60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Black or White”—Michael Jackson

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Rob reminisces on his time witnessing Janelle Monae perform at South By Southwest in the year of Michael Jackson’s passing, before looking back at the King of Pop’s televised funeral. Along the way, Rob looks back at the height of Jackson’s powers in the '80s as well as a bit more tumultuous era in the '90s. Later, Wesley Morris joins the show to aid in deciphering how to process Michael Jackson’s career draped in success and controversy. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Wesley Morris Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to Power Pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. It's way too melodramatic to be the truth, right? But the way I remember it, at the exact moment I got the news, I was talking on the phone with Janelle Monet. It is 2009. It's June 25th, 2009.

I am working at the Village Voice in New York City. I'm the music editor. And I have become obsessed with a bewildering and electrifying young pop star named Janelle Monet. Among the perks of working at the Village Voice, you get to go to South by Southwest, right? The giant long weekend blowout music festival in Austin, Texas, held every March. You fly down there, you get your lanyard, right? You eat your weight in brisket. You stand in 500 different lines to see 500 different shows held in every club and parking lot

and vacant alley within a 20-mile radius. You sweat unattractively. You see 10,000 different bands. You drink margaritas poured from one of those old school coolers. Your Little League coaches used to serve you Gatorade in back in Little League, like with a white spigot, right? You start reminiscing about Little League. You're watching the bravery or some dorky indie rock band like that. You get dangerously wistful.

You drink way too many margaritas. You yack into a trash can. You yack out the window of the cab that you're very patient and saintly friends call for you to take you back to your hotel. You yak some more in your hotel room. You spend the whole next day catastrophically hungover in your darkened hotel room, sprawled across your bed watching March madness and missing the 500 more shows you wanted to see that day. You recover. You are properly chagrined. You see one or two shows total that truly resonate with you.

You go home. That's what you do. That's South by Southwest in my experience. The Little League Margarita Cooler Disaster only happened to me once. Okay, she only happened to me once too. South by Southwest, 2009, I see Janelle Monet like half a dozen times. More accurately, I see Janelle once by accident, and then I just follow her around Austin the whole rest of the weekend. I am transfixed.

It's already clear she's going to be crazy famous. I'm too late to even count as an early adopter. But to this day, this specific Janelle Monet set is one of the best live shows I've ever seen in my life. Janelle's from Kansas City, Kansas. She eventually wound up in Atlanta. She's got outcast affiliations and young genius type idiosyncrasies. She's part P-Funk and part like Madonna. She's wearing a tuxedo.

She's got a full thrashy backup band also wearing tuxedos. She's singing about and droids and shit. She's got wild, ecstatic robot type choreography. She's belting her ass off. She's crowd surfing climatically all the way to the back of the club. She's got this supercharged space funk song called Tightrope. That's one of the best songs I've ever heard in my life. But then also, right in the middle of this sincerely life-changing 25-minute set that I go see half a dozen times in 48 hours,

Janelle stops dead in her tracks and her whole band drops out, except her. her guitar player with the cool rock star hair and the sunglasses and the whole place gets electrifyingly and heart-breakingly quiet. And Janelle tenderly belts out a song older than both of us combined. Janelle Monet sings the song Smile. Composed by Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 film Modern Times, two English writers, Jeffrey Parker and John Turner, added the lyrics in 1954 and Smile becomes an American standard. Nat King Cole does it. Stevie Wonder does it.

Barbara Streisand does it. Judy Garland. Eric Clapton. Tony Bennett. Lady Gaga eventually. Donna Summer. Donna Summer. Many fine beloved canonical versions.

But yeah, this is Janelle Monet's song as far as I'm concerned. No offense to Nat or anybody. And maybe partly you had to be there. You had to hear it in context. You had to hear it live, awestruck and lighter than air, despite being dense with brisket, dazzled by the wild energy, the chaos, the grandiosity of the pre-fame Janelle Monet live experience. When all that chaos falls away and leaves only one jazzy guitar and her suddenly delicate voice behind it, and she sings smile like nobody had ever sung it before, like nobody had ever smiled.

like nobody had ever smiled before. I am transfixed. She sounded like the future to me in 2009, and she was, but she was also the best case scenario for the past. And so I interview her. I get Janelle Monet on the horn. We do a phoner. We talk for maybe 20 minutes,

the classic 20-minute alt-weekly phoner, incisive. I gush at her, she's very gracious, it's fine. I survive. She survives. I did find the article that I wrote based on this phone call on what's left of the Village Voice website, which is a pleasant surprise to me that the Village Voice website even still exists because journalism is collapsing, but it doesn't matter. What we talked about and what I wrote doesn't matter because it's too melodramatic to be the truth. But in my memory, I'm on the phone with Chanel Monet when I find out that Michael Jackson has died. And moreover, I have no idea in that moment that smile happens to be one of Michael Jackson's very favorite songs.

That's the time trying. Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 of a drug overdose. He was 50 years old. His doctor, Conrad Murray, was eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter. I'm almost positive I was not talking to Janelle Monet at the exact moment that I found out Michael Jackson died because I can't imagine I would have survived that experience. The anxiety of trying to decide if I should personally inform Janelle Monet that Michael Jackson died. I would have blown up. I would have spontaneously combusted with the stress of that situation.

No way that's what really happened. But now it's two weeks later. Now it's July 7th, 2009, and 31.1 million people in America alone are watching one of the 19 TV channels showing the live broadcast of Michael Jackson's memorial service. Held at the Staples Center, the basketball arena, and Los Angeles. Mariah Carey, Lionel Richie, and Jennifer Hudson are among the singers. Barry Gordy, Smoky Robinson, and Brooke Shields are among the speakers. And Brooke Shields says that Smile was one of Michael's

favorite songs. And then Germaine Jackson, Michael's brother and former bandmate, the Jackson Five, sings Smile with Michael's casket right there in front of him, loaded up with flowers. And if you're going to start crying, if you're going to lose it,

then you're going to lose it at the moment when Germain puts both his hands on his microphone and you see that he's wearing just one sparkly white glove on his right hand, just like the rest of Michael's brothers. And if you don't lose it then, you're definitely going to lose it when Germain almost loses it. Meanwhile, the Village Voice Music section, from the moment we hear that Michael Jackson has died, the office is plunged into absolute chaos. Or maybe it was just chaos

in my head. Many blogs were blogged, my friends, much content. This was the light. This was the life. And you know how about that life we were, the Staples Center Memorial, we live blogged it, which was the style at the time. I remember Usher performed. He sang Michael's song, Gone Too Soon, and it was beautiful and moving, of course, but also Usher walked off stage and down to Michael's casket, as though he was going to throw himself on top of it or something. And I remember writing. I remember live blogging the sentence, Usher, step away from that casket this instant. countless incisive blogs. The Village Voice Print Archives, dating all the way back to 1955, every physical issue of the paper was bound in these beautiful giant green books.

