{"id":16028,"date":"2009-06-27T07:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-27T12:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=16028"},"modified":"2009-06-27T07:38:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-27T12:38:00","slug":"now-you-can-admit-it-you-liked-some-of-michael-jacksons-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/now-you-can-admit-it-you-liked-some-of-michael-jacksons-songs\/","title":{"rendered":"Now you can admit it, you liked some of Michael Jackson’s songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Steve Bergstein<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Many years ago in high school, when I was reading a lot of rock criticism, a common theme among the more politically-oriented writers was that corporate American was killing music. The idea was that corporate-types at the record companies and radio stations were too conservative and afraid to try anything new in the way of innovative music.<\/p>\n

While these writers were correct, they overlooked another music-killer: the celebrity and rock and roll lifestyle. Many great rock and rollers are dead because of the lifestyle, either from drugs or wild living. The real cause of Michael Jackson’s death may be debated for a long time, but I know that he was a victim of the lifestyle that only rock stars get to experience. He may not have used hard drugs, but you know that the freak show that his life had become could not have happened without the millions of dollars that Michael Jackson squandered.<\/p>\n

Michael Jackson became a mega-star in the early 1980’s, a decade that gave us other mega-stars, like Prince and Bruce Springsteen. At the time, it was fashionable for rock fans to dismiss Michael Jackson’s music as crap. I remember hanging around during lunch hour in high school when one guy said that he liked the Jackson Five but that Michael Jackson had become some kind of a fag. Except that some rock fans had to admit that Beat It was a pretty good song, mostly because of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solo. But I also remember reading Creem or some other rock magazine and an anonymous heavy metal singer who played in a bar band published a letter to the editor. He admitted that he absolutely loved the Thriller album and that, unbeknownst to his heavy metal friends, he played the album all the time.<\/p>\n

MJ sold millions and millions of albums, but for many of us he was a guilty pleasure. Nothing that he did after Thriller made any sense to me, and once he decided to become freak it was all over. But Thriller has its moments. The title track was not bad, though it sounded like a re-write of some of his better songs, like Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough. Beat It wasn’t bad, though it seemed like MJ was trying to hard to write a straightfoward rock song.<\/p>\n

But his greatest songs, for me, were Billie Jean and Wanna Be Startin’ Something. Billie Jean had a haunting melody and genuinely good lyrics. Wanna Be Startin’ Something is one of the great grooves of all time. For MJ, it was his Mount Everest, reaching heights which he would never see again. A friend of mine once said that all he wanted out of life was to write two great songs. These two, then, put Michael Jackson in rarified air. Dig ’em now, and don’t be ashamed to admit. These are great songs.<\/p>\n

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By Steve Bergstein Many years ago in high school, when I was reading a lot of rock criticism, a common theme among the more politically-oriented writers was that corporate American was killing music. The idea was that corporate-types at the record companies and radio stations were too conservative and afraid to try anything new in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1504,705],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}