BY COS STAFFON NOVEMBER 14, 2016, 12:00AM
01. MICHAEL JACKSON
Have you ever watched Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker? Odds are if you were born between 1975 and 1985, the VHS tape sat somewhere next to your equally worn copies of Back to the Future, E.T., and Star Wars. Anyways, if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and find it somewhere on YouTube as it’s worth a watch, if only for the captivating videos and the way it more or less bottles up the timeless magic and appeal of the King of Pop. The reason I’m bringing it up now is specifically for its opening segment, which captures Jackson singing “Man in the Mirror” during his colossal Bad Tour across Europe. For a good three or four minutes, you can watch everyone lose their shit as he triumphantly lifts up their spirits with arguably one of the greatest songs ever. But look closer: It’s people of all nationalities, united and feeling it together.
That was ultimately the power of Michael Jackson; he had the ability of stopping everyone in their tracks, both in life and death. Some might credit this to his unprecedented dance moves, and they’d be right. Some might say it was his masterful production, and they’d be right. Some might point to the archive of hooks that fueled each of his songs, and they’d be right. And some might say it was his voice … and they’d be right. He was the full package in a way we haven’t and probably never will see again — the greatest performer who ever lived. So, yes, you could sit here and make cogent arguments for any of the multifaceted reasons behind his undying legend, but really it starts and ends with his voice. It’s his voice that connected the world together, and it’s his voice that never wavered as he slid into every kind of genre imaginable, from disco to rock to pop to hip-hop to R&B.
What’s more, it’s his voice that keeps on giving: Name any groundbreaking artist of the last 30 years and they’ll all point to him as a major influence, whether it’s his work fronting The Jackson Five, his salad days in Motown, or the decade and a half he turned his music into both a lifestyle and a brand — doesn’t matter, it’s all in regular rotation. Even now, after all the dark and disturbing controversies that have surfaced over the last two decades, he remains an unstoppable, influential enigma. “One of the first times I ever performed in front of a big group of people was at my kindergarten graduation,” Chance the Rapper, then 20 years old, told XXL. “I did, like, a Michael Jackson impersonation as, like, a five-year-old. I had the suit and blazer, the glove and the fedora, and I just performed a whole Michael Jackson song. I’m sure it was ‘Smooth Criminal’.” Shit’s off the wall. –Michael Roffman