And so we get the interns to find every time the voice had ever written about Michael Jackson. Articles by Robert Crisgau, Greg Tate, Vince O'Letti, Chuck Eddie, Guy Trebe, Stanley Crouch. And we transcribe those articles straight into our CMS and we blogged them. but not just blogs, my friends. The editor-in-chief gave me the whole village voice feature well, like 10 print pages in the next issue. Jessica Hopper, the great author, critic, filmmaker, Jessica Hopper, went out to Gary Indiana, Michael Jackson's birthplace.

Jessica went out to the house Michael grew up in. 2,300 Jackson Street, Gary, Indiana, the night he died to write about all the people mourning there, keeping vigil. Greg Tate, very arguably the single greatest cult, culture writer ever born. Greg Tate wrote Michael Jackson's obituary. You don't edit Greg Tate. I didn't edit Greg Tate. I just watched. I just read it first. And it's long, but it's Greg Tate so it's worth it. So here's part of what Greg Tate wrote. Michael's death was probably the most shocking celebrity curtain call of our time because he had stopped being vaguely mortal or human for us quite a while ago.

had become such an implacably bizarre and abstracted tabloid creation, worlds removed from the various Michaels we had once loved so much. The unfortunate blessing of his departure is that we can now all go back to loving him as we first found him without shame, despair, or complication. Which Michael do you want back is the other real question of the hour. Over the years, we've seen him variously as our hamlet, our Superman, our Peter Pan, our Icarus, our Fred Astaire, our Marcel Marceau, our Houdini, our Charlie Chaplin, our Scarecrow, our Peter Parker and Black Spider-Man, our Ziggy Stardust and Thin-White Duke, our Little Richard Redux, our Alien versus Predator, our Elephant Man, our Great Gatsby, our Lon Cheney,

our old blue eyes, our Elvis, our Frankenstein, our ET, our mystique, our dark Phoenix, end quote. The cover of that issue, of the village voice, was a photo of Michael Jackson from 1976, so he'd be 17 or 18 years old. MJ standing on a balcony on the upper east side, his arms spread wide like he already owned the city. Giant smile blooming across his face. the photographer Michael Putland said he couldn't believe, given how famous and beloved MGA already was, how soft-spoken and fragile MGA was in person. Putland says, I almost felt sorry for him while taking the photos. I wanted to say, it's okay, Michael. End quote. That Michael, young, innocent, beloved, shockingly quiet in person, but still radiating joy. Someone you unabashedly, both rooted for and felt sorry for. I think that's the Michael that Jermaine Jackson is singing for here, barely keeping it together, but finally making it all the way through Michael's favorite song.

And no one forgot the bizarre behavior, the rumors, the allegations, the criminal investigations, the trial, the acquittal, the self-exile, the constant jokes. To my mind, you don't forget about any of that when Michael Jackson dies, but this is a person so famous, so successful, so culturally ubiquitous that whatever you think about him, however much you try to actively avoid thinking about him, when someone walks up to you on a random Thursday in June of 2009 and says Michael Jackson died, you think Billy Jean instantly, instinctively. or don't stop you get enough or the way you make me feel or remember the time or I want you back or whatever. Whatever your Michael Jackson song is, the split second you hear that he's gone, that song's in your head now. For me, it was Beat It. I make zero apologies. I wanted to hear Beat It as soon as possible, preferably while surrounded by hundreds of other people who are also in mourning. A complex and terrifyingly intense sort of mourning. Actually, can I tell you honestly,

worst show, the single worst concert I ever saw in my life, I saw the night Michael Jackson died, the night of June 25th, 2009. Because our next door neighbor in our Brooklyn apartment building was dating this guy, this clown who had a band, right, like a doofy, semi-rocus indie landfill type local band. And my neighbor, she'd been trying to get me to go see her new boyfriend's band for weeks. And I'm like, no, thank you. But I had finally agreed to see my neighbor's boyfriends band that night. Hours after news broke that Michael Jackson died.

And this band sucked. And the lead singer told a few dumb Michael Jackson jokes and I just stood there with my arms crossed and smoke coming out of my ears thinking, this band sucks ass. And all I want to do right now is be in a room with other people listening to beat it. I want to be at the Apollo

in Harlem or at least a bar somewhere where they're only playing Michael Jackson. I hate this band. I curse this band. I curse this band. name. The dude turned out to be a total clown, and he and my neighbor broke up, so I don't feel bad about any of this. Then I got home from that terrible show, and my wife and I just sat on the couch in a daze and watched MTV for a couple hours. And MTV, of course, is showing nothing but Michael Jackson videos, and that's the last time we watch MTV until Prince dies seven years later.

Anyway, Beat It plays in a loop in my head for two weeks after Michael Jackson dies. And Beat It does not replace everything I might think and feel and maybe trying to forget about Michael Jackson. But Beat It does thoroughly drown all that out for a very long time because I am in mourning. And genuinely, I think everyone consciously or subconsciously, is in mourning too, because this is also melodramatic, but I believe it. In that moment, we are all mourning Michael Jackson, however much or however little grace or sympathy we may be personally inclined to show him. We are all also mourning a part of ourselves because Michael Jackson was and is so huge and unprecedented a superstar that he's a part of all of our lives whether we like it or not. So even if you can't

listen to him or even look at him anymore, even if you're personally inclined to show him zero grace or sympathy, even if you think he's guilty of genuinely horrible things. If you're not mourning Michael Jackson the person, then you're mourning the Michael Jackson sized hole in your life where that person used to be. This isn't about how hard it is to separate the art from the artist. This is about how, in his case, it's impossible to separate the art from us. Michael Jackson did record and release his own version of his favorite song. In 1995, he put out a double album called History, Past, Present and Future, Book 1,

with his capitalized in the word history, and a 10-foot paramilitary statue of MJ on the cover that was part of a bizarrely militaristic ad campaign that Diane Sawyer described to Michael's face by saying, The critics have said that it's the most boldly, vanglorious self-deification a pop singer ever undertook with a straight face, end quote.

But that's nitpicking, isn't it? The first disc is his greatest hits to that point. 15 songs from Rock with You to heal the world that everyone knew at the time and everyone still remembers now whether you like it or not. The second disc is new stuff. And it reflects, unfortunately,

the state of Michael Jackson's personal and public life in 1995. He'd first been investigated for child sexual abuse in 1993 and vehemently denied any wrongdoing and the family of a 13-year-old named Jordan Chandler filed a lawsuit

against him which Michael settled out of court. And so here, now in 1995, on disc two of history, we are treated to the angriest and most confrontational music we'd ever hear him make. The song with his sister Janet called Scream. The song called They Don't Care About Us that included anti-Semitic slurs, which Michael quickly removed while insisting that the song was actually anti-prejudice. The song called tabloid junkie. The song widely assumed to be Michael's disc track aimed at the Santa Barbara district attorney who'd been investigating him. The Beatles cover come together. The song featuring the notorious B.I.G.

The song featuring Shaquille O'Neal. The song called You Are Not Alone. Oh, this is nice. I really like this one. Written by R. Kelly. God damn it. The song called Childhood. As in Have You Seen My Childhood.

