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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs and the culture of popism
On MSNBC the other day, the writer who goes by the name Touré was telling us we’ve just all been too mean to Michael Jackson:
[A]mong the people, you know, the music and the joy and the cultural importance of Michael has been liberated from the discussion of the eccentricities*, which is what the media, and a lot of regular people, too, have focused on in the last decade or so.
Now, hold that thought for a minute. Meanwhile, in the NYT, my friend David Carr was coming to the defense of Steve Jobs:
[L]ast week, Mr. Jobs returned to work on a part-time basis, precisely when he said he would. Experts with only a general knowledge of his treatment suggest his prognosis is good.
That did not stop the keening on the blogs, in the news media and in the investment community that he and Apple needed to do a medical full monty to explain his conditions because they believe they are material to the company’s future and should be reported as such.
To which I, and not many others, say: Is anyone really confused about Mr. Jobs’s health status? I remain unconvinced, in part because I believe that prurience, not legitimate financial concerns, drives most people’s interest in the illness of others.
Now, what unites these two comments is an overweening concern for the tender feelings of celebrities—or, in the much more egregious Touré-Jackson case, for the tender feeling of a dead celebrity.
Two things are going on here. For the first, their perspectives are uncannily similar to the position that would be taken not just by the famous people involved themselves, but their PR establishments.
In Toure’s case I think it’s pretty much a case of his being a popist, that sphere of pop culture writing that thinks that there’s just too darn much criticism about pop stars out there. The popist mantra is to take pop stars on their own terms. Carr is a much more serious person and is of course not carrying Apple’s water, though he is equally wrong.
He’s wrong because of the second issue, which is much more important. Neither Touré nor Carr said the obvious: That when you live by celebrity you die by it—metaphorically, of course I mean, though mortality at least brushes each of these cases.
Jackson lived and Jobs lives in almost unimaginable luxury, and more than that they both lived lives in which their every whim was fulfilled. They each can make the boast of the truly fortunate person, which is that he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do, and can basically do anything he wants to do.
And forgive me for sounding crass, but the category of doing what one wants to to, particularly when it comes to men, often involves sex, and it’s hard to believe that both, like most other celebrities, haven’t enjoyed the manifold benefits of that, too.
You didn’t hear either of them, or their respective amen corners, complain about the state of their lives before the downside of their wealth and fame arose.
In fact, both, to a great extent, have been hoisted on their own petard. Jobs, of course, is famously intransigent and unforgiving. He’s insulting, rude, impulsive, and, by all accounts, a heroic asshole, by which I mean he goes the extra mile and is mean to people even when doesn’t have to be.
Beyond that, he’s turned himself into a celebrity—a brittle and remote one, of course, but a consumer icon.
Well guess what? People get interested when you contract a mysterious disease.
Tough shit if he’s getting subjected to a little too much publicity about his health, particular when a) he and the company have been at best obfuscatory and at worst untruthful about his condition and b) he patently is a key corporate asset whose health, for better or worse, is tied to Apple’s financial fortunes. How is interest driven by these two forces “prurient”? I mean, it might be, as well, but the prurient aspect is far outweighed by the other two.
There’s a really easy way to work in the business world and have this not be a factor, and that is to own your own business and keep the company private. Jobs made that decision many years ago.
As for Jackson, jesus—his biggest claim to fame is his celebrity qua celebrity. He’s an amazing pop artist, of course, but he’s no Stevie Wonder, to name just one Motown fellow. He’s no Springsteen**, either, and he’s no Prince. A lot of black activists, like the buffoonish Al Sharpton, have been trying to prop up his rep as a breakthrough black artist; I take the point that “Billie Jean” was a watershed for MTV, but Wonder was hitting crazy commercial landmarks in the 1970s. (Songs of the Key of Life debuted at number one, for example, an almost unprecedented event at the time, and while I don’t care much about the Grammys, his dominance of the event in the middle part of the decade was nearly total.)
Anyway, the one thing people can say about Jackson was that, for a time, he had the biggest-selling album ever in the U.S.*** He played his celebrity for all it was worth. He was an early practitioner of the art of being more famous for being famous.
Again, guess what? People are going to be interested when kids say you molested them, in whether you’re gay if you’ve apparently never had a heterosexual relationship in your life, in why your skin color changed, or in why you’ve destroyed your face with plastic surgery.
He got all the attention for the things he wanted to have attention paid to—god knows we’ve heard enough about Jackson’s accomplishments. But it takes a special type of journalist to then turn around and complain when people also talk about the weird stuff.
Indeed, Toure was also on MSNBC excitedly telling viewers that Jackson was “bigger than Elvis in the history of music,” which is a silly thing to say, for reasons I‘ve explained earlier: Most particularly, the difference is that Jackson’s supreme skill was marshaling his already formidable commercial appeal and taking it to a new level—a temporary one, as we saw. Presley, as we all know, invented himself, his music, and then his audience one by one, in an absolutely epochal series of audacious moves.
If, as popists do, you equate simply popularity with importance, it’s easy to fall into such absurd logical traps. As more of the hoopla goes on, the more brittle Jackson’s legacy feels to me. If you gotta keep insisting someone’s important, he starts to seem more of a simulacrum. In this way I think Jackson will be a most impermanent star.
———–
* Touré, who I bet didn’t write about Jackson’s “eccentricities” when he was alive, also doesn’t think they should be talked about when he was dead. (”Is it appropriate now to go into those issues? … We’ve gone over them over and over”) His remark provoked this smackdown from Gloria Allred: “May I say we weren’t just talking about eccentricities for the last what, 15 years or so. What you call curiosity other people call accusations of child molestations.”
** Springsteen was a serious songwriter, of course; he melded the music of everyone from the Crystals to Van Morrison in a strikingly open-hearted way; he ran away from celebrity at crucial times; and he’s carried himself through an almost 40-year career with a great deal of dignity.
*** Until Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles supplanted it. Now, you’ll, note, everyone talks about how Thriller is the largest selling album worldwide. It probably is, but it’s a conveniently uncheckable factoid; in some twelve days of almost constant coverage, I’ve yet to hear someone say that Thriller is the second best-selling album in U.S. history.
[A]mong the people, you know, the music and the joy and the cultural importance of Michael has been liberated from the discussion of the eccentricities*, which is what the media, and a lot of regular people, too, have focused on in the last decade or so.
Now, hold that thought for a minute. Meanwhile, in the NYT, my friend David Carr was coming to the defense of Steve Jobs:
[L]ast week, Mr. Jobs returned to work on a part-time basis, precisely when he said he would. Experts with only a general knowledge of his treatment suggest his prognosis is good.
That did not stop the keening on the blogs, in the news media and in the investment community that he and Apple needed to do a medical full monty to explain his conditions because they believe they are material to the company’s future and should be reported as such.
To which I, and not many others, say: Is anyone really confused about Mr. Jobs’s health status? I remain unconvinced, in part because I believe that prurience, not legitimate financial concerns, drives most people’s interest in the illness of others.
Now, what unites these two comments is an overweening concern for the tender feelings of celebrities—or, in the much more egregious Touré-Jackson case, for the tender feeling of a dead celebrity.
Two things are going on here. For the first, their perspectives are uncannily similar to the position that would be taken not just by the famous people involved themselves, but their PR establishments.
In Toure’s case I think it’s pretty much a case of his being a popist, that sphere of pop culture writing that thinks that there’s just too darn much criticism about pop stars out there. The popist mantra is to take pop stars on their own terms. Carr is a much more serious person and is of course not carrying Apple’s water, though he is equally wrong.
He’s wrong because of the second issue, which is much more important. Neither Touré nor Carr said the obvious: That when you live by celebrity you die by it—metaphorically, of course I mean, though mortality at least brushes each of these cases.
Jackson lived and Jobs lives in almost unimaginable luxury, and more than that they both lived lives in which their every whim was fulfilled. They each can make the boast of the truly fortunate person, which is that he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do, and can basically do anything he wants to do.
And forgive me for sounding crass, but the category of doing what one wants to to, particularly when it comes to men, often involves sex, and it’s hard to believe that both, like most other celebrities, haven’t enjoyed the manifold benefits of that, too.
You didn’t hear either of them, or their respective amen corners, complain about the state of their lives before the downside of their wealth and fame arose.
In fact, both, to a great extent, have been hoisted on their own petard. Jobs, of course, is famously intransigent and unforgiving. He’s insulting, rude, impulsive, and, by all accounts, a heroic asshole, by which I mean he goes the extra mile and is mean to people even when doesn’t have to be.
Beyond that, he’s turned himself into a celebrity—a brittle and remote one, of course, but a consumer icon.
Well guess what? People get interested when you contract a mysterious disease.
Tough shit if he’s getting subjected to a little too much publicity about his health, particular when a) he and the company have been at best obfuscatory and at worst untruthful about his condition and b) he patently is a key corporate asset whose health, for better or worse, is tied to Apple’s financial fortunes. How is interest driven by these two forces “prurient”? I mean, it might be, as well, but the prurient aspect is far outweighed by the other two.
There’s a really easy way to work in the business world and have this not be a factor, and that is to own your own business and keep the company private. Jobs made that decision many years ago.
As for Jackson, jesus—his biggest claim to fame is his celebrity qua celebrity. He’s an amazing pop artist, of course, but he’s no Stevie Wonder, to name just one Motown fellow. He’s no Springsteen**, either, and he’s no Prince. A lot of black activists, like the buffoonish Al Sharpton, have been trying to prop up his rep as a breakthrough black artist; I take the point that “Billie Jean” was a watershed for MTV, but Wonder was hitting crazy commercial landmarks in the 1970s. (Songs of the Key of Life debuted at number one, for example, an almost unprecedented event at the time, and while I don’t care much about the Grammys, his dominance of the event in the middle part of the decade was nearly total.)
Anyway, the one thing people can say about Jackson was that, for a time, he had the biggest-selling album ever in the U.S.*** He played his celebrity for all it was worth. He was an early practitioner of the art of being more famous for being famous.
Again, guess what? People are going to be interested when kids say you molested them, in whether you’re gay if you’ve apparently never had a heterosexual relationship in your life, in why your skin color changed, or in why you’ve destroyed your face with plastic surgery.
He got all the attention for the things he wanted to have attention paid to—god knows we’ve heard enough about Jackson’s accomplishments. But it takes a special type of journalist to then turn around and complain when people also talk about the weird stuff.
Indeed, Toure was also on MSNBC excitedly telling viewers that Jackson was “bigger than Elvis in the history of music,” which is a silly thing to say, for reasons I‘ve explained earlier: Most particularly, the difference is that Jackson’s supreme skill was marshaling his already formidable commercial appeal and taking it to a new level—a temporary one, as we saw. Presley, as we all know, invented himself, his music, and then his audience one by one, in an absolutely epochal series of audacious moves.
If, as popists do, you equate simply popularity with importance, it’s easy to fall into such absurd logical traps. As more of the hoopla goes on, the more brittle Jackson’s legacy feels to me. If you gotta keep insisting someone’s important, he starts to seem more of a simulacrum. In this way I think Jackson will be a most impermanent star.
———–
* Touré, who I bet didn’t write about Jackson’s “eccentricities” when he was alive, also doesn’t think they should be talked about when he was dead. (”Is it appropriate now to go into those issues? … We’ve gone over them over and over”) His remark provoked this smackdown from Gloria Allred: “May I say we weren’t just talking about eccentricities for the last what, 15 years or so. What you call curiosity other people call accusations of child molestations.”
