We're Gonna Rock The Night Away: Michael Jackson 1958-2009

This article was written by Danielle

The King of Pop In the Top of His Career

The King of Pop At the Top of His Career

What a painful reminder to us all. Life can’t be too perfect, prospects can’t go too well; we can’t quite be too happy. It’s not fair, but that is life. It is promised to absolutely no one. Even for the best of us. It didn’t have to happen like this… or did it?

Music, in and of itself is an omnipresent impulse to human nature. It’s velocity is literally unlimited and indefinite. It’s timeless; a refined product, oxygen to the soul. To be honest, music has always been a little bit bigger than we really thought. But amongst all of music’s amazing ascendancy and innumerable influence is the inevitibility that people would find a way… to eff it up. Like water, music is contaminated with careless greed. It’s bottled up, marketed, recycled, and ruthlessly controlled. Rarely is it a clean and pure product. So if you’re pissed off about today’s purposefully manipulated garbage that is force fed to your earlobes through the filtered, devil-sponsored radiowaves… I can’t blame you.

But can you think of anyone – and I really mean anyone – who didn’t embody music – just real music – more than Michael Jackson? Mike was the ambassador of my precious human commidity. And as the ambassador, he possessed special, special privileges. Growing up in a home governed by an uber-religious mother, Thriller was the only album I was ever allowed to play in the house without her barking at me to turn it off. Now that is an accomplishment! I never had to sneak around with the headphones. The first music video I ever watched with my parents was “Rock With You” on a Sunday night, when I was nine-years old. To this day, my favorite MJ song. He had a special method of connecting our disjointed family. It was as refreshing as your first spring day. No other artist in my life has been that influential. Who else can make certified classic hits that are family friendly and timeless? Man…

You look back. I watched the documentaries and videos of his earlier hits with The Jackson Five. And here you have this kid performing with such an authentic enthusiasm for his talent! He had a supposable smile, and a glow from his eyes, the young man just seemed to know what he was doing. He was original and outstanding, to say the least. He was almost invaluable.

The unfortunate and inevitable element to music is the nasty side of exploitation. His unmatched work ethic, combined with his God-given talent was propelled in an industry that produced incredible capital. Everyone wanted a piece, and it was only a matter of time before the morbidly evil side of American culture caught up with him. Being the bearer of the music world rewarded him with unthinkable riches and fame, but the brunt of society’s immense pressure. We live in a society that chews our celebrities like Juicy Fruit, sucking in the sweetness and spitting it out after it’s all drained. And when you get someone with as much long-lasting flavor as Mr. Jackson, the intense demand to remain relevant may have forced his hand in ways we may never understand. We will never truly grasp the psychological toll it took on a man burning from the radiant beams of human judgement. Who will ever truly know his private thoughts? He was a marked male from the beginning of his success, for better or for worse.

I will never know what he was thinking as he tragically died. But all I know is there will never, ever be another Michael Jackson. There will never be another singer that would make my best friend Reggie and I, jump out of our parent’s car at a red light in a busy intersection and dance in the street like we had won the lottery. There will never be another artist that ushered in a humanitarian era for musicians like him. There will never be a man who jumps out on the stage, standing there for ten straight minutes of unadulturated, consistent screaming. There will never be another musician that can make an entire family of different cultures and ages cry when he passes away. He was a really special human being. His music will continue to live on. As a living person, he is no more. What a painful reminder to us all.