This is a truly chaotic collection of 15 songs. It's profoundly ugly in place. And it might even get uglier the more beautiful it gets. And it's a super dark joke almost to end all this chaos with Michael's own lovely and heartbreaking version of smile. But of course, even by 1995, nothing about any of this was even remotely funny anymore. This is nearly 15 years before he passes. But already, in this moment, Michael Jackson has eons past the point. where you could hear this is just a guy singing a song, a guy singing his favorite song.

Michael Jackson singing Smile in 1995 is heartbreaking and almost unbearable whether you believe he's a saint or a monster. The context is overwhelming, suffocating, deafening, and now, in the nearly 15 years since Michael Jackson passed in 2009, we did not get to enjoy what Greg Tate called the unfortunate blessing of MJ's departure. We couldn't go back to loving him as we first found him without shame, despair, or complication. And what only heightens the despair, for me at least, is that when it comes to Michael Jackson, I can't ever forget him as I first found him when he towered over me and seemed to tower over everyone, like a 10,000 feet high statue of himself. He was never quite real to me, never quite human. And it took me years to realize that might have been a huge part of

the problem. However, you defined the problem and however you defined the solution. I've gone years without listening to this person. It feels like I've gone years without actively thinking about this person. And then I'll hear his voice at random somewhere and the entire elaborate Michael Jackson soundboard in my head will reactivate. The dragging footsteps of the zombies in the thriller video. Or Michael and his backup dancers going as they hump the ground in the video for the way you make me feel. Or the smooth criminal video, right?

The whole smooth criminal video. The smooth criminal video is my favorite. Was my favorite. Is my favorite. Especially when the tough guy in the film noir saloon is shooting pool and Michael catches the cue ball in midair spins around, smashes it in his fist, and then blows the dust back at the tough guy.

Did I really think it was possible to ever forget any of this? I worshipped Michael Jackson in the 80s because I worshipped MTV, and MTV worshipped Michael Jackson. There was a worn vinyl copy of Michael Jackson's thriller in every house I ever set foot in for the first 15 years of my life. Thriller generated its own elaborate Michael Jackson soundboard in my head. As a kid in the early to mid-80s, some days I'd wake up and the only thing in my head would be Michael Jackson, almost cracking himself up while calling me a vegetable during wannabe starting something.

I also like the part in that song where all the backup singers go, he-ha, other days I'd wake up and the only thing in my head would be the single, uh, during the bridge to P-Y-T. or in my more serene childhood moments, my head would just be a loop of the high note MJ hits at the end of human nature. And then we got to 1987, and I wore out my own personal cassette of Michael Jackson's Bad.

Thriller was my parents' Michael Jackson album, but Bad was mine. I'd listen to Bad, the song, on repeat, and crack up at the line, Your But is Mine every time. I'd head banged a dirty Diana. I'd soulfully reflect on the man in the mirror during the man in the mirror. I'd listen to the last song on Side B, which was called Leave Me Alone,

and I'd wonder who Michael was talking about. And I'd fail to realize that he was talking about literally everyone. And then I'd flip the tape back over to Side A and listen to Bad again and crack up at the line, your butt is mine again. I'd obsessively rewatch the smooth criminal video that I'd taped on our VCR, just to see the cue ball smash move again. and I'd also fantasize about walking into a bar and flipping a quarter into the jukebox from 50 yards away.

I'd listen to my bad cassette while I played Mega Man 2 on my Nintendo. Then we got to the 90s and I played Michael Jackson's Moonwalker on Sega Genesis. And that got beat it stuck in my head all over again. Does he really saying no one wants to be defeated there? I never knew that. I just assumed he's saying no one wants to be. Eat it, beat it. And that doesn't make sense,

but I didn't care because I've loved this song since I was five. The Beat It video, right? Yeah, the video. The specific part of the Beat It video where the two street gang tough guys have a knife fight with their hands tied to each other. And Michael Jackson shows up and puts a hand on each of them, just as he sings, it doesn't matter who's wrong or right.

And somehow that convinces them to knock it off. showing how funky and strong is your fight. Really? That's what he sings there? Really? Huh. Maybe. It doesn't matter.

Anyway, and then all the street gang tough guys dance together for the next 60 seconds. Incredible. This is my childhood. This person is my childhood. We talk about the monoculture now. In retrospect, we lament the death of the monoculture now that the internet has atomized everything.

We reminisce about the golden era where we had three TV channels plus MTV and everyone watched the same thing on TV and went to the same movies and listened to the same records. That's Michael Jackson. The person everyone watched and listened to was Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson was the monoculture. This did not change overnight in the 90s. It just got weirder. Then it got uglier. And then it got impossible.

And then it somehow got exponentially more impossible for the next 20 odd years. And there are days when I'd much rather forget that any of it ever happened. But that would be dishonest. It would be dishonest, for example, to pretend to forget that one night in 1991, roughly 500 million people watched on TV as Michael Jackson turned from a panther back into a human and rubbed his crotch a whole lot and smashed up a car with a crowbar as part of what Entertainment Weekly later described on its cover as Michael Jackson's video nightmare. We had no idea back then how nightmarish things could get.

But there's no explaining any decade of my life without reckoning with him. And I suspect that's true for all of us. The clunkiness of the phrase, When I saw you kicking dirt in my eye used to bother me so much. But that doesn't matter anymore, I guess. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 116th episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s, and I've spent 115 episodes trying to taught myself out of this.

But this week we are discussing black or white by Michael Jackson, from his 1991 album, Dangerous. We're going to get through this together. Because I haven't forgotten any of it, and neither is anybody else. Billy Jean alone has 1.6 billion plays on Spotify, and Beat It has another billion plus, and beat it is still my favorite, but Billy Jean was also easily the most rapturously received song the DJ played at my wedding.

Everybody on the dance floor, everybody delighted. And meanwhile, MJ the Musical is currently one of the biggest hits on Broadway, even if I only know that because of Saturday Night Lives jokes about it. This person's music, his iconography, his legacy is too deeply embedded in our cultural fabric to ever be washed out or disavowed. even if you think it should be. Let me strongly recommend to you the Wondery Podcast, Think Twice, Michael Jackson. Ten episodes, came out in 2023, hosted by Leon Nafak and Jay Smooth. It's thoughtful and fair and compassionate and unsparing. It spans MJ's whole career, starting with growing up in Gary, Indiana,

in a hypermusical family dominated by his father, then the Jackson Five, then the whiz, then off the wall, thriller, then bad, then dangerous, then the 1995 history double CD. They talked to the poor guy who directed the four-minute history promo video. And as an initial description of this video, let's just say that the director says, quote, we really went out of our way to make sure it did not appear fascistic and did not have any overtones of, you know, the guys who lost

in World War II, end quote, which is how you know, that the history promo video was frequently accused of being fascistic and having overtones of, you know, the guys who lost in World War II. Basically, Michael is marching with a giant Star Wars Empire-type army amid fiery revolution-type riot-adjacent calamity