** Springsteen was a serious songwriter, of course; he melded the music of everyone from the Crystals to Van Morrison in a strikingly open-hearted way; he ran away from celebrity at crucial times; and he’s carried himself through an almost 40-year career with a great deal of dignity.
*** Until Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles supplanted it. Now, you’ll, note, everyone talks about how Thriller is the largest selling album worldwide. It probably is, but it’s a conveniently uncheckable factoid; in some twelve days of almost constant coverage, I’ve yet to hear someone say that Thriller is the second best-selling album in U.S. history.
The death of MJ: The commenters strike back
Timothy Howard:
Do you have a reasonable idea of why MJ was apparently so ill for so many years? What were his illnesses? I have heard so many different rumors over the years, but clearly he was frail, weak and often in a wheelchair. We know he was diagnosed with lupus, which contributed to his sun sensitivity, but was he just a hypochondriac who took a lot of drugs for imagined illnesses? Did his heart just give out from years of starving himself?
HV: I’m not a expert in this. The one I remember was vitiligo, which supposedly caused his pigmentation to vary; others say, No, he was bleaching his skin to be white; yet others say no, he was just trying to even out the effects of the vitiligo, which seems nutty. From afar it seems the real problem was some sort of self-hating syndrome that caused him to wish to alter his appearance so dramatically, and so tragically. Again, from the outside, it looked like what he really needed was psychological help, for that and whatever his sexual issues were, to the extent that they made him unhappy, that he wasn’t able to fulfill himself, or that they affected his ability to, ah, conduct himself in accordance with societal mores.
John Bormanis:
Such “suicides” in public seem an almost inevitable result of the drives to go over the top. An interesting question is, why don’t they happen more frequently (one can imagine the same happening to Brit. Spears any moment)? How did he hold out so long? Quite tragic how humans endure abuse for stardom…
HV: We’ve heard as well about the “stress” Jackson was under. I have a feeling that he probably caused more stress for people than he took in. Granted that a child molestation trial wasn’t a walk in the park, and could have been an enormous distraction; at the same time, he took delight into turning the thing into a circus, and along the way his feelings should have run not to stress but to the much more sensible, “How could I be so stupid as to have sleepovers with hundreds of young boys?”
Other than that, you have to ask, What did Michael Jackson do all day? He hadn’t recorded an album within memory and barely appeared in public.
Rvanpatten:
maybe if he would’ve used more recipes from my cookboook, he’d still be around.
dick van patten
HV: This commenter is making a rude reference to a comment I made about Mr. Van Patten in a post about Howard Kurtz and Mariel Hemingway.
Ingrid:
“[Presley’s] tragedy is so vast it calls into question the future of the society that created, and destroyed, him.”
That is a big, big statement. Could you say more about what you mean by “society” - the entertainment industry, the record-buying and movie-going public, the South, what? And destroyed? Didn’t Elvis destroy himself, with help from the doctors who prescribed drugs for him?
I’m not being snarky, I really want to know what leads you to this conclusion.
HV: Presley has become, in a lifetime, an archetype. It’s funny, I remember arguing many years ago with a friend who, irritatingly, kept insisting that “’Star Trek’ had created the first new mythology in 4000 years.” (Wrong on so many levels.) Presley, though: Did we have, before him, the model of the artist who died too young, not in the hot flame of his art, but by keeling over off a toilet to die, his last moments of life spent in the dim haze of a realization that he’d throw away everything? Isn’t that a modern archetype with a primal force to equal other ancient ones?
Anyway, beyond that, Presley also stands as a metaphor for America, given the breathtaking achievement of his wild surmise. If you buy into that, his debauching—by himself and others—and that fate are worrisome. Not just to America-bashers; Virgil, you’ll recall, served as a national poet without peer, but still found in Rome’s behavior disturbing indications—among other things, a dangerously out-of-control leadership and cathartic but needless violence.
You can appreciate both America’s failings and its achievements and worry about a society that, after creating such figures, watches blankly while such an artist collapses. On the other hand, the founding fathers didn’t define the happiness they allowed us to pursue, and some people, particularly people with the funds to underwrite the quest, are going to get it wrong.
Frank Youngwerth:
I think the Colonel, who continuously sucked money out of Elvis’ soul, and Quincy Jones, who apparently considered Michael a jazz artist, deserve consideration too.
HV: I disagree with you about Jones, but in both cases don’t you think the artist shares the blame? If the bioraphies are to be believed, Parker was taking 50 percent of Presley’s income in the latter half of his career, which is different from, for example, the Stones’ shafting at the hands of Allen Klein.
ruben martinez:
elvis presley and michel jackson were both superstars in their field of music. both were great singers, different styles, great charisma attraction. michael jackson was loved it seems by both black and white audiences, while i am not sure the black audience liked presley’s music. what i do know is when elvis died the entire white people of the world mourned plus other non white races like hispanics. i do not know if the same is true about jackson. the point i am trying to make is to me, a hispanic man in my 50s, i grew up with both; i love their music equally. no black or white prejudice and will miss them deeply. but in my opinion because elvis was white his legacy will continue to be supreme over anybody else white or black, and it will be up to the mainly the black race to keep [jackson’s] legacy from being forgotten. they were one of a kind, R M
Bill:
Excellent analysis; great counterpoint. A bit harsh, perhaps, but a bit of reality needs to intrude.
I agree about Elvis. Those of us who lived in the segregated US before the ’60’s will be able to relate to what you meant. Those who have never seen blatant discrimination, in thought and speech as well as in deed, probably will not get it.
TJ Mertz:
Three related thoughts.
First, my brother pointed out a difference he saw yesterday and that is that Elvis seemed to enjoy himself and his stardom (at least for over a decade) and that Michael didn’t.
Second, although you are correct about Michael Jackson building Berry Gordy’s crossover concepts and not pioneering in the sense of Elvis and cross over being primarily a commercial concept, I think the word “merely” isn’t quite right and that (at least in terms of my experience and inner life) Michael’s role is more significant than this captures.
For many those years of the early 1970s were years when the ideals of the Civil Rights movement were being tried out in day-to-day life. As a grade schooler at an consciously integrated school named after Martin Luther King, I was in the middle of this. The Jackson 5 (I wish I could type with the 5 in Jackson 5 ending in a heart like it did in the notebooks of the girls in my grade school) dominated the culture of my school and embodied this idea. In this, their youth and ours were key. We were the “Young Folks,” the children of the dream and the J5 were ours. It was (for the most part) a culture of post-struggles hope and optimism (”bring salvation back”) and joy. We were the children of integration and crossover and were able to lived as if these were natural and ascendant. This made us and J5 different from earlier Motown artists and from the earlier culture of the Civil Rights movement. In important ways cross over did become merely commercial in the larger society, but for people like me the experiences of that time still resonate. The J5 are near the center of those experiences. I’ll add that at the time when Thriller broke I was working with some white working class and relatively racially isolated teenagers at a restaurant in Massachusetts and their embrace of Michael ten years later impressed me as having some of the same qualities in a much less conscious or political way.
Last, I’ve been thinking about how little Michael s death seems to call up personal feelings of mortality among my generation. I recall that when Elvis died people many who came of age in the 50’s and early 60’s spoke and wrote of how his death brought home the end of their youth and brought closer thoughts of the inevitability of their own deaths. I don’t feel this at all with Michael and don’t hear it from others. maybe it is because his life has been so publicly strange for so long that there is more of a personal distance. Maybe it is because there have been so many deaths — Joey Ramone evoked these feeling with me. Maybe, I’m wrong and others do feel it.
TJ
HV: TJ, thanks for taking the time to write. I take your point, but let me press back a little. Consider this: The Jackson Five should have been the very lightest of the great Motown acts in terms of their family-group shitck, but paradoxically became among the most … I won’t say timeless, but beloved. Wasn’t this because of the songs Deke Richards provided for them? Wasn’t it another one of Gordy’s peculiar triumphs that his machine provided the five something extra? Michael was going to be a star, regardless, sure. But those opening chords of “I Want You Back,” the jaunty beat and snappy wordplay of “The Love You Save” … Michael Jackson didn’t do that, The Corporation did. Again, not taking anything away from the Jackson brothers’ specific talents. And finally, I’d point out that the Jackson Five came in toward the end of the label’s golden era. For more than five years Motown acts had been banging the charts; I just took a cursory look at the number one hits of the 1960s; there really weren’t too many by black artists that weren’t Motown acts, and I bet the ratio was the same in the top tens or twenties. By which I mean that the Jackson Five came in at the end of an incredible shift in societal perceptions of black musicians; and for that Motown deserves the credit.
And I’m with you about the mortality issue. I’m disappointed in Jackson, mostly; the loss of Joey Ramone was much more affecting.
Forest:
Among Jackson’s numerous Neverland possessions up for auction a few months ago was something truly fascinating. It was one of those life-sized Elvis statues you sometimes see in theme restaurants - but that wasn’t the fascinating part. Someone (Jackson, I assume), had inscribed a quote on Elvis’ shoulder: “If I could only find a white man with a black man’s sound, I could make a million dollars.” ~ Sam Phillips. How telling.
Mike S.:
While I agree with most of what you’re saying here, I’m kind of confused about the remark you made that Elvis was a sexual predator. What exactly do you mean by that? I haven’t read about Elvis’s life too extensively but I don’t think I’ve come across anything suggesting that.
HV: Examples of this were detailed in Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Presley biographies. And of course Preseley’s fixation on Priscilla began when she was 14. (He was 24.) Leaving aside the malevolent Albert Goldman biography, Guralnick’s books, which are definitive and engrossing but infuriating in their special pleading for Presley, nonetheless include all sorts of other repellent Presley behavior, from dragging around a woman by her hair to missing his bodyguard’s wedding. Presley was supposed to have been the best man.
Andy Price:
In fairness to Ashleigh Banfield, she was fired after, in early 2003, she criticized media coverage (including but not limited to Fox News) of the Iraq invasion and occupation in a speech at Kansas State. So I think she is unworthy of your scorn.
Dan Coyle:
Agreed, Andy. Banfield is all right.
Ann:
Another angle I was totally unaware of: MJ reportedly converted to Islam late last year. The story didn’t get much play, and has been disputed, but I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it before, even as rumor:
Joe Kvidera:
The obligatory stampede of mourners to buy Bad and Thriller again is generating income for the first time in years. And just imagine the estate sale. Sothebys must be licking their lips.
HV: The math is interesting. Jackson Inc. went from having not much income and enormous expenditures into zero expenditures and boatloads of income. I’m no accountant, but I think the latter is better. Jackson’s albums all became best-sellers again since his death, and he’s dominated the top of the Billboard charts. Look more closely at the figures, though, and you’ll notice that in total he sold less than a half-million CD equivalents, including downloads, the first week, and now 800,000 the second. Even in the context of today’s anemic CD sales, that seems quite low to me. Billboard calls it “whopping,” however, so maybe I’m being overly dismissive. Still, you’ll also note that basically half of his CD sales were of greatest hits albums (and not his dorky HIStory, either). I’m sure the Jackson foofara will continue, and his fans will continue to spend money buying related paraphernalia, but I’d bet the music sales will decline steeply after this week.
Mrv:
I find it mind boggling how most of the MSM picks up and regurgitates the same mis-information, i.e. total LP sales-750 million? Watched former RIAA mouthpiece and pit bull Hilary Rosen blather on and on about MJ last night but got all dumb when asked if she had ever met him: Er no, but knew people who had…
What I can’t let go of is that irrespective of his musical chops, he was a suspected pedophile. Simple question to any of these folks busy moaning and gnashing their teeth, would you let your 11 year son sleep over at Michael’s house?
