It’s hard for me to properly place Michael Jackson in my personal pantheon. On the one hand, I fully believe that Mike is the biggest star I will ever see in my lifetime, and may very well be bigger than any star that will ever be, given the manner in which media is fragmented these days. At the same time, when it comes to me personally, I liked Mike and all, but he was never on that Stevie-James stratum. Like I told somebody the other day, if I didn’t cry when James died, it ain’t gonna happen for nobody. I liked Mike a lot, and I’ve sho nuff had my days where I played Mike all day — and this is before tragedy struck. At the same time, I can’t really pretend that I was all crushed like some people are. Mike has been in continuous rotation around here, so in that respect, nothing has changed. Nor will it.

Mike was due for a Favorite 15, and his will probably be the next one I do, but the contrarian in me just doesn’t wanna do it now. Mike’s popular right now, and honestly Mike got so many hits, it’s really hard for me to find songs I really, really like that aren’t already major, which is part of the point of me even doing a Favorite 15.

Ultimately, it breaks down to this: I think Michael Jackson, while not necessarily my favorite at any of the things that he did (singer, songwriter, dancer, etc., etc), put all of those things together in such a fantastic package that I can only call him the greatest entertainer in my lifetime. Possibly ever.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.