as his fans scream his name and wave signs that say king of pop, roughly half a dozen women faint from excitement. Then the soldiers, played by actual British paratroopers flown into Budapest where this was all shot, the soldiers twirl their bayonets for a while, at which point a skyscraper-sized statue of Michael is unveiled amidst fireworks and myriad helicopters. It's bananas. It's disconcerting. It is poorly received by the media. It is indeed boldly vanglorious self-deification. It is indeed

a little fascistic. But this promo video was useful to Michael in 1995 as a distraction. And it's useful to me right now as a distraction. Because if we're talking about the Bananas Military Parade History video, then we're not talking about all the other stuff you have to talk about when you talk about Michael Jackson. So these are the facts. In 1993, a 13-year-old boy named Jordan Chandler said,

that Michael Jackson molested him. Michael vehemently denied this, and that case was settled out of court before it went to trial. Ten years later, in 2003, a 13-year-old boy named Gavin Arvizo said that Michael Jackson molested him. Michael vehemently denied this, and that case went to trial in Santa Barbara County Superior Court in 2005, in a gruesome public media circus that ended with Michael being acquitted on all counts. Many reporters at the time felt that the prosecution's case was very poorly presented and that Michael's full acquittal was not exactly a surprise. Though in that Think Twice podcast, a few people also point out that nowadays, and especially after the Me Too movement emerged in 2017, most members of the media would talk about 13-year-old Gavin R. Vizzo and alleged sexual

assault victims in general with a great deal more compassion and a far greater benefit of the out in 2019, 10 years after Michael Jackson's death, HBO released the four-hour documentary Leaving Neverland, in which two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, say that Michael Jackson molested them as children. James beginning in 1988, Wade beginning in 1990. The Jackson estate vehemently denies this. Wade Robson, notably, had testified on Michael's behalf in the Gavin Arvizo trial in 2005. That HBO series also is thoughtful and unsparing, and overall I'm glad I watched it, though from a spiritual perspective, leaving Neverland is also the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. There's a still photograph early on of Wade Robeson

as a kid posing with Michael, and Wade is wearing a child's replica of the dapper white suit from the smooth criminal video, my favorite Michael Jackson video, and they're both smiling, and I found it physically painful to look at this photo, and I very much do not like to think about it, and mostly I don't.

This podcast thing twice announces early on that their point is not to determine Michael's guilt or innocence. Jay Smooth says, quote, For us, this podcast isn't about honoring Michael. Rather, it's about figuring out how to take the love so many of us have for him for his songs, his voice, all of the family and community that we've built around him in our

lives and put all of that next to the distinct possibility that he may have done things we consider unforgivable." So take the example of R. Kelly, another seemingly untouchable pop hitmaker in the subject of his own punishing a necessary 2019 documentary series, a lifetime surviving R. Kelly, even R. Kelly, who is now in prison, who is now in the eyes of the law, unquestionably guilty of so many things that we consider unforgivable. R. Kelly's music is still here. Still streaming. You can still hear it even if you never actually listen to it again. He was so popular for so long that either you can still hear R. Kelly's music in your head,

or you can still hear faintly the sound of the tremendous ongoing effort it requires to suppress the sound of R. Kelly's music in your head. I'm not here to determine Michael's guilt or innocence either. I think we're long past the point of that ever being definitive. proven one way or the other. And there is no escaping Michael Jackson's impact regardless. The wider world has been grappling with that, but the terrible things he might have done and the tremendous world-altering, virtually unprecedented societal impact of his music since the first public investigations into Michael in 1993. From 1993 on, listening to Michael Jackson has been a fight.

It is a war. A metaphorical war. Sure, maybe, but it is real and it is brutal and it is endless. It is both an external war, with fans and detractors still arguing Michael's guilt are just as vehemently arguing as innocence and an internal war. It's a war in your own head about how you hear this person's music now, or whether you ever want to hear it in your head at all. You can remove this man and his music from your brain, but you're going to need an army. And even back in 1991, Michael himself sounded like he was ready to start fighting and never stop. In 1991, Michael Jackson puts out an album called Dangerous, which starts with a song called Jam, which appears to be constructed from only the most explosive and combative parts of the Michael Jackson soundboard in all our heads.

All the grunts, the screams, the diamond hard consonants, the detonation of every breath he takes. is cacophonous. It is industrial in both scale and tone. So Michael Jackson's thriller comes out in 1982 and sells a reported 70 million copies worldwide and reigns to this day as the best selling album of all time globally. It's the second best selling album of all time in America. The Eagles. The fucking Eagles. Next, in 1987, Michael puts out bad, which is the 12th best-selling album of all time globally, with 35 million reported copies sold worldwide, making it slightly more successful than Alanis Morissette's jagged little pill, and slightly less successful than Led Zeppelin 4.

Then in 1991 comes Dangerous, which is the 30th best-selling album of all time globally, selling roughly 30 million reported copies and sandwiched by the fucking Beatles. Dangerous is just ahead of Abbey Road, And just behind Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, we are trending downward in terms of pure sales, from thriller to bad to dangerous. But Michael Jackson is nonetheless still on a monster blockbuster run, the likes of which pop music had never seen before. And no offense to Taylor Swift or whoever, we will never see again. People do not sell albums like Michael Jackson anymore. The absolute biggest pop stars now are hailed as gods if they sell like one-tenth as many albums as peak Michael Jackson did.

So Dangerous is a monster success even on his own terms. And that's all the more impressive given that Dangerous is often wildly flagrantly abrasive. Quincy Jones, the all-universe super producer who'd mastered a super 80s zillion dollar live band sound and who'd been Michael's right-hand man since off the wall back in 1979, Quincy is out. For about half of dangerous, Teddy Riley is in. Teddy Riley, the primary architect of New Jack Swing, the brash hip-hop and R&B hybrid that took over pop music starting in the late 80s. Teddy Riley from the group's Black Street and Guy.

Teddy Riley, the guy who now helps Michael hone the skeletal harshness of a song like, Why You Want a Trip on Me, on which MJ suggests, politely, that the media finds somebody, or preferably something else, to fixate on. They say I'm different. They don't understand. But there's a bigger problem. That's a much more than demand. They say I'm different. They don't understand. But there's a bigger problem that's much more in demand. He's whispering, but he's also kind of screaming. Only Michael Jackson can both whisper and scream simultaneously. here in 1991 tabloid-wise we're talking about bubbles the chimp we're talking about whether or not michael tried to buy the elephant man's bones we're starting to talk about the plastic surgery we're starting to

talk about the alarming and ever-increasing lightning of michael jackson's skin michael suffered from the skin disease vitilago nonetheless based on all the tremendously impassioned writing we found in the village voice archives the color of michael jackson's skin was of grave social and cultural importance. You sell this many records, and every single thing about you matters. Dangerous is the album after the album that ended with a song called Leave Me Alone. This is the album before the cultural conversation about Michael Jackson takes a disastrously and permanently pitch black turn.