HV: I wouldn’t! Your Rosen story reminds me of when Lou Ferrigno was on I think Larry King the other night, blathering on about what good friends he and Jackson were. King came out of his stupor to ask an interesting question: Did you see evidence of drug use? Ferrigno, quickly: “Oh, I don’t know anything about his personal life!”
Joe Kvidera:
I just happened to surf by the CEO of Epic on TV saying Michael had sold “750 million records” world-wide. I yelled at the screen, “You SAY that here–but how many does it say he sold on your royalty statements?”
David K.:I guess the BILLION people who are said to watch the Oscars are the ones buying those albums.
Don’t expect there to be any rhyme or reason to the crap the media will be throwing out in the next few weeks.
Joe (not Kvidera):
Nice analysis. But the 100 million figure of Thriller isn’t as outlandish as you point out. Michael Jackson is HUGE outside of the U.S. It’s not far fetched to think that Michael sold way more albums overseas compared to the States.
HV: I don’t know, the more I look into it the more bogus the 100 million claim for Thriller seems. As far as I can tell the Guinness people were crediting Jackson with 50-something million sold as recently as a few years ago. And check out this chart anaysis story from Idolator. The writer is bending over backward to give Jackson all sort of credit but still notes:
I find it suspicious that [Thriller] was quoted at just over 40 million in global sales in the mid-’80s and suddenly shifted to the 100-mil figure less than two decades later — in the absence of additional hits, where’d those 50 million in new sales come from?
Bod:
This article (“Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs and the culture of popism”) remembers of that scene following Donnie’s death in The Big Lebowski, when Walter gives the most self-centered eulogy he could think of and the dude really loses it. Like what are you talking about man?
It’s nice to be consistent and not praise Jackson now that he is dead, as you obviously did not like him beforehand. However, Touré is allowed to mention (carefully) that people are damn stupid for celebrating him after rejoicing about his personal problems for years (which is pervert, ironically). But what the heck does Elvis have to do with that? They are lots of singers who are/were more talented that Elvis (or Jackson) and died. That’s not Touré’s point. That’s not the point.
If you want to argue about the quality of Thriller, know that some of Jackson’s album were produced by none other than Quincy Jones (including Thriller). This guy is a legend, like Miles Davis-legend. Are you now going to argue that Springsteen is also better than Quincy Jones?
Bob Peebles:
Bill, your persistent use of a made-up definition of “popism” exposes your intellectual dishonesty — or perhaps your simple lack of brainpower — once more.
You’re just not bright, knowledgeable or witty enough to be a prominent commentator on these issues, which is why you’re relegated to an obscure, self-created blog. All that drives you is seething resentment of those who still have the kind of jobs you lost.
Your dismissal of the merits of Michael Jackson’s music is thoroughly bizarre, churlish and flat-out wrong.
Maybe it’s time to get a new career?
HV: I appreciate your taking the time to write, but I don’t see why it’s so controversial for calling out journalists when they function as a part of the PR campaigns for the music industry. That a guy like Touré can go on national television and talk about Jackson’s achievements as a black artist and not in the same breath at least make acknowledgment that Jackson himself by all the evidence didn’t want to be black is curious to me. That’s one issue. Another: Admitting that Jackson’s artistic heyday ran from 1979 to, really, 1982. After that it can be legitimately said he did some amazing material, which was somewhat undercut by his rather grasping image campaigns (one year “bad,” the next “dangerous”)… and then a quick decline and a subsequent several decades of patent debilitation. And what sort of journalist shouts down someone talking about the negative side of the discussion, not because it’s wrong or anything, but just because it’s not nice to the subject? A popist, that’s who.
TheZeitgeist:
Jackson was someone who courted celebrity to be sure. But he is a unique character. Going from womb to tomb under the spotlights like that is pretty unique. No one else comes to mind in a comparable context.
Also, speculating on Jackson’s andro-image and bizarre fascination with the boys is one thing…hauling him down to the courthouse for what was a complete sham of a trial by a vindictive prosecutor that mentally damaged the dude (IMHO)is something else. Jackson didn’t “ask” for, or deserve that frankly. The guy really was asexual…even about the kids.
Its something that is very, very hard for other people to understand. Asexual people run the gamut, I think Hitler was another example. That behavior seems unbelievable to most people, sex is so important with most people at SOME point in their lives. Instead the response is to guess that they are epic perverts because no sex because that makes more sense in our perverted little minds than NO sex. Just say’in.
HV: This is a fair point: Jackson was never convicted of anything, and even the one settlement could have been a payoff to someone who was essentially blackmailing him. But that doesn’t mean Jackson did not behave inappropriately with kids in ways that should have both sunk his career and resulted in him being legally prevented from being around them. The public record of this behavior, combined with the sight of Neverland’s secret rooms (some with a half-dozen deadbolts) is slightly nauseating. And in that sense Jackson did ask for it. Again, a jury acquitted Jackson, but remember that part of the reason the prosecutor seemed so aggressive is that he was trying to prevent Jackson from again buying off his accuser.
John R.:
While I think you’re right about Elvis’ place in music history, bringing together the genres you listed I’m a little skeptical of your claims that he was a visionary, artistic figure. Michael certainly played a greater role in authoring his product, whether writing and producing his songs, setting up his music videos, or designing his stage shows. Elvis was a great singer and performer but his music was more dependent on writers and producers. As far as Elvis successors go (other than Nicolas Cage), do we have any rockabilly singers on the charts these days?
HV: I’m not an expert-expert on Presley, but I’m persuaded by people who are that his vocal meldings and his musical imagination were definitive. I also think that, far more than even Jackson, he threw this talent away. Never was more talent invested in such an oafish figure.
Jackson should probably be given more credit for his own control of his career, and visualizing that level he aspired to and of course achieved. As I said on NPR the other day, however, in an argument with Nelson George, giving Jackson too much credit for that is a trap—because, if the measure of his worth is that popularity, it must be noted it was a temporary one. As his album sales and his stature declined, he was forced to make up for it with ever-more-grasping posturings, like those oh-so-dated photo ops with him leading extras dressed up in military uniforms. (Talk about screwy: This was when the U.S. was spending a lot of money funding clowns in juntas in Central America.) As Jackson quickly had nothing to be famous about, he had to spend more and more of his time thinking up ways to demonstrate how famous he was.
Jeff:
Elvis remains the most influential artist of his era and the most important artist in rock history for a simple reason: he was the first. Whether intentional or not, he introduced black rhythm & blues to the wider white audience. That was the spark that lit the fire that’s been burning for 50+ years now. One can argue about the many great artists (white and black) of that era who are overlooked today, or the injustice of it, but that’s missing the point. For good and bad, in the context of those times, Elvis was the one.
Michael Jackson, on the other hand, didn’t invent a genre - he refined one already in existence, making it more palatable to the masses. The difference is immense. A better comparison than Elvis or the Beatles (the other name thrown into the mix by TV commentators), I think, is the Bee Gees circa Saturday Night Fever. After a decade in the biz, they shot to superstardom…and flamed out within a few years due to overexposure and changing musical trends. The same was true of MJ. By 1990 he was, for all intents and purposes, an afterthought.
Noam Sane:
Really interesting stuff. But the entertainment business is chock full of guys like this - he just took it large-scale.
For instance, Ahmet Ertegun - a revered music-industry figure. Check this paragraph out from an interview that Uncut Magazine did with the first manager of the Buffalo Springfield,
Frazier Mohawk:
Neil once said I should have stayed with the Buffalo Springfield longer. And I thought that too, but I gave them up at gunpoint so I didn’t have a choice. I was in New York putting on a little Eastern tour with the Springfield, and we were out there with The Byrds. I’d be talking to promoters as we were going about. One day [Atlantic producer/manager] Charlie Greene showed up and asked me out to dinner. So he picked me up in his limo, which I was pretty sure belonged to Ahmet [Ertegun, Atlantic boss] because it wasn’t a rental and he was the only guy I knew in New York with a limo. We drove around and around and Charlie would be talking, saying how he thought he could do a better job with the band. He had a silver revolver that he’d taken out of his waistband and had put in his pocket. The whole time he was talking, he had his hand on it. Eventually I said: “Hey Charlie, how about dinner now?” And he pulled over to a hotdog stand, reached through the window and bought me a hotdog. Then he said “Look, I’ll give you $1,000 for the band”, to which I said no. I think I said I’d think about it, but all I wanted to do was get out of there. So through a series of things, Charlie had written out an ‘agreement’ on a paper napkin. And I hadn’t signed it. As I was finally getting out of the car, and that was the only way I could get out, he stuck $1,000 in my pocket. I said “No no, I really don’t want this.” Charlie said “No, you keep it.” And that was the last I saw of The Buffalo Springfield. Charlie more or less said that if I came back around, I’d be dealt with. It was scary as hell. I never told the band what happened. And to this day, Neil and the others don’t know it happened. It was that whole Sonny Bono group of people at Atlantic. Ahmet was a very aggressive and forceful businessman and he got what he wanted. Yes, he had great ears and did wonderful things with music, but I certainly wasn’t happy.
Andrew Goodwin:
A difference between Elvis and Jackson — Michael was forced into show biz at such a young age that today we might call that child abuse. Which then produces a drivenness and a related need to re-create a lost childhood. Standard psycho-babble? Or simply what happened *to* him?
HV: Yeah, it’s a much different story. Both had a big idea, but when they had it they were at much different places in their lives, and the motivations, which is your point, are in both cases unknowable but plainly different. On the other hand, both had compromised fathers and both were closely attached to their mothers; something was driving Presley, too.
Dan Coyle:
I wonder, when Axl Rose kicks it, if we’re gonna be treated to a similar round of “Misunderstood genius” horseshit. Because that’s another guy who has been locked in his room for years, metaphorically, like Jackson and Elvis.
HV: And, of course, Sly Stone.
Do you have a reasonable idea of why MJ was apparently so ill for so many years? What were his illnesses? I have heard so many different rumors over the years, but clearly he was frail, weak and often in a wheelchair. We know he was diagnosed with lupus, which contributed to his sun sensitivity, but was he just a hypochondriac who took a lot of drugs for imagined illnesses? Did his heart just give out from years of starving himself?
HV: I’m not a expert in this. The one I remember was vitiligo, which supposedly caused his pigmentation to vary; others say, No, he was bleaching his skin to be white; yet others say no, he was just trying to even out the effects of the vitiligo, which seems nutty. From afar it seems the real problem was some sort of self-hating syndrome that caused him to wish to alter his appearance so dramatically, and so tragically. Again, from the outside, it looked like what he really needed was psychological help, for that and whatever his sexual issues were, to the extent that they made him unhappy, that he wasn’t able to fulfill himself, or that they affected his ability to, ah, conduct himself in accordance with societal mores.
John Bormanis:
Such “suicides” in public seem an almost inevitable result of the drives to go over the top. An interesting question is, why don’t they happen more frequently (one can imagine the same happening to Brit. Spears any moment)? How did he hold out so long? Quite tragic how humans endure abuse for stardom…
HV: We’ve heard as well about the “stress” Jackson was under. I have a feeling that he probably caused more stress for people than he took in. Granted that a child molestation trial wasn’t a walk in the park, and could have been an enormous distraction; at the same time, he took delight into turning the thing into a circus, and along the way his feelings should have run not to stress but to the much more sensible, “How could I be so stupid as to have sleepovers with hundreds of young boys?”
Other than that, you have to ask, What did Michael Jackson do all day? He hadn’t recorded an album within memory and barely appeared in public.
