.You can see where one ends and the other begins, and the sight is not a pretty one. Where he once twirled like a propeller that could take you higher, his spin has slowed so that reality and fantasy are no longer blurred together. There is only one problem with the equation: Michael Jackson has lost it. There, the assembled lined up to mingle and consume, while Michael Jackson thumped and bumped over the skybox club speakers–like any other anonymous disco hack providing musical wallpaper.Įpic hopes HIStory will match the $500 million worldwide gross of Thriller, the most successful album ever–and with a list price of $32.95 per unit, they need sell only half as many copies of HIStory. It’s a little unfair to judge the artistic value of songs you’ve heard only once, but the crowd’s response left an indelible impression–basically because there was no crowd response, except at the open bar. In the background, Michael Jackson brayed in exorcism, then came the crash of percussion and a voice as tight as a fist: “Tired of injustice/Tired of the schemes/Kinda disgusted/So what does it mean?”įor a song, the music industry “elite” and scattered Dallas Cowboys invited to the listening party sat at their tables and bobbed their heads as Michael and sister Janet traded verses on “Scream.” But with each successive track, the ringside crowd thinned a little more by the time the CD ended 75 minutes later with a cover of “Smile,” co-written by his idol Charlie Chaplin, only five or six remained seated at the tables. “At this listening party you’re not going to be able to talk over the music,” promised (or warned) Sony’s Jack Chase, who gestured for the sound man to crank up the new CD.
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It sure didn’t seem like it when the Dallas Sony branch played HIStory in its entirety for a gathering of about 125 folks at Texas Stadium a couple of weeks ago. You wonder if, considering the avalanche of bad publicity Jackson received for making a multimillion-dollar settlement with his accuser in a child molestation case, this could be an instance of throwing good money after bad and tossing hype where healing should go.īut it seems that Epic Records, MTV, pop radio, and the now-struggling record stores of the world have too much to gain from a mega-successful Michael Jackson album, and they haven’t taken the time to sit back and ask themselves, “Does Michael Jackson still have it?”–“it” being that intangible that separates superstars from untouchable icons, genius from absolute perfection, Michael Jackson from the rest of the world. The double-disc does not hit stores until next Tuesday, but the hoopla started early with a $4-million trailer and a massive ad campaign on MTV Epic Records has earmarked $30 million total to promote HIStory, which is a lot of money to gamble on the belief that the 36-year-old manchild still knows the way to the promised land. And so he makes his grand reemergence with the pretentiously titled HIStory Past, Present and Future–Book 1, which combines a greatest-hits CD with 15 new tracks. Michael Jackson’s salvation has always been in being at the top of that pyramid of possibility called show business like Nora Desmond descending the staircase at the end of Sunset Boulevard, he demands all eyes upon him. As Courtney Love and Woody Allen would attest, the best way to punch your way out of the wet plastic bag of celebrity dishonor is to go with what you know and get back, deeply and completely, into the gift that can’t be touched.