He's got genuine problems here in 1991, image-wise, but his problems right now will be obliterated by his problems later. This is the last time that Michael can even attempt to whisper scream about how maybe we should all talk about world hunger instead. You've got world hunger, not enough to eat, there's really no time. You've got world hunger, not enough to eat, there's really no time to be tripping on me. He's not wrong, but pretty much nobody listened. Most of us found the time.

Even the huge, warm, super poppy blockbuster moments on dangerous have a jagged edge to them. A weaponized fury. The best song in this record is Remember the Time, because of course it is. But the best part of Remember the Time is at the end when Michael really, really, really, really want you to fucking remember already. I always wanted to be able to do that. I've never even attempted to do that, not even once, not even in private. I'm certainly not going to try now. You're welcome.

There is plenty of swoony ballad action on dangerous. Heal the World is on Dangerous, but do you particularly want to hear Heal the World? I don't. If we want to talk about diminishing skills, if we want to talk about deterioration, the swoony ballot action side of Michael Jackson deteriorates way faster. Heal the world is no human nature or man in the mirror. But the harder, the faster, the more caustic aspects of dangerous succeed, I think, in updating MJ for the 90s.

His tough guy beat it side proves far more adaptable. Michael was never quite going to be the vanguard for 90s R&B, but he still feels present tense. And that is plenty impressive enough for a pop star who'd been famous since 1969.

His voice, both physical and cultural, is deafening, even if you can barely make out what he's actually saying. Just premise me what In the Closet is called In the Closet and it's about a love affair Michael urgently wants to keep quiet

draw your own conclusions everybody else did this song is hard though this song's got teeth this song is very quietly scarier than thriller you know it's pretty good actually swoonie ballad action wise

the song Will You Be There You know the most unsettling part of this whole album The End of Will You Be There This cannot help but feel prophetic in the worst possible way. Michael Jackson in 1991 audibly choking up while musing about what we might do in his darkest hour. He talks about my violence, my turbulence, my fear and my confessions, my anguish and my pain. But yet again, what he's saying is nowhere near as impactful or as upsetting as how he's,

he's saying it. I'll never let you part. Dangerous is a wild record to listen to now with the benefit of hindsight. The benefit, sorry, I meant with the terrible curse of hindsight. Even at its cheesiest and calmest, this record just does not work at all as any sort of cliched calm before the storm. This is the last relatively normal, relatively uncomplicated, relatively bearable moment in the Michael Jackson discourse, but normal

is never ever what we wanted from this person. And it's never what we got. And so we arrive finally at the beginning, at the first single released off Dangerous, the opening salvo, and maybe a single greatest cultural flex of the

1990s, in which, as I believe I mentioned previously, roughly 500 million people watched on TV as he turned from a panther back into a human and rubbed his crotch a whole lot and smashed a car windshield with a crowbar. Now the moment you've been waiting for.

Don't touch that dial. He's bad. He's cool. He's dangerous. He's the king of pop music. My main man, Michael Jackson. Yes, that was Bart Simpson. The original 11-minute video for Michael Jackson's Black or White,

directed by John Landis, premiered on Thursday, November 14th, 1991, airing simultaneously in America on MTV, VH1, BET, and Fox. I watched it live on Fox. I watched it right after the Simpsons. It was season three,

the one where Bart and Homer built a soapbox derby car. The episode the following week was Flaming Mose. I watched Bart Simpson introduce this video. Bart Simpson, technically, is introduction number one. Introduction number two is George Went, a.k.a. the guy from Cheers.

Screaming at McCauley Culkin, a.k.a. the kid from home alone. But dad, this is the best part. Then McCauley plugs in an electric guitar, and it's a power cord, and blasts Norm from cheers through the roof of the house and into the lower stratosphere

and all the way, apparently, to Africa. That's introduction number two. Then the actual song starts. Do you like this song, Black or White, by Michael Jackson? Have I ever asked you that outright before about any song ever? I don't know if I ever worked out for myself whether I really like this song or not.

For me, it just arrived one day. One Thursday is a gargantuan cultural phenomenon. It hardly feels like a song at all. Do you know what words he's even singing most of the time? I still kind of don't. Does he really sing I took my baby on a Saturday bang right there? Sure he does. Sure.

That is not Slash from Guns and Roses on Gets. there. Sometimes slash would play this song with MJ Live later, but that's not slash now. I was mistaken about that when I was 13. I regret the error. Bill Betrell is on guitar there now. Bill Betrell, who co-wrote and co-produced Black or White with Michael Jackson. Bill Betrell, who'd go on to very famously work with Cheryl Crowe on Tuesday night music club. This is not Bill's last unexpectedly prominent contribution to this song. Bill will be back short. that's my personal favorite part of black or white right there the hook the bounce the exuberance the he the he is tremendously important it may come down very simply to the fact that as a kid

in the 80s i associated michael jackson with miracles with belief with joy with slack-jawed wonder with a carefree majesty lighter than air lighting up the ground wherever you walked. I took the moonwalk both seriously and literally. It may come down to the fact that black or white, and specifically the Simpsons lead in black or white video premiere, is

the very last time I regarded Michael Jackson as an uncomplicated, ecstatic, deified, immortal pop superstar. This is the final moment in which I, at 13, might be said to be worshipping him. It is November 1991.

You know what other record is climbing the charts right now, Nirvana's Nevermind. In January 1992, Nirvana's Nevermind will hit number one on the Billboard album chart, replacing Michael Jackson's dangerous. Nirvana beats Michael Jackson. That's how the 90s officially start. That's how the brutally long, drawn-out end of Michael Jackson begins. That's the myth anyway. That's the myth I believe when I was 13. That's probably an error or two, but I regret that one less.

Michael Jackson in 1991 singing, It don't matter if you're black or white. Unbelievable. Black or white is a disconcertingly cheerful provocation, and that extends to this video, in which Michael dances, cheerfully, with African tribesmen and Thai women and Native Americans, and an Indian woman amid roaring traffic,

that's my favorite, and a troop of Ukrainian folk dancers. Somewhere in there, he also dances in front of a giant fireball. You hear those explosions? He's actually dancing in front of grainy footage of a missile launcher in front of war footage. As he sings,

I ain't scared of no sheets. Meaning the KKK or the tabloids or both, probably. That's a great line if you want the truth. Still provocative, but way less cheerful. You ready for Bill Betrell again? The Cheryl Crowe producer guy? Because Bill's ready for you. Oh my God. Yeah, this is Bill Betrell again. Bill wrote the rap part to this song. He's like, well, obviously we'll get an actual rapper to wrap this. And Michael Jackson was like, no, you do it. And then in the video, McCauley Culkin will lip sync your rapping while wearing sunglasses at backward baseball cap and at least three giant gold chains. And Bill is like, what? Do you ever just sit around and think about roughly 500 million people? gathered around their televisions on a Thursday night,

watching the same music video, watching the same Michael Jackson video, watching the same Michael Jackson video where the kid from home alone, lip sinks, Cheryl Crow's producer's rap verse about how he's not going to spend his life being a color. Does this actively make you miss the monoculture, or does it make you very glad the monoculture doesn't exist anymore?