Rvanpatten:
maybe if he would’ve used more recipes from my cookboook, he’d still be around.
dick van patten
HV: This commenter is making a rude reference to a comment I made about Mr. Van Patten in a post about Howard Kurtz and Mariel Hemingway.
Ingrid:
“[Presley’s] tragedy is so vast it calls into question the future of the society that created, and destroyed, him.”
That is a big, big statement. Could you say more about what you mean by “society” - the entertainment industry, the record-buying and movie-going public, the South, what? And destroyed? Didn’t Elvis destroy himself, with help from the doctors who prescribed drugs for him?
I’m not being snarky, I really want to know what leads you to this conclusion.
HV: Presley has become, in a lifetime, an archetype. It’s funny, I remember arguing many years ago with a friend who, irritatingly, kept insisting that “’Star Trek’ had created the first new mythology in 4000 years.” (Wrong on so many levels.) Presley, though: Did we have, before him, the model of the artist who died too young, not in the hot flame of his art, but by keeling over off a toilet to die, his last moments of life spent in the dim haze of a realization that he’d throw away everything? Isn’t that a modern archetype with a primal force to equal other ancient ones?
Anyway, beyond that, Presley also stands as a metaphor for America, given the breathtaking achievement of his wild surmise. If you buy into that, his debauching—by himself and others—and that fate are worrisome. Not just to America-bashers; Virgil, you’ll recall, served as a national poet without peer, but still found in Rome’s behavior disturbing indications—among other things, a dangerously out-of-control leadership and cathartic but needless violence.
You can appreciate both America’s failings and its achievements and worry about a society that, after creating such figures, watches blankly while such an artist collapses. On the other hand, the founding fathers didn’t define the happiness they allowed us to pursue, and some people, particularly people with the funds to underwrite the quest, are going to get it wrong.
Frank Youngwerth:
I think the Colonel, who continuously sucked money out of Elvis’ soul, and Quincy Jones, who apparently considered Michael a jazz artist, deserve consideration too.
HV: I disagree with you about Jones, but in both cases don’t you think the artist shares the blame? If the bioraphies are to be believed, Parker was taking 50 percent of Presley’s income in the latter half of his career, which is different from, for example, the Stones’ shafting at the hands of Allen Klein.
ruben martinez:
elvis presley and michel jackson were both superstars in their field of music. both were great singers, different styles, great charisma attraction. michael jackson was loved it seems by both black and white audiences, while i am not sure the black audience liked presley’s music. what i do know is when elvis died the entire white people of the world mourned plus other non white races like hispanics. i do not know if the same is true about jackson. the point i am trying to make is to me, a hispanic man in my 50s, i grew up with both; i love their music equally. no black or white prejudice and will miss them deeply. but in my opinion because elvis was white his legacy will continue to be supreme over anybody else white or black, and it will be up to the mainly the black race to keep [jackson’s] legacy from being forgotten. they were one of a kind, R M
Bill:
Excellent analysis; great counterpoint. A bit harsh, perhaps, but a bit of reality needs to intrude.
I agree about Elvis. Those of us who lived in the segregated US before the ’60’s will be able to relate to what you meant. Those who have never seen blatant discrimination, in thought and speech as well as in deed, probably will not get it.
TJ Mertz:
Three related thoughts.
First, my brother pointed out a difference he saw yesterday and that is that Elvis seemed to enjoy himself and his stardom (at least for over a decade) and that Michael didn’t.
Second, although you are correct about Michael Jackson building Berry Gordy’s crossover concepts and not pioneering in the sense of Elvis and cross over being primarily a commercial concept, I think the word “merely” isn’t quite right and that (at least in terms of my experience and inner life) Michael’s role is more significant than this captures.
For many those years of the early 1970s were years when the ideals of the Civil Rights movement were being tried out in day-to-day life. As a grade schooler at an consciously integrated school named after Martin Luther King, I was in the middle of this. The Jackson 5 (I wish I could type with the 5 in Jackson 5 ending in a heart like it did in the notebooks of the girls in my grade school) dominated the culture of my school and embodied this idea. In this, their youth and ours were key. We were the “Young Folks,” the children of the dream and the J5 were ours. It was (for the most part) a culture of post-struggles hope and optimism (”bring salvation back”) and joy. We were the children of integration and crossover and were able to lived as if these were natural and ascendant. This made us and J5 different from earlier Motown artists and from the earlier culture of the Civil Rights movement. In important ways cross over did become merely commercial in the larger society, but for people like me the experiences of that time still resonate. The J5 are near the center of those experiences. I’ll add that at the time when Thriller broke I was working with some white working class and relatively racially isolated teenagers at a restaurant in Massachusetts and their embrace of Michael ten years later impressed me as having some of the same qualities in a much less conscious or political way.
Last, I’ve been thinking about how little Michael s death seems to call up personal feelings of mortality among my generation. I recall that when Elvis died people many who came of age in the 50’s and early 60’s spoke and wrote of how his death brought home the end of their youth and brought closer thoughts of the inevitability of their own deaths. I don’t feel this at all with Michael and don’t hear it from others. maybe it is because his life has been so publicly strange for so long that there is more of a personal distance. Maybe it is because there have been so many deaths — Joey Ramone evoked these feeling with me. Maybe, I’m wrong and others do feel it.
TJ
HV: TJ, thanks for taking the time to write. I take your point, but let me press back a little. Consider this: The Jackson Five should have been the very lightest of the great Motown acts in terms of their family-group shitck, but paradoxically became among the most … I won’t say timeless, but beloved. Wasn’t this because of the songs Deke Richards provided for them? Wasn’t it another one of Gordy’s peculiar triumphs that his machine provided the five something extra? Michael was going to be a star, regardless, sure. But those opening chords of “I Want You Back,” the jaunty beat and snappy wordplay of “The Love You Save” … Michael Jackson didn’t do that, The Corporation did. Again, not taking anything away from the Jackson brothers’ specific talents. And finally, I’d point out that the Jackson Five came in toward the end of the label’s golden era. For more than five years Motown acts had been banging the charts; I just took a cursory look at the number one hits of the 1960s; there really weren’t too many by black artists that weren’t Motown acts, and I bet the ratio was the same in the top tens or twenties. By which I mean that the Jackson Five came in at the end of an incredible shift in societal perceptions of black musicians; and for that Motown deserves the credit.
And I’m with you about the mortality issue. I’m disappointed in Jackson, mostly; the loss of Joey Ramone was much more affecting.
Forest:
Among Jackson’s numerous Neverland possessions up for auction a few months ago was something truly fascinating. It was one of those life-sized Elvis statues you sometimes see in theme restaurants - but that wasn’t the fascinating part. Someone (Jackson, I assume), had inscribed a quote on Elvis’ shoulder: “If I could only find a white man with a black man’s sound, I could make a million dollars.” ~ Sam Phillips. How telling.
Mike S.:
While I agree with most of what you’re saying here, I’m kind of confused about the remark you made that Elvis was a sexual predator. What exactly do you mean by that? I haven’t read about Elvis’s life too extensively but I don’t think I’ve come across anything suggesting that.
HV: Examples of this were detailed in Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Presley biographies. And of course Preseley’s fixation on Priscilla began when she was 14. (He was 24.) Leaving aside the malevolent Albert Goldman biography, Guralnick’s books, which are definitive and engrossing but infuriating in their special pleading for Presley, nonetheless include all sorts of other repellent Presley behavior, from dragging around a woman by her hair to missing his bodyguard’s wedding. Presley was supposed to have been the best man.
Andy Price:
In fairness to Ashleigh Banfield, she was fired after, in early 2003, she criticized media coverage (including but not limited to Fox News) of the Iraq invasion and occupation in a speech at Kansas State. So I think she is unworthy of your scorn.
Dan Coyle:
Agreed, Andy. Banfield is all right.
Ann:
Another angle I was totally unaware of: MJ reportedly converted to Islam late last year. The story didn’t get much play, and has been disputed, but I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it before, even as rumor:
Joe Kvidera:
The obligatory stampede of mourners to buy Bad and Thriller again is generating income for the first time in years. And just imagine the estate sale. Sothebys must be licking their lips.
HV: The math is interesting. Jackson Inc. went from having not much income and enormous expenditures into zero expenditures and boatloads of income. I’m no accountant, but I think the latter is better. Jackson’s albums all became best-sellers again since his death, and he’s dominated the top of the Billboard charts. Look more closely at the figures, though, and you’ll notice that in total he sold less than a half-million CD equivalents, including downloads, the first week, and now 800,000 the second. Even in the context of today’s anemic CD sales, that seems quite low to me. Billboard calls it “whopping,” however, so maybe I’m being overly dismissive. Still, you’ll also note that basically half of his CD sales were of greatest hits albums (and not his dorky HIStory, either). I’m sure the Jackson foofara will continue, and his fans will continue to spend money buying related paraphernalia, but I’d bet the music sales will decline steeply after this week.
Mrv:
I find it mind boggling how most of the MSM picks up and regurgitates the same mis-information, i.e. total LP sales-750 million? Watched former RIAA mouthpiece and pit bull Hilary Rosen blather on and on about MJ last night but got all dumb when asked if she had ever met him: Er no, but knew people who had…
What I can’t let go of is that irrespective of his musical chops, he was a suspected pedophile. Simple question to any of these folks busy moaning and gnashing their teeth, would you let your 11 year son sleep over at Michael’s house?
HV: I wouldn’t! Your Rosen story reminds me of when Lou Ferrigno was on I think Larry King the other night, blathering on about what good friends he and Jackson were. King came out of his stupor to ask an interesting question: Did you see evidence of drug use? Ferrigno, quickly: “Oh, I don’t know anything about his personal life!”
Joe Kvidera:
I just happened to surf by the CEO of Epic on TV saying Michael had sold “750 million records” world-wide. I yelled at the screen, “You SAY that here–but how many does it say he sold on your royalty statements?”
David K.:I guess the BILLION people who are said to watch the Oscars are the ones buying those albums.
Don’t expect there to be any rhyme or reason to the crap the media will be throwing out in the next few weeks.
Joe (not Kvidera):
Nice analysis. But the 100 million figure of Thriller isn’t as outlandish as you point out. Michael Jackson is HUGE outside of the U.S. It’s not far fetched to think that Michael sold way more albums overseas compared to the States.
HV: I don’t know, the more I look into it the more bogus the 100 million claim for Thriller seems. As far as I can tell the Guinness people were crediting Jackson with 50-something million sold as recently as a few years ago. And check out this chart anaysis story from Idolator. The writer is bending over backward to give Jackson all sort of credit but still notes:
I find it suspicious that [Thriller] was quoted at just over 40 million in global sales in the mid-’80s and suddenly shifted to the 100-mil figure less than two decades later — in the absence of additional hits, where’d those 50 million in new sales come from?
Bod:
This article (“Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs and the culture of popism”) remembers of that scene following Donnie’s death in The Big Lebowski, when Walter gives the most self-centered eulogy he could think of and the dude really loses it. Like what are you talking about man?
It’s nice to be consistent and not praise Jackson now that he is dead, as you obviously did not like him beforehand. However, Touré is allowed to mention (carefully) that people are damn stupid for celebrating him after rejoicing about his personal problems for years (which is pervert, ironically). But what the heck does Elvis have to do with that? They are lots of singers who are/were more talented that Elvis (or Jackson) and died. That’s not Touré’s point. That’s not the point.
If you want to argue about the quality of Thriller, know that some of Jackson’s album were produced by none other than Quincy Jones (including Thriller). This guy is a legend, like Miles Davis-legend. Are you now going to argue that Springsteen is also better than Quincy Jones?
