If You Cant Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
Then Don't Have A Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
And Don't Think Maybe (Yeah, Yeah)
If You Can't Feed Your Baby (Yeah, Yeah)
You'll Be Always Tryin'
To Stop That Child From Cryin'
Hustlin', Stealin', Lyin'
Now Baby's Slowly Dyin'
I love it how Michael often could couple the most cheerful, dancy music with rather dark and pretty serious lyrics.
Earlier today I was just thinking about those lyrics, especially the ones I bolded out. I read the malicious presumption they were about Michael's brothers, but I actually think they are a most brilliant plea for economically-based abstinence or at least contraception.
He does seem to have not just the ability to sing seriousness over groovy beats, as noted, but also to rarely and subtly insert himself in cultural debates, like abortion and creationism. That is actually rather surprising considering his apolitical and non-partisan view of the world, as well as his justified reluctance to delve into the specifics of his religious beliefs given the diversity of his fan base.
Take
Planet Earth for example. It is a poetic masterpiece all over, but a certain portion sounds to me like the most artistically sublime expression of support for intelligent design
Planet Earth, my home, my place
A capricious anomaly in the sea of space
Planet Earth are you just floating by, a cloud of dust
A minor globe, about to bust
A piece of metal, bound to rust
A speck of matter in a mindless void
A lonely spaceship, a large asteroid
Cold as a rock without a hue
Held together with a bit of glue
Something tells me this isn't true
Most of the songs on HIStory have amazing lyrics. Some of my faves:
"If he dies sympathize
Such false witnesses
Damn self-righteousness"
Tabloid Junkie
^^ How prophetic did that prove to be in his own death?
Will You Be There - lyricly a masterpiece.
And Will You Be There was written before all the horrible things happend - yet it somehow seems like MJ had forseen it all!
There does seem to be some sort of prophetic component to Michael's lyrical content. What a shame only the most terrible and the darkest part of his "prophesies" ever came true..........Poetry and music do have that incredible capacity of talking to people's hearts and minds and many can find themselves in the words of artists. With Michael though that experience seems to be taken a bit further and words which initially may have had a certain meaning can add a few other layers of interpretation over time.
This thread has reminded me that MJ was a very underrated lyricist.
Absolutely......the man is freaking brilliant and those who only noticed the baseline in Billie Jean or the Thriller/Beat it routines missed out on the essence, both of the genius and of the man behind the entertainer.
If he would be any less than brilliant he couldn't possibly hold such a huge and most special place in my heart and in my life. He may have caught my eye with them curls, that killer smile of his and that semi-attempt at winking :cheeky: but it was the lyrical content of so very many of his songs which kept my attention for decades. As so many pointed out and proved with the countless quotes and posts, he was absolutely amazing, especially in those deep and socially-aware gems. Those are the tunes that made his mind and soul soooo incredibly attractive and magnetic in my book.
The extra cool thing about it is that he could write entire songs like
Shout,
Money,
Earth song where every line has some sparkle of genius behind it or he could capture the essence of a PhD in philosophy in just a few words -
stop existing and start living certainly comes to mind, as does
Armageddon of the brain. Don't get me wrong, I think both songs are amazing in their entirety, but these words are particularly striking to me. Not bad at all for a man whose brain capacity has been overshadowed by his other immense talents or simply ignored by the public at large.
Little Susie
To be damned to know hoping is dead and you're doomed
Then to scream out
And nobody's there...
Neglection can kill
Like a knife in your soul
They certainly are reminiscent of
Be not always.
Have you felt such pain
To have nothing
To dream something
Then lose hoping
Is not life but lame
His mind may have been brilliant, but we all know spelling wasn't exactly his forte. It turns out his creativity was so wide he even invented a few words in the English vocabulary. I don't know anything about
neglection, but neglect can definitely kill, I can vouch for that.
Rejecting the needs in her prayers is another of them brilliant combinations of words of which he was so capable to put not just on paper, but also sing with so much emotion and soul.
His ability to emote and the generous spirit in his humanitarian anthems that I blame mostly on his upbringing are responsible for the irresistible allure of his spirit to me. The whole family seems to be preoccupied with bringing the world together (probably due to their JW roots) and also by sheer fact of being an American he has that refreshing and almost innocent impetus for community service and collective social action, a feeling which us, Europeans seem to have partially lost.
