I’ve been reading Internet arguments about whether or not he molested children, whether or not that invalidates the good of his music, whether or not the pop he was king of for a good decade is a worthwhile form of human endeavor. All of which seems to miss the point. I listened to Thriller all the way through for the first time on the way home from work. I’m downloading Off The Wall now to do the same. I was first too young and then too sheltered to know the years of his glory, and too much a teenager to appreciate the years of his decadence and decline. I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood him, and part of me has never wanted to, been repulsed by the cultural totalism he represented. There was no space for silence or reflection or patient inquiry into other lives in the Michael Jackson universe; to listen to a Michael Jackson song was to live, willing or no, in his world. He would have no other gods. (Paul McCartney sounds so out of place on Thriller, like an eighteenth-century fop who’s wandered onto an aircraft carrier. Quincy and Michael even have to drag out a creaky old doo-wop rhythm for him to stand upright on.) I imagine this is what the kids who grew up to embrace punk felt about the Beatles and the Stones, or what the kids who grew up to embrace rock & roll felt about Sinatra and Louis Armstrong, that the cultural monoliths of their childhood provided no space for them to establish their own identity, that they had to either reject it or glom on to the monolith, remora-like, and lose themselves. Or I could just be excusing my laziness in not having seriously tackled the Jackson discography before now. I know the hits, and love the ones before 1980. My understanding of pop doesn’t exclude Michael Jackson, but it’s not predicated on him, and this I think is the faultline between me and my generation. I heard him for the first time, really, as an adult; everyone else grew up with him. I envy their sense of shared community; but I can’t find my way in. The edifice gleams too bright; history has swung shut.

I’ve been reading Internet arguments about whether or not he molested children, whether or not that invalidates the good of his music, whether or not the pop he was king of for a good decade is a worthwhile form of human endeavor. All of which seems to miss the point.

I listened to Thriller all the way through for the first time on the way home from work. I’m downloading Off The Wall now to do the same.

I was first too young and then too sheltered to know the years of his glory, and too much a teenager to appreciate the years of his decadence and decline. I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood him, and part of me has never wanted to, been repulsed by the cultural totalism he represented. There was no space for silence or reflection or patient inquiry into other lives in the Michael Jackson universe; to listen to a Michael Jackson song was to live, willing or no, in his world. He would have no other gods.

(Paul McCartney sounds so out of place on Thriller, like an eighteenth-century fop who’s wandered onto an aircraft carrier. Quincy and Michael even have to drag out a creaky old doo-wop rhythm for him to stand upright on.)

I imagine this is what the kids who grew up to embrace punk felt about the Beatles and the Stones, or what the kids who grew up to embrace rock & roll felt about Sinatra and Louis Armstrong, that the cultural monoliths of their childhood provided no space for them to establish their own identity, that they had to either reject it or glom on to the monolith, remora-like, and lose themselves. Or I could just be excusing my laziness in not having seriously tackled the Jackson discography before now. I know the hits, and love the ones before 1980.

My understanding of pop doesn’t exclude Michael Jackson, but it’s not predicated on him, and this I think is the faultline between me and my generation. I heard him for the first time, really, as an adult; everyone else grew up with him. I envy their sense of shared community; but I can’t find my way in. The edifice gleams too bright; history has swung shut.