Bob Peebles:
Bill, your persistent use of a made-up definition of “popism” exposes your intellectual dishonesty — or perhaps your simple lack of brainpower — once more.
You’re just not bright, knowledgeable or witty enough to be a prominent commentator on these issues, which is why you’re relegated to an obscure, self-created blog. All that drives you is seething resentment of those who still have the kind of jobs you lost.
Your dismissal of the merits of Michael Jackson’s music is thoroughly bizarre, churlish and flat-out wrong.
Maybe it’s time to get a new career?
HV: I appreciate your taking the time to write, but I don’t see why it’s so controversial for calling out journalists when they function as a part of the PR campaigns for the music industry. That a guy like Touré can go on national television and talk about Jackson’s achievements as a black artist and not in the same breath at least make acknowledgment that Jackson himself by all the evidence didn’t want to be black is curious to me. That’s one issue. Another: Admitting that Jackson’s artistic heyday ran from 1979 to, really, 1982. After that it can be legitimately said he did some amazing material, which was somewhat undercut by his rather grasping image campaigns (one year “bad,” the next “dangerous”)… and then a quick decline and a subsequent several decades of patent debilitation. And what sort of journalist shouts down someone talking about the negative side of the discussion, not because it’s wrong or anything, but just because it’s not nice to the subject? A popist, that’s who.
TheZeitgeist:
Jackson was someone who courted celebrity to be sure. But he is a unique character. Going from womb to tomb under the spotlights like that is pretty unique. No one else comes to mind in a comparable context.
Also, speculating on Jackson’s andro-image and bizarre fascination with the boys is one thing…hauling him down to the courthouse for what was a complete sham of a trial by a vindictive prosecutor that mentally damaged the dude (IMHO)is something else. Jackson didn’t “ask” for, or deserve that frankly. The guy really was asexual…even about the kids.
Its something that is very, very hard for other people to understand. Asexual people run the gamut, I think Hitler was another example. That behavior seems unbelievable to most people, sex is so important with most people at SOME point in their lives. Instead the response is to guess that they are epic perverts because no sex because that makes more sense in our perverted little minds than NO sex. Just say’in.
HV: This is a fair point: Jackson was never convicted of anything, and even the one settlement could have been a payoff to someone who was essentially blackmailing him. But that doesn’t mean Jackson did not behave inappropriately with kids in ways that should have both sunk his career and resulted in him being legally prevented from being around them. The public record of this behavior, combined with the sight of Neverland’s secret rooms (some with a half-dozen deadbolts) is slightly nauseating. And in that sense Jackson did ask for it. Again, a jury acquitted Jackson, but remember that part of the reason the prosecutor seemed so aggressive is that he was trying to prevent Jackson from again buying off his accuser.
John R.:
While I think you’re right about Elvis’ place in music history, bringing together the genres you listed I’m a little skeptical of your claims that he was a visionary, artistic figure. Michael certainly played a greater role in authoring his product, whether writing and producing his songs, setting up his music videos, or designing his stage shows. Elvis was a great singer and performer but his music was more dependent on writers and producers. As far as Elvis successors go (other than Nicolas Cage), do we have any rockabilly singers on the charts these days?
HV: I’m not an expert-expert on Presley, but I’m persuaded by people who are that his vocal meldings and his musical imagination were definitive. I also think that, far more than even Jackson, he threw this talent away. Never was more talent invested in such an oafish figure.
Jackson should probably be given more credit for his own control of his career, and visualizing that level he aspired to and of course achieved. As I said on NPR the other day, however, in an argument with Nelson George, giving Jackson too much credit for that is a trap—because, if the measure of his worth is that popularity, it must be noted it was a temporary one. As his album sales and his stature declined, he was forced to make up for it with ever-more-grasping posturings, like those oh-so-dated photo ops with him leading extras dressed up in military uniforms. (Talk about screwy: This was when the U.S. was spending a lot of money funding clowns in juntas in Central America.) As Jackson quickly had nothing to be famous about, he had to spend more and more of his time thinking up ways to demonstrate how famous he was.
Jeff:
Elvis remains the most influential artist of his era and the most important artist in rock history for a simple reason: he was the first. Whether intentional or not, he introduced black rhythm & blues to the wider white audience. That was the spark that lit the fire that’s been burning for 50+ years now. One can argue about the many great artists (white and black) of that era who are overlooked today, or the injustice of it, but that’s missing the point. For good and bad, in the context of those times, Elvis was the one.
Michael Jackson, on the other hand, didn’t invent a genre - he refined one already in existence, making it more palatable to the masses. The difference is immense. A better comparison than Elvis or the Beatles (the other name thrown into the mix by TV commentators), I think, is the Bee Gees circa Saturday Night Fever. After a decade in the biz, they shot to superstardom…and flamed out within a few years due to overexposure and changing musical trends. The same was true of MJ. By 1990 he was, for all intents and purposes, an afterthought.
Noam Sane:
Really interesting stuff. But the entertainment business is chock full of guys like this - he just took it large-scale.
For instance, Ahmet Ertegun - a revered music-industry figure. Check this paragraph out from an interview that Uncut Magazine did with the first manager of the Buffalo Springfield,
Frazier Mohawk:
Neil once said I should have stayed with the Buffalo Springfield longer. And I thought that too, but I gave them up at gunpoint so I didn’t have a choice. I was in New York putting on a little Eastern tour with the Springfield, and we were out there with The Byrds. I’d be talking to promoters as we were going about. One day [Atlantic producer/manager] Charlie Greene showed up and asked me out to dinner. So he picked me up in his limo, which I was pretty sure belonged to Ahmet [Ertegun, Atlantic boss] because it wasn’t a rental and he was the only guy I knew in New York with a limo. We drove around and around and Charlie would be talking, saying how he thought he could do a better job with the band. He had a silver revolver that he’d taken out of his waistband and had put in his pocket. The whole time he was talking, he had his hand on it. Eventually I said: “Hey Charlie, how about dinner now?” And he pulled over to a hotdog stand, reached through the window and bought me a hotdog. Then he said “Look, I’ll give you $1,000 for the band”, to which I said no. I think I said I’d think about it, but all I wanted to do was get out of there. So through a series of things, Charlie had written out an ‘agreement’ on a paper napkin. And I hadn’t signed it. As I was finally getting out of the car, and that was the only way I could get out, he stuck $1,000 in my pocket. I said “No no, I really don’t want this.” Charlie said “No, you keep it.” And that was the last I saw of The Buffalo Springfield. Charlie more or less said that if I came back around, I’d be dealt with. It was scary as hell. I never told the band what happened. And to this day, Neil and the others don’t know it happened. It was that whole Sonny Bono group of people at Atlantic. Ahmet was a very aggressive and forceful businessman and he got what he wanted. Yes, he had great ears and did wonderful things with music, but I certainly wasn’t happy.
Andrew Goodwin:
A difference between Elvis and Jackson — Michael was forced into show biz at such a young age that today we might call that child abuse. Which then produces a drivenness and a related need to re-create a lost childhood. Standard psycho-babble? Or simply what happened *to* him?
HV: Yeah, it’s a much different story. Both had a big idea, but when they had it they were at much different places in their lives, and the motivations, which is your point, are in both cases unknowable but plainly different. On the other hand, both had compromised fathers and both were closely attached to their mothers; something was driving Presley, too.
Dan Coyle:
I wonder, when Axl Rose kicks it, if we’re gonna be treated to a similar round of “Misunderstood genius” horseshit. Because that’s another guy who has been locked in his room for years, metaphorically, like Jackson and Elvis.
HV: And, of course, Sly Stone.
Michael Jackson’s worldwide sales — revealed?
Joe Kvidera passes on an interesting series of blog posts that purport to show official sales totals of Michael Jackson from around the world. I’m still absorbing the large amount of data myself that a poster named “Nelson” has shared, but here’s what seems to be the money graf:
WORLDWIDE SALES TOTAL in selected countries
SINGLES Total: 32,430,000 in selected countries
Australia: 525,000
Canada: 450,000
France: 4,275,000
Germany: 2,500,000
Japan: 370,000
US: 13,000,000
UK: 11,310,958
ALBUMS Total: 111,353,000 in selected countries
Australia: 2,835,000
Brazil: 8,220,000
Canada: 3,950,000
France: 5,100,000
Germany: 7,550,000
UK: 14,060,000
Japan: 3,638,000
U.S.: 55,000,000 (certified 58.5 in RIAA - HIStory 3.5, double albums)
Europe: 11,000,000 (complicate, introduced since 1996)
The Jackson camp, of course, makes the claim of 750 million sold. Let the analysis begin!
A few figures seem not quite right to me: Only 13M single sales in the US? Jackson has at least ten platinum singles, and quite a few more gold ones. (Most were from the pre-SoundScan era; if Nelson’s figures are not wrong, it’s powerful evidence that those RIAA certifications, which are based on shipments and not sales, are extremely unreliable indicators.*.)
And there are a lot of quadrants of the world not accounted for, from Asia to Africa.
More later. Besides the other MJ posts below, I also discussed Jackson’s inflated sales claims here.
——
* They are much more reliable in the multi-platinum realm. A CD certified ten times platinum has probably sold more than 9.5 million. But a simple gold or platinum certification can remain on a record that shipped 500k or 1M but sold perhaps 50 percent of that. If Sony, under demands from Jackson’s management, kept insuring that the artist could claim platinum certs, if not sales, it would be easy for the figures cited by the poster to be correct. Still, I’m skeptical.
WORLDWIDE SALES TOTAL in selected countries
SINGLES Total: 32,430,000 in selected countries
Australia: 525,000
Canada: 450,000
France: 4,275,000
Germany: 2,500,000
Japan: 370,000
US: 13,000,000
UK: 11,310,958
ALBUMS Total: 111,353,000 in selected countries
Australia: 2,835,000
Brazil: 8,220,000
Canada: 3,950,000
France: 5,100,000
Germany: 7,550,000
UK: 14,060,000
Japan: 3,638,000
U.S.: 55,000,000 (certified 58.5 in RIAA - HIStory 3.5, double albums)
Europe: 11,000,000 (complicate, introduced since 1996)
The Jackson camp, of course, makes the claim of 750 million sold. Let the analysis begin!
A few figures seem not quite right to me: Only 13M single sales in the US? Jackson has at least ten platinum singles, and quite a few more gold ones. (Most were from the pre-SoundScan era; if Nelson’s figures are not wrong, it’s powerful evidence that those RIAA certifications, which are based on shipments and not sales, are extremely unreliable indicators.*.)
And there are a lot of quadrants of the world not accounted for, from Asia to Africa.
More later. Besides the other MJ posts below, I also discussed Jackson’s inflated sales claims here.
——
* They are much more reliable in the multi-platinum realm. A CD certified ten times platinum has probably sold more than 9.5 million. But a simple gold or platinum certification can remain on a record that shipped 500k or 1M but sold perhaps 50 percent of that. If Sony, under demands from Jackson’s management, kept insuring that the artist could claim platinum certs, if not sales, it would be easy for the figures cited by the poster to be correct. Still, I’m skeptical.
Everything you ever wanted to know about worldwide record sales—Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Pink Floyd and more!
On the UK message board I wrote about last week, ukmix.org, a poster calling himself MJDangerous has been submitting reams of information about sales figures from around the world, notably about Michael Jackson.