Tell him what it's not about, Bill. And then the black or white video utilizes a face of the going to spend my life being a color. And then the black or white video utilizes a baffling new special effect called feature-based morphing in which a bunch of super cheerful people

of various races, including Tyra Banks, lip sync the outro while morphing seamlessly and cheerfully into each other. You're going to have to trust me that this was cutting-edge technology in 1991. You're also going to have to trust me that the last four minutes of this video in which Michael Jackson stalks off the video set

in Panther form, transforms back into Michael Jackson, repeatedly pantomimes masturbation, smashes up a car, throws a trash can through a shop window, do the right thing style, and morphs back into a Panther. Just trust me that this is the most bananas thing ever shown on national television. If we consider the size of the audience

and the ungodly hugueness of the guy doing all the screaming and smashing and groping. We are beyond mere provocation. Now, this shit is legitimately avant-garde. I think about sitting there at 13, watching this in real time on the couch next to my parents. I think about all the parents nationwide who called Fox, the TV station, to complain.

In a Seattle Times article, a few days later, a Fox network spokesman named Danielle Parker says, quote, it was horrible. People are complaining. They're saying they don't understand it and that it was pretty gross, end quote. And Michael took this reaction to heart. Kind of.

He tried releasing a new version of the video where the car has computer generated racist graffiti on it. So we better understand that Michael is whacking the bejesus out of this car with a crowbar because the car represents racism. Like we're in a newspaper political cartoon. but introducing racist graffiti into your blockbuster music video is unlikely to mollify the sort of people inclined to call up a TV network on the phone to complain about your blockbuster music video. And so soon Michael releases a statement that says, quote, it upsets me to think that black or white could influence any child or adult to destructive behavior, either sexual or violent.

I've always tried to be a good role model. and therefore have made these changes to avoid any possibility of adversely affecting any individual's behavior. I deeply regret any pain or hurt that the final segment of black or white has caused children, their parents, or any other viewers." End quote. And MTV just stopped showing that whole part of the video, pretty much. And that was the end of that, and the start of literally everything else. This is the part of Michael Jackson's memorial service that got to me. Stevie Wonder.

On stage at the Staples Center in L.A. in July 2009. Just a few weeks after Michael's death, live on what felt like every TV channel and every computer screen, singing his 1974 song, They Won't Go When I Go. It would be perverse to say

that this is my single favorite Stevie Wonder song, but it's up there. This is when I lost it while live blogging Michael Jasson's memorial service, the devastation and the fury in Stevie Wonder's voice. Who will sing like this for Stevie Wonder when we lose him? Who else could have come close to conveying what we lost when we lost Michael? As close as we're ever going to get, we were unified. In this precise moment, in our grief, or at least our shock, we meaning everyone, we, we're. We, meaning everyone, We meaning the world, this corny idea of the monoculture returned.

Just this once for the public memorial for the man who'd once managed to unite us that would now just as bitterly divide us. Everyone felt something. We all grieved for somebody. The scale of pop stardom is always changing. But human nature never does. We are honored to be joined by Wesley Morris, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. critic at large for the New York Times and the co-host of the beloved podcasts,

still processing and do you like Prince movies. Wesley, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Rabbi. I don't know what's going to happen right now, but... I don't know either. We're going to get through this together. I'm down to get on this great space coaster of yours. Oh, my God.

And it's an honor to be on the show, I should also say. Well, it's an honor to have you. Where does Michael Jackson start for you? Like, how old were you? What was the song in the video? Like, when did you first know that he was special and that he was going to be with you your entire life, whether you liked it or not?

When did I know? I mean, the first time I can remember seeing Michael Jackson was probably at Motown 25, the Motown 25 special. That's good start. That aired on ABC, and I believe the... I don't remember what time of year it was, but 1983 was when it aired. And, you know, like everybody else,

I was bored for the first, for all the, not everybody else, but like many, many people, many, many seven and eight year olds. I was like, who are these people? I do remember that night seeing Diana Ross on that broadcast. And Diana Ross is somebody I had seen many times. Actually, actually, my first Michael Jackson experience would have been seeing the whiz, which I saw before Motown, 24. Of course, of course.

But he was just a guy in a movie at that point. I didn't know that he was, I didn't know a lot about the Jackson 5. I didn't know anything about who the scarecrow was beyond his scarecrow in the whiz being captivating. But then Motown 25 happens. He comes out, does the thing with his brothers. I guess I knew he was in a group called the Jackson 5 because the victory tour was also on offer.

Not that I was going to that either. But he comes out and does Billy Jean after the thing with his brothers, and you just, you know, even watching it with my mom and my sister in my mom's bedroom, we also felt the earthquake. And even my mother was like,

this is insane. Like, little Michael Jackson is doing this. I can't believe it. And we were just, like, jumping up and down, really excited to watch this happen. So that was my first, I would say, formative Michael Jackson experience.

was seeing him on Motown 25. When the Moonwalk happened, because that's obviously when he debuted the Moonwalk. Did you know the second you saw the Moonwalk? It's like, oh, this is going to be probably the single most famous dance move, you know, of our generation,

of any generation, really. Yeah, I mean, I never, I mean, like everybody, it just, but it isn't, it wasn't just the novelty of the Moonwalk itself, right? It was the, the absolute grace

and precision and swag of it there was a way that he I mean he almost seemed to be improvising that whole thing and yet it had a fluidity of premeditation

and all of his physical signatures were completely fully formed in that Motown 25 performance. But I, you know, Michael is, I mean, I've heard stories from musicians. I mean, people I've spoken to over the years, stories I've heard people tell other people in people's memoirs.

There are little snippets of Michael Jackson stories. And he is a revenge artist. He is a thief. He, I mean, and I think the revenge part is historical. It's not like you did this to me. I'm going to do this back to you. I think Michael Jackson understood the history of American music and was like, oh, Freddie Mercury, Kenny Loggins,

y'all want to do this? I can do it better and I'm not going to apologize for it. And I want y'all to come at me and tell me I stole your shit. But, you know, Michael Jackson wasn't singing like he was on thriller before he started working with Kenny Loggins. and he wasn't, you know, whatever that register was that he was not reaching on wannabe starting something, you know, off the wall by the time he gets to want to be starting something

and he is like kicked it up on an entire key, basically. Like he found a register that was basically in direct conversation slash conflict with another one bites the dust, Freddie Mercury, right? and I heard a story, and you can correct me from wrong, I heard a story that, if you've heard this story too, that Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson was giving Queen advice about making another one Bites the Dust a single. Like, I don't know if they were going to not put it on an album.

I don't know what the story was with that song. But Michael definitely gave them some advice for what to do with that song, because he heard how big it was going to be. And I don't know if that was advice they needed. But I just heard a story that Michael Jackson in some way, and without his taking credit for it or anything, like I just heard a story that Michael Jackson said to Freddie Mercury

or Brian May or somebody, like, y'all, this is some shit. This is the song. But I also think, like, any artist, like, he's like, I want to try that, see if I can do it better. Right. I've never heard him describe that way as a revenge artist, but that makes a lot of sense to me now that you say. Oh, he's pilfering from everybody. I mean, and often like in homage, like all of, I mean, you can find five dancers that he moves like, right? I mean, and you can spot the actual pieces of, you know, musicals that he has taken things from working with these assorted choreographers and he's, you know, collaborated with, you know, over the years of his career. So he really was paying a lot of tributes to a lot of different people.

