson was, but as this movie causes people to lament yet again what a great talent we've lost, let's remember that he destroyed it ages ago.