With that exhaustive data, I first assumed he was a Sony employee, based either in Britain or France. MJDangerous was kind enough to respond to an email I sent him. It turns out he is French, just recently out of school and working as an engineer. His name is Guillaume Vieira. He’s not in the business at all, but rather a fan who for the last six years has been collecting press releases, Billboard stories and sales data and collating them into a coherent and persuasive portrait of an elusive beast: Legitimate accountings of worldwide record sales. I found the information he had at his fingertips impressive*.
We had the following chat over the weekend. I rearranged it a little and did some minor editing.
Hitsville: Thanks for taking the time to talk about this. What’s your experience in collecting worldwide sales figures? They are notoriously difficult to discern, aren’t they?
Guillaume Vieira: Figures are difficult to discern in the beginning, but I faced enough of them to discern them immediately and quite easily now. I’ve checked charts, certifications and officially reported sales of over 10,000 albums in the last six years. When a figure is said to have been officially reported but hasn’t, I know it instantly. As I said, it is easy for me—I already know all the figures that have been really reported.
Hitsville: As you’ve no doubt noticed, the New York Times after Michael Jackson’s death stated flatly that he had sold 750 million records worldwide, and that Thriller had sold an “estimated” 100 million. Every other news outlet in the land, not to mention the indefatigable U.S. cable channels, cited similar figures. Are they accurate? What’s your best estimate about Thriller?
Vieira: The figure of “over 100 million” for Thriller came out, just like the figure of 750 million for Jackson, in November 2006 at World Music Awards. The last reported figure by Sony was 54 million worldwide, during the HIStory era, while the Guinness Book of World Records reported Thriller at “over 50 million” worldwide. In 2006, his management team reported it sold 104 million worldwide—54 million in the US according to the RIAA and 50 million elsewhere according to Guinness!
Thriller indeed sold over 28 million copies in the US. It was a giant blockbuster there (37 weeks #1). But to sell 100 million it would have to be even more successful in every other market than in the US, which represents 40 percent of international sales. It was for sure a blockbuster, but that much was simply not possible!
In UK, its shipment is up to 4,12 million copies with last week’s sales.
In France, it sold a record breaking 3,3 million copies (1,8 million by Feb 1984 according to Billboard; 2,5 million by 1988 according to SNEP—the French equivalent of the RIAA. Then we have documented sales for recent years).
Italy, 1,19 million up to 2001, published by Sony Music. Thriller 25 is Gold there, as a whole it sold 1,3 million in this country by now.
Germany, 3xPlat (1,5m**) since 1995, not many figures since that time but chart performances put it around 2 million.
Sweden, recently certified 4xPlatinum, 400,000, plus 20,000 copies for Thriller 25.
Netherlands, 800,000 copies by 1996 (8xPlatinum, highest certified album ever), by now over 1 million.
Austria, 400,000, 8xPlatinum, again highest figure ever reached (local albums included).
Belgium, 550,000, 11xPlatinum, second to Helmut Lotti’s Goes Classic only.
Spain, 500,000 by 1984, around a million currently.
In Europe, it sold close to 17 million copies. This figure is massive—more impressive than 28 million in US. Since IFPI introduced album certifications for Europe in 1994, no album ever reached even 10 million. The only one studio album that reached 10 million in Europe in the last 20 years is Dangerous, by Michael Jackson himself, released in 1991, which sold 12 million copies in the old continent. That album, regarded as half a flop in the US, is to Europe/Asia/Oceania the equivalent of Shania Twain’s Come On Over in the US—The biggest album released in the last 2 decades.
Billboard recently reported a figure of 2,5 million copies in Japan for Thriller (it sold 1,616,000 copies while charting in 83/84 alone, without counting imports, 30% of sales of foreign acts). It sold around 6,5 million in Asia.
Over a million in Australia, recently certified 14xPlatinum (980,000).
In South America, it is the best selling album ever for a foreign act: more than 600,000 copies in Argentina, over 1,3 million in Brazil, 400,000 in Chile and a million in Mexico. Then over 3 million in Canada. In Africa, it sold 600,000 copies in South Africa alone, 300,000 copies in Turkey, over 2 million in the continent.
Then we only have to add figures: US 28,5m, Europe 17m, Canada 3,3m, Asia 6,5m, Latin America + Oceania 6m, Africa 2m, total around 63 million. As you can see, a lot of accurate data is actually known; the jigsaw is far from being as obscure as people may think. Give or take a maximum of 2m, this figure of 63 million is correct.
Hitsville: What’s your ballpark estimate of how many records Jackson sold worldwide?
Vieira:Albums - at least 205 million, at most 225 million
Singles - at least 105 million, at most 120 million
Digital singles - at least 19 million, at most 22 million
Music Videos - at least 14 million, at most 17 million
Ringtones - 2 million, give or take a few thousands (1,4 million in the US)
All those figures don’t include sales of the Jackson 5/Jacksons, except for Digital singles. The group sold:
Albums - at least 45 million, at most 60 million
Singles - at least 40 million, at most 55 million
All together, that puts a ballpark at 430—500 million, but since some figures may be a bit too high, and others too low (they aren’t all in the low side or all in the high side), a more correct one would be worldwide records sales somewhere between 450 million and 480 million.
That’s around 80 million more than Elvis Presley, 40 million under the Beatles***.
Hitsville: Those are impressive figures, even if they don’t approach those big round numbers the papers were tossing about. Let’s talk about the Jackson Five for a minute. It’s funny—while I hadn’t published it, I was working on a post discussing whether the figure of 100 million sold for the Jackson Five, as is claimed, could possibly be right. To be honest, I thought it couldn’t; their heyday lasted about 18 months. In the U.S. they’re the equivalent of, say, Three Dog Night. On the other hand, I also remember Michael Jackson perhaps in the Martin Bashir documentary, recalling that as a 12-year-old he would get royalty checks of $200,000, which I thought was a large figure a) at the time and b) considering infinitesimal royalty rate the group was getting from Motown. But it makes sense if the group was selling records at those levels. Did they really sell anything like 100 million records?
Guillaume: The Jackson 5/Jacksons did sell around 100 million; they sold around 50 million of each singles and albums. But that is up to now! When that figure was first claimed in 1977, they were obviously, far, far from reaching it. That claim even supposed they were the second group reaching that milestone after the Beatles—outselling even the Rolling Stones, which was not true at all (and still isn’t!). Their single sales in the US were massive; even up to now they still are close to Madonna in this area, and outsold acts like Whitney Houston.
Hitsville: In the context of Motown, the Jacksons were the label’s 5th or 6th biggest act. As I look over a crude marker like the biggest chart acts of Billboard, its strikes me that Berry Gordy oversaw the careers of close to ten percent of the biggest acts in history. Do you have an off-the-cuff sense of how many records Motown sold?
Guillaume: Motown sales were truly gigantic in the 60s and 70s. Single sales were huge at that time and to be honest they were definitely dominating that sector. Album sales of Motown acts are very often not that impressive: First because the market wasn’t big at the time, second because their acts are more remembered for their singles than their albums in general, third because Motown releases the same hits packages again and again, cannibalizing sales of original albums. Only Stevie Wonder, and later Lionel Richie, sold loads of albums while signed by Motown. It is hard to guess the entire sales of the label (especialy since I haven’t studied several of their key acts), but let’s check a few of them:
- Jackson 5 - 70 million (not including sales of the Jacksons, who weren’t on Motown anymore)
- Michael Jackson - 20 million
- Stevie Wonder - 170 million
- Lionel Richie - 85 million
- Diana Ross/Supremes - 190 million
- Commodores - 60 million
- The Temptations - 110 million
- Marvin Gaye - 110 million
- Four Tops - 40 million
- Miracles/Smokey Robinson - 55 million
A total of 910 million - most of them were singles. With all their acts, it is safe to say the Motown label sold well over 1 billion records, which is an incredible total.
Hitsville: Now, if it’s fair to toss in the Jackson Five’s sales with Michael’s, it’s fair to toss in Paul McCartney’s with his previous band. What’s his totals compared to Jackson’s? Diana Ross’ totals as a solo artist combined with with the Supremes?
Guillaume: Diana Ross/Supremes total is ahead, not that far from 200 million records sold. Paul McCartney is the master. He sold around 170 million records on his own, added to over 500 million with the Beatles; that is over two thirds of the road to a billion! Obviously, on such a list, Michael Jackson wouldn’t be at 2, considering the three other Beatles would be ahead of him. Macca with 670m, Lennon with 620m, Harrison with 550m and Ringo with 525m, then Michael Jackson with around 465m. When we see how hard it is to sell 10 million records (and despite what most people think it has always been very hard), those numbers are from another world!
Hitsville: Janet Jackson gets overlooked sometimes in the Michael hoopla, but she is a top-tier star in her own right, isn’t she? What’s your best estimation of her worldwide sales and her ranking worldwide?
Janet sold 45 million singles and 65 million albums, which ranks her among the top 60 best selling acts ever, quite an achievement already, definitely a star on her own. She is in par with the likes Nirvana, Journey, and the Who in terms of album sales and sold many more singles than them.
Hitsville: What are the second and third best-selling albums worldwide, behind Thriller?
Guillaume: Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, is the second-best-selling album ever. It is now up to 42 million and still selling very well year after year. It is harder to say which album is at three—a trio of soundtracks sold about the same at 40 million: Grease, Saturday Night Fever and The Bodyguard. Grease looks like having the lead yet and anyway is the one that is still selling the most so it will end at 3 sooner or later.
Jackson’s Bad ranks in the top 10 while Dangerous sits inside the top 20. Interesting to note that despite their relatively small sales in the US compared to Thriller, in the rest of the world they were almost as massive as Thriller and are among the seven and eight best-selling albums ever, along with Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, Dark Side of the Moon and the three soundtracks previously named. All those albums sold 20 to 23 million outside of the US, except Thriller, which sold close to 35 million.
With that exhaustive data, I first assumed he was a Sony employee, based either in Britain or France. MJDangerous was kind enough to respond to an email I sent him. It turns out he is French, just recently out of school and working as an engineer. His name is Guillaume Vieira. He’s not in the business at all, but rather a fan who for the last six years has been collecting press releases, Billboard stories and sales data and collating them into a coherent and persuasive portrait of an elusive beast: Legitimate accountings of worldwide record sales. I found the information he had at his fingertips impressive*.
We had the following chat over the weekend. I rearranged it a little and did some minor editing.
Hitsville: Thanks for taking the time to talk about this. What’s your experience in collecting worldwide sales figures? They are notoriously difficult to discern, aren’t they?
Guillaume Vieira: Figures are difficult to discern in the beginning, but I faced enough of them to discern them immediately and quite easily now. I’ve checked charts, certifications and officially reported sales of over 10,000 albums in the last six years. When a figure is said to have been officially reported but hasn’t, I know it instantly. As I said, it is easy for me—I already know all the figures that have been really reported.
Hitsville: As you’ve no doubt noticed, the New York Times after Michael Jackson’s death stated flatly that he had sold 750 million records worldwide, and that Thriller had sold an “estimated” 100 million. Every other news outlet in the land, not to mention the indefatigable U.S. cable channels, cited similar figures. Are they accurate? What’s your best estimate about Thriller?
Vieira: The figure of “over 100 million” for Thriller came out, just like the figure of 750 million for Jackson, in November 2006 at World Music Awards. The last reported figure by Sony was 54 million worldwide, during the HIStory era, while the Guinness Book of World Records reported Thriller at “over 50 million” worldwide. In 2006, his management team reported it sold 104 million worldwide—54 million in the US according to the RIAA and 50 million elsewhere according to Guinness!