But it's hard for like some of the singing to be considered a tribute where really it's just like he is dunking. It's just, you know, it's just one-upsmanship. Yeah. So when we get to the 90s, when we get to Dangerous, say, who do you hear, you know,

who is he avenging, who is he getting revenge on? And, you know, as he moves into the 90s, as you get the dangerous and the history album and blood on the dance floor, even. I mean, the revenge is on the media, right? Like, it's on the haters. He has turned fully persecutorial.

And he, or fully persecuted. And the revenge is essentially like, you guys can't stop me. I will not be stopped. You can say what you want. but I'm still here. I'm going to still make music and people are still going to buy it.

And for the most part, that was true. But the aggrievement, like the 90s, Michael was, like, operating at extremes, right? Where the paranoia, sense of persecution, the determination to insist upon a conventional heterosexuality, was operating at one extreme

and the other extreme was this sort of childlike, naive, um, optimist that produced no good music.

All the good music was happening at this other defensive end, right? Yeah. He's essentially like preempting and punching back

and, you know, counter arguing against the depictions of himself in the media. And, you know, to open dangerous, to call the album Dangerous for one thing, right? Like, I mean, to say bad is one thing

because that's interpretable. You know, you can, that's open to interpretation. Like what bad could be. Right. Dangerous is like, nah, I know what y'all think. Here it is. Y'all want to talk shit about me? And then the cute thing about the dangerous part,

of course, is the song is about a woman being dangerous. and that's a jam like straight up like steals takes from from Fred Astaire right I believe it's um is it silks is it um

is it silk stockings silk stockings is it what Fred Astaire movie is it where he's where he's got that number with Sid Chorice anyway it doesn't matter but that song is the Fred Astaire spoken interlude basically in that movie

to me I almost explicitly I think if you look at the lighter notes I think it might even like acknowledge that movie. Dangerous, with the exception of heal the world and, I think just, I think Heal the World is the only bad, truly just almost unlistenable song on that album. It's in a different category of listenable.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right. It is easy listenable, but it is un-listenable. It is dis-eased listening for me. Yeah, I can't do it. I get you. I get you. Sure. But it ends up, I mean, if you had a cassette or a piece of vinyl listening to Dangerous, you could end one, flip it over. And there was black and white waiting for you to, like, cleanse you of that terrible, terrible song. Okay, that's an excellent framing for black and white. Do you remember the video? Do you remember the blockbuster, you know, multi-channel video premiere of black or white?

I remember being in my dorm room. I went to a private boarding school and I had a roommate, Tramaine Davis and I, we hung out by the TV that we had in our room. And we had a little tiny TV and we watched what, I mean, Fox had done a really good job of selling this thing as being a like,

like an event. And I think it was the, there were two events from this album. It was black and white in the Remember the Time video. Which also, that was definitely, that definitely premiered on or after in living color on a Sunday. I hope I'm right about that. But I'm pretty sure. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

We're not here to talk about that. Black or white, I don't know. I didn't know what to expect. Everybody wants Thriller 2, Electric Bugaloo, and Michael knows that that's what we want. And we've got to give us a little bit of something scary. and something's like special effects, some special effect we've never seen before. But also, I mean,

the idea that he is attacking that car in what I can only describe as the way you make me feel visual palette. That's true. That's absolutely true. On a street. Yes. And that car's there.

And he, I mean, that video is, I mean, I don't need to tell you, Rob. It's deep. You know? Because it opens, the song on the album opens with this kid in his bedroom, trying to listen to a song. And the music's too, it's, you know, very generic. I call it video game music that kid is listening to. Yeah, it's just like rock.

It's just like, yeah, like a rock preset on a keyboard. Exactly, exactly. And the dad bangs in the door and he's like, turn that off. And the kid's like, no! And the dad's like, turn it off. And the kids are like, I'll show you. And then he puts our, and of all the, like, he doesn't take out injustice for all, you know. He doesn't even put on a poison album, right?

He just plays black or white. And that is this little white kid. I presume he's white. I don't know. He could, I mean, I'm giving him a race. But I just saw a version of Bart Simpson doing this objection. And he puts on black and white to shut his parents up. So that's the beginning of the song.

And then the video, you know, the video is really interesting because it's just, it's kind of, it's like Michael also had a new look, right? He did not look like, like even for bad, where his skin had been, where his skin was lighter. now he was he was more wraith-like he'd somehow gotten even lighter and you know now John Landis the director of that video had you know I don't know whose idea was

to light him in a way that kind of made him glow a little bit but now he was a glow and I can remember sitting there just being like trying to trying to square how to appreciate what was happening here, right? Like, because the thing about Michael Jackson that we don't really give ourselves enough credit

for or something in terms of like what the human brain has the capacity to, to contain at once or process at once. But like so much of that premiere, the premiere of that video was about like, okay, here's a new song about Michael Jackson. We have been waiting at this point three years for it. Actually, not even that. Like, yeah, three years for it. We've heard the rumors about him being too close to boys.

And as for me, I would have been 15 at the time. So, I mean, it wasn't, I didn't have a moral responsibility to be thinking about this. But it was back there in my kid brain. Not even back there. It was like in the middle. of my kid brain. And then there was the fact that, like, Michael was getting lighter and lighter and lighter.

And his hair was getting straighter. And his facial features were becoming, like, the thing about the black and white video was how much smaller his nose it got. And how red his lips were. That's just something was, there's like a lot to, like, take in visually. But because it was Michael Jackson,

you were just like, nah, okay. this is where we're going and Michael is trying to take us to androgyny, racelessness and like trying to make himself

like a menace to society just in terms of like the way he like thwapped his chest and threw his chest out and beat it and he got his shirt open and this is before the car. We don't, we're not even at the car yet. Right.

Right. This is just him getting to the bridge of that song. By the way, fantastic bridge. Great bridge. The rap. The rap does it for you. No, not the rap. I ain't scared of this stuff.

I ain't scared of no sheets. Right. You know, I mean, like, just the violence of the bridge of that song is like laying the groundwork for what happens with the car. He's got war footage projected behind him. There's like fires burning. Right. It's just And so the song

I mean at that point I didn't know I mean I guess you know what the song is about But it's just to say like I'm not breaking up with this person I love this person You can KKK you come at me I don't care I'm ready to fight let's go Let's go I love this person

And they're like it is such a musical Like it's such a perfect use of of music and musicality to express mood. Because it goes after the bridge, it goes right back. You know, you get the rap, which, you know, take it or leave it.

But this is the era when all your stars were importing rappers to do something. I don't know what, because very few of them, like, you know, I mean, Prince did it, Michael did it, but I think Prince did it because Michael did it. That makes sense. I mean, is that fair to Prince? No, because, I mean, Cat was rapping on like Love Sexy.

