I will be the first to stand up and admit that I was obsessed with MJ back in the days when “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” came out. I was also eight years old. My innocent ears had heard something it liked and rolled with it. We never had cable when I lived with my parents, but since Thriller was so popular, the songs from the album were played (ad nauseum) on the four channels our TV actually got. I was constantly exposed to it and I loved it. I wanted a red leather zipper jacket as bad as the next kid, but that faded in time. Just like smelly stickers and fat shoe laces, MJ’s music and the persona that went with it was a short-lived fad for me and I moved on to the next “big” thing quite quickly.
When Bad, MJ’s first studio album after Thriller, was released in 1987, I was no longer an innocent eight year old girl. I was thirteen. And I was already a pack-a-day smoker who could drink anyone under the table. I was listening to Fat Bob ask “Why Can’t I Be You”, not MJ sing “Man In the Mirror”. My album collection consisted of various mix tapes as well as Through the Looking Glass, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Substance, Document, The Lion and the Cobra and The Joshua Tree.
After Bad came Dangerous. It was 1991. We moved on to music on CD and I was now “feeling” my music as well as hearing it. Wake, bake and turn on Nevermind, Superstition, Spine of God or Ten. And I had no idea that MJ was still making music at all.
In 1993, MJ was accused of abuse by thirteen-year-old Jordan Chandler. I had moved out of my parents home and was working second shift full time. Sure, coverage of the abuse accusations was all over the news, but I really was not interested. Superjudge, Undertow, Exile in Guyville, Siamese Dream, Bloody Kisses, Laid, Angst, and Mexican Moon dominated my music world. I had been to the Woodstock reunion the summer before and I couldn’t stop getting tattoos. I was way too busy having fun to bother with MJ.
MJ released HIStory in 1995 and I was none the wiser. The Bends, Everything Is Wrong, Dopes To Infinity, Astro Creep: 2000, Use Your Fingers, Insomniac, Tragic Kingdom and Smells Like Children thumped out of my green Geo Metro while my friends and I sang drunken karaoke at the Seafood Shanty. My wild oats were raging and I was having the time of my life. Some may say I was out of control, but I did not care. I was alive!
In 2003, MJ was once again accused of abusing a thirteen-year-old boy. At this time, my relationship with Mr. JLG365 had become serious and he had become my world. Elephant became the soundtrack to our courtship and I happily closed the door to the wild ways of my past. I didn’t need to be that way anymore. I had found what I was looking for. And I was the luckiest person in the world.
MJ was found not guilty of the 2003 abuse charges in the summer of 2005. By that time, Mr. JLG365 were married and we were getting ready to move out of the city. Tori Amos released the forgettable Beekeeper and They Might Be Giants released a children’s album. Guero, Get Behind Me Satan, In Your Honor, Hefty Fine and Confessions on a Dance Floor were in heavy rotation in the JLG365 household and I was as happy as a pig in shit.
When I heard Michael Jackson had died I was on a bridge from PA to the Jersey Shore. Of course it surprised me, but I most certainly cannot say I saw it coming. I envisioned that the bulk of the mourning for MJ would be coming from the other countries he had lived in in the most recent past, not here at home. I thought that the public perception here in the states was that MJ was the OJ Simpson of the music world and it was good that he was a recluse. Boy was I wrong.
Like people who only go to church on Christmas, MJ’s “fans” poured out of the woodwork faster than the water flew from the levees in Louisiana. All of a sudden, MJ was a saint, a healer, a martyr and a god. It completely sickened me. An accused pedophile as a god? MJ was guilty in my opinion. Hell, I would retract my “accusations” for $21 million too. But we are all entitled to our opinions and I will respect that. However, MJ was dead to me after Thriller and I never looked back. And today, as the astronomically overrated jackassery that will be MJ’s memorial will be on every channel on the TV and radio, I will do without either. Instead I will settle in with a good book and my MP3 player on shuffle. And there will not be a single MJ song to be heard.