Thriller indeed sold over 28 million copies in the US. It was a giant blockbuster there (37 weeks #1). But to sell 100 million it would have to be even more successful in every other market than in the US, which represents 40 percent of international sales. It was for sure a blockbuster, but that much was simply not possible!
In UK, its shipment is up to 4,12 million copies with last week’s sales.
In France, it sold a record breaking 3,3 million copies (1,8 million by Feb 1984 according to Billboard; 2,5 million by 1988 according to SNEP—the French equivalent of the RIAA. Then we have documented sales for recent years).
Italy, 1,19 million up to 2001, published by Sony Music. Thriller 25 is Gold there, as a whole it sold 1,3 million in this country by now.
Germany, 3xPlat (1,5m**) since 1995, not many figures since that time but chart performances put it around 2 million.
Sweden, recently certified 4xPlatinum, 400,000, plus 20,000 copies for Thriller 25.
Netherlands, 800,000 copies by 1996 (8xPlatinum, highest certified album ever), by now over 1 million.
Austria, 400,000, 8xPlatinum, again highest figure ever reached (local albums included).
Belgium, 550,000, 11xPlatinum, second to Helmut Lotti’s Goes Classic only.
Spain, 500,000 by 1984, around a million currently.
In Europe, it sold close to 17 million copies. This figure is massive—more impressive than 28 million in US. Since IFPI introduced album certifications for Europe in 1994, no album ever reached even 10 million. The only one studio album that reached 10 million in Europe in the last 20 years is Dangerous, by Michael Jackson himself, released in 1991, which sold 12 million copies in the old continent. That album, regarded as half a flop in the US, is to Europe/Asia/Oceania the equivalent of Shania Twain’s Come On Over in the US—The biggest album released in the last 2 decades.
Billboard recently reported a figure of 2,5 million copies in Japan for Thriller (it sold 1,616,000 copies while charting in 83/84 alone, without counting imports, 30% of sales of foreign acts). It sold around 6,5 million in Asia.
Over a million in Australia, recently certified 14xPlatinum (980,000).
In South America, it is the best selling album ever for a foreign act: more than 600,000 copies in Argentina, over 1,3 million in Brazil, 400,000 in Chile and a million in Mexico. Then over 3 million in Canada. In Africa, it sold 600,000 copies in South Africa alone, 300,000 copies in Turkey, over 2 million in the continent.
Then we only have to add figures: US 28,5m, Europe 17m, Canada 3,3m, Asia 6,5m, Latin America + Oceania 6m, Africa 2m, total around 63 million. As you can see, a lot of accurate data is actually known; the jigsaw is far from being as obscure as people may think. Give or take a maximum of 2m, this figure of 63 million is correct.
Hitsville: What’s your ballpark estimate of how many records Jackson sold worldwide?
Vieira:Albums - at least 205 million, at most 225 million
Singles - at least 105 million, at most 120 million
Digital singles - at least 19 million, at most 22 million
Music Videos - at least 14 million, at most 17 million
Ringtones - 2 million, give or take a few thousands (1,4 million in the US)
All those figures don’t include sales of the Jackson 5/Jacksons, except for Digital singles. The group sold:
Albums - at least 45 million, at most 60 million
Singles - at least 40 million, at most 55 million
All together, that puts a ballpark at 430—500 million, but since some figures may be a bit too high, and others too low (they aren’t all in the low side or all in the high side), a more correct one would be worldwide records sales somewhere between 450 million and 480 million.
That’s around 80 million more than Elvis Presley, 40 million under the Beatles***.
Hitsville: Those are impressive figures, even if they don’t approach those big round numbers the papers were tossing about. Let’s talk about the Jackson Five for a minute. It’s funny—while I hadn’t published it, I was working on a post discussing whether the figure of 100 million sold for the Jackson Five, as is claimed, could possibly be right. To be honest, I thought it couldn’t; their heyday lasted about 18 months. In the U.S. they’re the equivalent of, say, Three Dog Night. On the other hand, I also remember Michael Jackson perhaps in the Martin Bashir documentary, recalling that as a 12-year-old he would get royalty checks of $200,000, which I thought was a large figure a) at the time and b) considering infinitesimal royalty rate the group was getting from Motown. But it makes sense if the group was selling records at those levels. Did they really sell anything like 100 million records?
Guillaume: The Jackson 5/Jacksons did sell around 100 million; they sold around 50 million of each singles and albums. But that is up to now! When that figure was first claimed in 1977, they were obviously, far, far from reaching it. That claim even supposed they were the second group reaching that milestone after the Beatles—outselling even the Rolling Stones, which was not true at all (and still isn’t!). Their single sales in the US were massive; even up to now they still are close to Madonna in this area, and outsold acts like Whitney Houston.
Hitsville: In the context of Motown, the Jacksons were the label’s 5th or 6th biggest act. As I look over a crude marker like the biggest chart acts of Billboard, its strikes me that Berry Gordy oversaw the careers of close to ten percent of the biggest acts in history. Do you have an off-the-cuff sense of how many records Motown sold?
Guillaume: Motown sales were truly gigantic in the 60s and 70s. Single sales were huge at that time and to be honest they were definitely dominating that sector. Album sales of Motown acts are very often not that impressive: First because the market wasn’t big at the time, second because their acts are more remembered for their singles than their albums in general, third because Motown releases the same hits packages again and again, cannibalizing sales of original albums. Only Stevie Wonder, and later Lionel Richie, sold loads of albums while signed by Motown. It is hard to guess the entire sales of the label (especialy since I haven’t studied several of their key acts), but let’s check a few of them:
- Jackson 5 - 70 million (not including sales of the Jacksons, who weren’t on Motown anymore)
- Michael Jackson - 20 million
- Stevie Wonder - 170 million
- Lionel Richie - 85 million
- Diana Ross/Supremes - 190 million
- Commodores - 60 million
- The Temptations - 110 million
- Marvin Gaye - 110 million
- Four Tops - 40 million
- Miracles/Smokey Robinson - 55 million
A total of 910 million - most of them were singles. With all their acts, it is safe to say the Motown label sold well over 1 billion records, which is an incredible total.
Hitsville: Now, if it’s fair to toss in the Jackson Five’s sales with Michael’s, it’s fair to toss in Paul McCartney’s with his previous band. What’s his totals compared to Jackson’s? Diana Ross’ totals as a solo artist combined with with the Supremes?
Guillaume: Diana Ross/Supremes total is ahead, not that far from 200 million records sold. Paul McCartney is the master. He sold around 170 million records on his own, added to over 500 million with the Beatles; that is over two thirds of the road to a billion! Obviously, on such a list, Michael Jackson wouldn’t be at 2, considering the three other Beatles would be ahead of him. Macca with 670m, Lennon with 620m, Harrison with 550m and Ringo with 525m, then Michael Jackson with around 465m. When we see how hard it is to sell 10 million records (and despite what most people think it has always been very hard), those numbers are from another world!
Hitsville: Janet Jackson gets overlooked sometimes in the Michael hoopla, but she is a top-tier star in her own right, isn’t she? What’s your best estimation of her worldwide sales and her ranking worldwide?
Janet sold 45 million singles and 65 million albums, which ranks her among the top 60 best selling acts ever, quite an achievement already, definitely a star on her own. She is in par with the likes Nirvana, Journey, and the Who in terms of album sales and sold many more singles than them.
Hitsville: What are the second and third best-selling albums worldwide, behind Thriller?
Guillaume: Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, is the second-best-selling album ever. It is now up to 42 million and still selling very well year after year. It is harder to say which album is at three—a trio of soundtracks sold about the same at 40 million: Grease, Saturday Night Fever and The Bodyguard. Grease looks like having the lead yet and anyway is the one that is still selling the most so it will end at 3 sooner or later.
Jackson’s Bad ranks in the top 10 while Dangerous sits inside the top 20. Interesting to note that despite their relatively small sales in the US compared to Thriller, in the rest of the world they were almost as massive as Thriller and are among the seven and eight best-selling albums ever, along with Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, Dark Side of the Moon and the three soundtracks previously named. All those albums sold 20 to 23 million outside of the US, except Thriller, which sold close to 35 million.
Michael Jackson and the ultimate crossover
CNN’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s sudden illness in the minutes before his death was reported captured nicely the way the media has treated him. Nutty people were allowed to talk at length, including a guy who kept saying his concerts in London were in 2010. (They were scheduled for next month.)
Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera to tell us earnestly that the head of the concert promotion company had told them that Jackson was in “tip top shape,” and that he’d passed a health exam “with flying colors.”
Funny how an impossibly pampered 50-year-old guy in top-top shape could just keel over dead.
We’re supposed to live in an Age of Paparazzi. Isn’t it curious how stars nonetheless manage to die right before our eyes?
They do it with our complicity.
——-
Born not just to celebrity but to stardom, Michael Jackson never knew what it was like to live normally, or even behave normally. He was drafted into the family’s musical act, the Jackson 5, while in elementary school, and taken to Motown records. He was taught how to live a manufactured image at the feet of Berry Gordy, who was quite good at such legerdemain.
If you’re nine years old and born to be a star, such training will definitely turbocharge the marketing of your record sales; as for the fact that almost all the money from those sales went to your teacher and not you … well, that was his second lesson.
Trust, truth … there were concepts Michael Jackson learned early on didn’t have much worth. But of course he had his family, right?
His angry father beat him and his eight siblings with some determination, reputable biographers have told us. (Untrustworthy La Toya said that she and Michael were sexually molested, too.) On tour at age ten, Michael tried to sleep as his older brothers banged groupies in the motel rooms they shared. Then all the kids watched in wonder as their father took up with another woman and had a child with her.
Love, marriage, sex … Michael Jackson learned early that those didn’t mean much either. The Jackson 5 had a three-year run, not bad for a kid act. When the family, which realized it hadn’t made any money, left the label, a vengeful Gordy exacted as a price not just a brother—Jermaine, who, married to Gordy’s daughter, stayed at Motown—but even their name. When they moved to Columbia, they couldn’t use the name the Jackson 5.
Michael was all of 14.
In five years he collected himself, extracted himself from his father’s control and recorded two albums that would change the music industry. The best was the first: 1979’s Off the Wall, a groovy, irresistible stunner. Blithe and implacable, sparkling and protean, it displayed a lean and kaleidoscopic talent, feline in his sexuality and relaxed in his blackness. The round-faced, broad-nosed charmer looking out from the album’s cover reeked not just of charm but confidence and, for the last time, normality.
Three years later, Thriller would take what became an epochal step forward in terms of commerciality. Viewed now, with the befit of hindsight, we can see Jackson’s evolving physiognomy symptomatic of an insecurity we didn’t think to question at the time.
His celebrity’s toll on his own and his family’s life became considerable. For some unaccountable reason, after Thriller he still lived at home, as his family busied itself with intrigues and cockamamie plans. One imagines him sitting in his room ignoring the knocks at his door as offers of millions came in to the family from across the country and around the world to do just about anything—anything, that is, that Michael would do too.
With the exception of Janet, his youngest sister, who somehow managed to extract herself and create her own extraordinary career, virtually every member of his family managed to blemish their reputations; among other things, more than one of the boys, their father’s sons, were charged with beating up their girlfriends or wives.
The story from that point is a bleak and unrelieved one. Superficial things: Michael’s ludicrous trappings and entourages; the fetishization of the armed militias marching around in his videos; tales of his supposed bizarre doings leaked to tabloids; the grasping grandiosity of his public appearances. Jackson had a flair for exploiting the tabloid celebrity he had, but that was a skill he shared with Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton, and it probably shouldn’t be listed among his unique abilities.
