How Billie Jean changed the world
Thursday July 12, 2007
The poll results are in and you have decided that Joe Queenan's new feature on the origins of classic songs will be called The Vinyl Word. Today, The Vinyl Word tackles one of Michael Jackson's biggest hits
There are four kinds of pop stars: the ones that work hard at remaining cool and stylish and vaguely hip long after their careers have plateaued (David Bowie, James Brown, John Lennon, Cher); the ones that gracefully enter middle age and assume the role of living legend/elder statesman (Neil Young, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan); the ones who never understand that it is time to get off the stage (Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart); and the ones who simply lose their grip and drift off into the void (Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson). Members of the latter group often become so strange, so pathetic, so self-destructive that it is hard for people who come after them to believe that they were once colossi who ruled the world. But Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson were indeed colossi, and they did once rule the world.
For around seven years, Michael Jackson was the most luminous, powerful, influential star in the music business, and no one else was even close. During that period, before his bizarre antics and legal problems turned the public against him, Jackson enjoyed the kind of international fame experienced only by the likes of Muhammad Ali, Greta Garbo and Lord Byron. He was so famous that if you cut his fame in half he would still have been eight times as famous as the next most famous person, whoever that may have been. It may have been Tom Cruise.
All this began with the 1983 hit single Billie Jean. Though it may not sound like it today, Billie Jean is one of the most revolutionary songs in the history of popular music. This is not, however, because its lyrics tell the story of a well-meaning paranoid being stalked by a woman who claims that he has impregnated her, although that in itself was certainly an unusual theme for a pop song at the time. No, Billie Jean was groundbreaking because it introduced the idea that a single must be accompanied by a high-production video - preferably by someone who is a bit of a hoofer - thereby transforming a run-of-the-mill song release into an "event". Billie Jean transformed MTV from a mere diversion for young people into a cultural institution that society at large paid attention to. It introduced the pasty-faced number-crunchers who ran MTV to the concept that white viewers would respond enthusiastically to videos featuring a black performer, something they had not previously believed. Back in those days, a lot of people in the entertainment business were still racists. Thank goodness that's over.
Billie Jean's greatest importance is that it launched the Michael Jackson era, a period in which the entire population of the planet made a group decision to follow the career of one star and one star only. This was an era in which a fabulously gifted performer like Prince was forced into a distant second-fiddle role, because even though Prince could dance, he couldn't dance like Michael Jackson. Jackson's all-encompassing appeal was something that had never happened before in the history of pop music: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beatles were preposterously famous in their time, but their appeal was still basically limited to white people. Michael Jackson, during his Thriller LP era, had everybody talking about him.
Cute and cuddly as front man/child for the Jackson Five, Jackson had been trying for several years to reintroduce himself to a public that was ill prepared to view him as anything other than a charming has-been. To shatter this perception, Jackson created the flashy, enigmatic, vaguely dangerous persona who appeared in Billie Jean, Beat It and Bad. At a time when most music videos were either primitive or stupid, Jackson made a video that was clever, original, visually opulent and mysterious.
This was the first time that a song had been upstaged by the performance of a song, creating a peculiar situation where no one really had any interest in hearing the song unless they could simultaneously watch the song being performed. Other bands - ZZ Top, the Police, Cyndie Lauper, the Bangles - were putting out amusing, entertaining videos at the time, but no one was watching them because of Sting's dancing. Michael Jackson's footwork was the central conversational theme of Planet Earth throughout the 1980's. Not until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 did mankind move on to another topic.
Billie Jean, which has nothing to do with the tennis legend Billie Jean King, was recorded on a specially designed set to capture the muted sound of the snare drum that Jackson insisted upon. It was produced by the legendary Quincy Jones, who wanted Jackson to change the name of the song and also to shorten the improbably lengthy 29-second introduction, during which Jackson does not actually sing. More thought went into the production of this single than would go into the entire recording careers of Axl Rose, Coldplay, Shania Twain or Gwen Stefani. The song stayed at the top of the charts for more than two months and propelled the album Thriller to its iconic status as the biggest-selling record of all time. Because no one buys albums anymore, and because high-concept music videos are a thing of the past, and because low-key, hybrid songs like Billie Jean sound anachronistic in the coarse hip-hop era, Michael Jackson's achievements now seem as remote and inexplicable as those of the pharaohs. But, if you're in the myth-making line of trade, the pharaohs are good company to be in.
(theguardian/MJNO)
Du sagst "7 Jahre gehen in Ordnung" und rechnest aber bis 1992. Das sind ja schonmal 10 jahre seit 1982 
. Bin da mit dir einer Meinung :top, aber "objektiv" betrachtet hatte schon Dangerous doch nicht mehr die massigen Welt-Nr.1-Hits (in den Billboardcharts haben die Singles doch bis auf 2-3 nicht wirklich hohe Positionen erreicht will ich meinen :?). Im Grunde sagen Platzierungen nicht sonderlich viel aus was die Qualität betrifft, aber solche "Fakten" geben Meinungen, dass man die Dangerouszeit wohl ausklammern kann, ihre Berechtigung.
