To me, Michael Jackson is not only important to me because of his music, but because the associations his music bring to mind.
When I was growing up, I had a ‘favourite’ cousin who was only six days younger than me and a total fan of everything Michael Jackson. His room was wall-papered with Michael Jackson posters; he videotaped a lot of his concerts, always played his music when I was there. A lot of our playtime was accompanied by the King of Pop.
Last week I watched a documentary on TV called Bad 25 that was directed by Spike Lee who also directed a lot of Michael Jackson’s ‘short movies’ (as he liked to call them). There are a lot of stories in this documentary of people that had worked closely with Michael Jackson during the development of the album Bad and it was fun to hear some anecdotes on how some songs on this record had come about, especially the lyrics to Smooth Criminal.
I was and am still very fond of this album because I remember dancing on it as a kid with black sunglasses on in my mom’s black leather jacket. The same goes for the album Dangerous by the way. This music will never get old to me.