More serious things: Mismanaged tours; declining songwriting skills; ever-more erratic album releases.
Even more serious things: An entirely transfigured physical appearance, morphing from an engaging and handsome African-American man into a misshapen Eurasian woman; his skin bleached, his faced resculpted; his nose, finally, needing to be practically taped on to his face. He left his race behind and, in a sense, his family too. (The nose, which seemed to have borne the brunt of his obsession with plastic surgery, was his father’s.)
The master of crossover had seemingly crossed over for good.
And finally, a black moral hole, and a descent into a double life as a sexual predator. You’ve heard about not taking candy from a stranger; Jackson’s candy took the form of literal amusement parks. There were nights of fun and sleepovers and inappropriate touching and …
Accusations were leveled many times; most cases were settled; one case, gone to trial, ended in an acquittal in Santa Maria in 2005.
In the obituaries, writers will savor Jackson’s talents, which were unquestioned; his ambition, which was otherworldly and a thing of awe; and his heyday, which was lasted really just a few years, and encompassed perhaps two and a half albums. Others will reflect on the tragedies visited upon him and those he visited on others.
I think it’s fair to classify Kurt Cobain’s death as one brought on by medical problems, specifically the roiling interaction of depression and addiction. Jackson’s death is in this sense more purely a suicide, just as Elvis Presley’s was some three decades ago. Like Presley, Jackson at some point stepped through a door, closed it, and turned the key. What went on behind the door we’ll never know.
Here’s what I wrote about Jackson and his plans for a comeback tour last year:
Jackson’s history with tours is checkered, of course, but this seems an obvious way to stave off financial problems. (And he could make even more if he kept his ambitions reined in and did a disciplined greatest-hits show with a minimum of spectacle.) The troubling question about Jackson is this: Is a tour or a series of performances the trump card, deep down inside, he knows he can put on the table when the need arises? Or is his mental or physical condition such at this point that it’s out of the question? If it’s the latter, Michael Jackson’s last years may turn out to be truly unpretty.
Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera to tell us earnestly that the head of the concert promotion company had told them that Jackson was in “tip top shape,” and that he’d passed a health exam “with flying colors.”
Funny how an impossibly pampered 50-year-old guy in top-top shape could just keel over dead.
We’re supposed to live in an Age of Paparazzi. Isn’t it curious how stars nonetheless manage to die right before our eyes?
They do it with our complicity.
——-
Born not just to celebrity but to stardom, Michael Jackson never knew what it was like to live normally, or even behave normally. He was drafted into the family’s musical act, the Jackson 5, while in elementary school, and taken to Motown records. He was taught how to live a manufactured image at the feet of Berry Gordy, who was quite good at such legerdemain.
If you’re nine years old and born to be a star, such training will definitely turbocharge the marketing of your record sales; as for the fact that almost all the money from those sales went to your teacher and not you … well, that was his second lesson.
Trust, truth … there were concepts Michael Jackson learned early on didn’t have much worth. But of course he had his family, right?
His angry father beat him and his eight siblings with some determination, reputable biographers have told us. (Untrustworthy La Toya said that she and Michael were sexually molested, too.) On tour at age ten, Michael tried to sleep as his older brothers banged groupies in the motel rooms they shared. Then all the kids watched in wonder as their father took up with another woman and had a child with her.
Love, marriage, sex … Michael Jackson learned early that those didn’t mean much either. The Jackson 5 had a three-year run, not bad for a kid act. When the family, which realized it hadn’t made any money, left the label, a vengeful Gordy exacted as a price not just a brother—Jermaine, who, married to Gordy’s daughter, stayed at Motown—but even their name. When they moved to Columbia, they couldn’t use the name the Jackson 5.
Michael was all of 14.
In five years he collected himself, extracted himself from his father’s control and recorded two albums that would change the music industry. The best was the first: 1979’s Off the Wall, a groovy, irresistible stunner. Blithe and implacable, sparkling and protean, it displayed a lean and kaleidoscopic talent, feline in his sexuality and relaxed in his blackness. The round-faced, broad-nosed charmer looking out from the album’s cover reeked not just of charm but confidence and, for the last time, normality.
Three years later, Thriller would take what became an epochal step forward in terms of commerciality. Viewed now, with the befit of hindsight, we can see Jackson’s evolving physiognomy symptomatic of an insecurity we didn’t think to question at the time.
His celebrity’s toll on his own and his family’s life became considerable. For some unaccountable reason, after Thriller he still lived at home, as his family busied itself with intrigues and cockamamie plans. One imagines him sitting in his room ignoring the knocks at his door as offers of millions came in to the family from across the country and around the world to do just about anything—anything, that is, that Michael would do too.
With the exception of Janet, his youngest sister, who somehow managed to extract herself and create her own extraordinary career, virtually every member of his family managed to blemish their reputations; among other things, more than one of the boys, their father’s sons, were charged with beating up their girlfriends or wives.
The story from that point is a bleak and unrelieved one. Superficial things: Michael’s ludicrous trappings and entourages; the fetishization of the armed militias marching around in his videos; tales of his supposed bizarre doings leaked to tabloids; the grasping grandiosity of his public appearances. Jackson had a flair for exploiting the tabloid celebrity he had, but that was a skill he shared with Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton, and it probably shouldn’t be listed among his unique abilities.
More serious things: Mismanaged tours; declining songwriting skills; ever-more erratic album releases.
Even more serious things: An entirely transfigured physical appearance, morphing from an engaging and handsome African-American man into a misshapen Eurasian woman; his skin bleached, his faced resculpted; his nose, finally, needing to be practically taped on to his face. He left his race behind and, in a sense, his family too. (The nose, which seemed to have borne the brunt of his obsession with plastic surgery, was his father’s.)
The master of crossover had seemingly crossed over for good.
And finally, a black moral hole, and a descent into a double life as a sexual predator. You’ve heard about not taking candy from a stranger; Jackson’s candy took the form of literal amusement parks. There were nights of fun and sleepovers and inappropriate touching and …
Accusations were leveled many times; most cases were settled; one case, gone to trial, ended in an acquittal in Santa Maria in 2005.
In the obituaries, writers will savor Jackson’s talents, which were unquestioned; his ambition, which was otherworldly and a thing of awe; and his heyday, which was lasted really just a few years, and encompassed perhaps two and a half albums. Others will reflect on the tragedies visited upon him and those he visited on others.
I think it’s fair to classify Kurt Cobain’s death as one brought on by medical problems, specifically the roiling interaction of depression and addiction. Jackson’s death is in this sense more purely a suicide, just as Elvis Presley’s was some three decades ago. Like Presley, Jackson at some point stepped through a door, closed it, and turned the key. What went on behind the door we’ll never know.
Here’s what I wrote about Jackson and his plans for a comeback tour last year:
Jackson’s history with tours is checkered, of course, but this seems an obvious way to stave off financial problems. (And he could make even more if he kept his ambitions reined in and did a disciplined greatest-hits show with a minimum of spectacle.) The troubling question about Jackson is this: Is a tour or a series of performances the trump card, deep down inside, he knows he can put on the table when the need arises? Or is his mental or physical condition such at this point that it’s out of the question? If it’s the latter, Michael Jackson’s last years may turn out to be truly unpretty.
Ongoing thoughts on Michael Jackson
(updated as the day goes on)
4) Quincy Jones interviewed: Did he worry about the child sex allegations against Jackson? “Yes, but I could never put my finger on it.”
3) From the “It-couldn’t-happen-to-a-nicer-group-of-people desk”; a Reuters story about the exposure of AEG, the promoter of Jackson’s 50 scheduled London shows:
Paying back the face value of some of the estimated 750,000 tickets sold is unlikely to be AEG Live’s only headache.
The company is reported to have invested $20-30 million on the production already, not including any advance to Jackson.
And the O2 Arena, which appears on AEG’s list of sites it owns or operates, is now faced with 50 empty nights, some of which it will struggle to fill at such short notice.
2) The media is reporting all sorts of things that make no sense. The NYT wrote last night, and I just heard someone on MSNBC report, that Jackson sold 750 million albums. Are they crazy?
Let’s give him his 100 million for Thriller, which I don’t believe for a minute.
The Jackson Five were a singles band; Jackson recorded six albums as an adult. Do people think he sold 150 million copies of each on average? Does anyone know how to do math? Even if you take singles into account and accept uncheckable sales figures from around the world it’s hard to see how he sold more than 250 million records, or a third of that total.
Then the MSNBC reporter said, without sourcing the info, that he may have been “a half billion dollars in debt.” That seems a little extreme! (Update: But see this attempt to do the math.) And then in the next breath she quoted his attorney saying that Jackson was “still generating great cash flow.” But of course, that was his problem: he wasn’t generating cash flow. Duh! That’s how you go into debt. He hadn’t released any new albums, and he hadn’t made any concert appearance. Where was the money coming from?
1) Get ready for the mother of all legal battles. Jackson undoubtedly left a legal and financial mess behind. It’s obvious that he was deeply in debt, by the simple expedient of having no income and spending money like a sheik; that his death will set off a feeding frenzy as his many creditors fight like jackals for the remains; and that the dozens of lawsuits he had going will grow enormously.
You can already see the more buffoonish members of his family posturing for the cameras, notably Jermaine:
My brother, the legendary King of Pop Michael Jackson, passed away… Our family requests that the media can respect our privacy during this tough time. And may Allah be with you, Michael, always.
4) Quincy Jones interviewed: Did he worry about the child sex allegations against Jackson? “Yes, but I could never put my finger on it.”
3) From the “It-couldn’t-happen-to-a-nicer-group-of-people desk”; a Reuters story about the exposure of AEG, the promoter of Jackson’s 50 scheduled London shows:
Paying back the face value of some of the estimated 750,000 tickets sold is unlikely to be AEG Live’s only headache.
The company is reported to have invested $20-30 million on the production already, not including any advance to Jackson.
And the O2 Arena, which appears on AEG’s list of sites it owns or operates, is now faced with 50 empty nights, some of which it will struggle to fill at such short notice.
2) The media is reporting all sorts of things that make no sense. The NYT wrote last night, and I just heard someone on MSNBC report, that Jackson sold 750 million albums. Are they crazy?
Let’s give him his 100 million for Thriller, which I don’t believe for a minute.
The Jackson Five were a singles band; Jackson recorded six albums as an adult. Do people think he sold 150 million copies of each on average? Does anyone know how to do math? Even if you take singles into account and accept uncheckable sales figures from around the world it’s hard to see how he sold more than 250 million records, or a third of that total.
Then the MSNBC reporter said, without sourcing the info, that he may have been “a half billion dollars in debt.” That seems a little extreme! (Update: But see this attempt to do the math.) And then in the next breath she quoted his attorney saying that Jackson was “still generating great cash flow.” But of course, that was his problem: he wasn’t generating cash flow. Duh! That’s how you go into debt. He hadn’t released any new albums, and he hadn’t made any concert appearance. Where was the money coming from?
1) Get ready for the mother of all legal battles. Jackson undoubtedly left a legal and financial mess behind. It’s obvious that he was deeply in debt, by the simple expedient of having no income and spending money like a sheik; that his death will set off a feeding frenzy as his many creditors fight like jackals for the remains; and that the dozens of lawsuits he had going will grow enormously.
You can already see the more buffoonish members of his family posturing for the cameras, notably Jermaine:
My brother, the legendary King of Pop Michael Jackson, passed away… Our family requests that the media can respect our privacy during this tough time. And may Allah be with you, Michael, always.
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