And on, you know, no, that's not fair to Prince. Michael, Michael was chasing Prince. It's true. Like, in their little back and forth competition. I mean, Prince had had more rapping on more of his songs before Michael Jackson had one rap. So. The Diamonds and Pearls album, I think, was that 91? That might have been out already.

92. Oh, okay, never mind. I get you. I don't remember. 91. 91. I think you're right. I think you're right that it's Michael chasing Prince more than the reverse in this specific.

But it doesn't matter. The point is he was doing a thing that like, like, like, because like all of these like fake heavy D rappers showing up on all these great pop stars albums was just like a bad trend. But after you get to the rap, the song just goes back to being. the sort of genial bop that it started off as, right? And you have to sort of remember that there's this really violent bridge that is just basically kicking you back into like, I love my baby because she's so awesome. We're going to walk until the sun comes.

You know, I mean, it's just like, it's just a cute, like if Sammy Davis Jr. had recorded black or white, the only thing that would have made Sammy not do it would have been the bridge. This is basically like a pop song that anybody who wanted to express some kind of progressive value

could have recorded except for the bridge. And the bridge is the most daring thing. It's one of my favorite musical breaks in a pop song because the character of it is so revealing of the mindset

of the person who made it. Like you could not have what kind of persecution you were in for on dangerous. But the bridge is kind of warning you when, yo, when this album comes out, and the first two songs are going to be about, like, I don't know, how the media is trying to, like, ruin my life and say horrible things about me and persecute me. I'm going to put a little tiny bit of this in this sweet little, cute little pop song.

And he did it. But anyway, you get to the end of the video. And, well, I don't know, Rob, where were you? Like, do you remember? I do. I was on my couch, dude. I was why I was The Simpsons. I watched The Simpsons.

I watched Bart Simpson's A. Here's my friend Michael Jackson video starts. I think my parents were in the room. I have a vague sense of my parents in the room. And Michael starts, you know, unzipping a zipper and smashing up a car. And I'm like, well, now this is happening. We didn't turn it off. I'll tell you that much.

So that's, that would be the litmus test. But I, that's, I just remember, as you said, how it was eventized, you know, very effectively, right? You know, and I, at the number, it's like 500 million people watched it. And like, you don't know, like, how they arrive at those numbers, how true they are. But it did. It was one of those moments that felt like everyone was watching. You didn't know anybody who hadn't seen it. Mm-hmm.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's, that's sort of the last time, one of the last times I remember that. with Michael Jackson without a huge number, you know, of complications, you know, about how you're hearing it. You're absolutely right that like the bridge is, you know, the foreshadowing, you know, of how the rest of the decade and really the rest of his life is going to go. But this is the last time, you know, that's like, oh, cool, a new Michael Jackson video and like half of it turns out to be balkers and confrontational. But like, we all watch it. I mean, I also think that like the end of that video.

I mean, other people have kind of written about this. Margot Jefferson. of course being... Sure, of course. Her book on Michael Jackson is the single greatest work of typing anybody he's ever committed to that man and the culture around him.

And I believe it was her who has a long... just some thinking about what it means for him to at the end of that video, you know, which was basically done in response to... This is Michael Jackson responding to the racial climate of the country at that moment, right?

You know, the Rodney King beating has happened at this point. We are in the midst of a whole other kind of racial reckoning with respect to justice and peace. And, you know, L.A. is, you know, where Michael Jackson, I mean, he doesn't live in L.A., but, you know, he knows what's going on. And this was him responding to the national mood. And, like, him expressing what his mood was in response to how things were going. And at the end of the video, after he's beaten up this poor car, he turns into a panther.

He turns into a black panther and just, like, saunter's all. Yeah. What the fuck? My thought, my thought exactly at the time. I mean, Chuck D. didn't do that? He did not. No, I don't recall Chuck D ever turning into a panther. You know, Ice Cube didn't turn into a black panther after beating up a car.

I'm just saying, like, Michael, I mean, he was a baller. And, you know, it's funny because you don't really want to hear these musicians talk about what their political opinions or anything are. They're just not the people you want to talk, like turn to on a panel. Michael, what do you think Los Angeles owes the community right now?

What are your thoughts? Nobody's asking Michael Jackson that question. And he kind of knows it because he doesn't, he wouldn't have a terribly coherent answer. He's a musician. Let the music speak. Like, let the art forms that he,

is a master of, let that do the talk it. And so, I just feel like this, as statements go, you just don't get any more blatant than that. And you just, like, what can he say in response? Like, he said it. It's in the video. Self-explanatory. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I went back and forth between black or white and scream. screams obviously in 1995. It's him and Janet. You know, there have been, you know, we're now having a very different conversation about Michael, you know, and you said, you know, like, I feel like these two songs are connected.

And Janet, honestly, like, like talk about foreshadowing. Hmm. Yeah. You know? Anyway, go on. Do you see these two songs in conversation, you know, just scream kind of takes just the attitude

of the bridge of black or white and like, now let's just make the whole plane out of the black box. like that kind of thing. Yeah. I don't want black or white. I want scream. You know,

I want something that is punching me in the face for three minutes. I want something where, conversely, the sweetest part of the song is the bridge, right? You know, it's Janet coming on by herself and just being like, last night,

what is it like? On the TV this evening, I was disgusted by all the injustice. All the injustice. You know, and then the guitar comes in. Oh my God, can't believe what I saw on the TV. Yes, that's what it is. You got it.

It's just, it's melodic. It's the only real, like, pure melody in the song. And then it goes right back to baseball bats upside your head. And it just, I think there's something, like, there was something about Janet at that point not fully, um, You know, they just had to contend with a lot of stuff. There was that stupid rumor that they were the same person, which I'd never even heard.

Then they showed up together at the Grammys, I think in 1994. But they showed up together at one of the Grammys or one of the American Music Awards together for some reason. Maybe to present something, maybe I don't know why. And I think Janet actually says, well, finally everybody will know that we're not the same person because here you are and here I am. and they were both wearing like ivory white.

Or maybe they both were. I don't know. I don't remember. But I definitely remember them addressing a rumor that I had not even heard, which is that they were the same person. So they record this song together. And, you know, it wasn't a, I mean, I guess there was some, like, wish that the two of the four most famous pop stars in the world

make a song together and that they were brother and sister kind of helps but the idea that you're going into the studio to record a song about how misunderstood and like maligned and abuse and exploited and

you know gossiped about you were and how the only recourse you have is to make a song about like just you know, exclaiming that you don't like that.

I kind of love that. And I love the idea that, like, I don't think Catherine or Joe Jackson would have listened to one second of the song. Like, it just would have... I can't picture that either. I just see them covering their ears. Like, oh, Michael and Janet,

what are you up to? Like, they're the kids at the beginning of the black and white song, you know, in the bedroom. But I just think the song, song. It's like, I love, I love that, you know, da-da-da-da-da. I love that, I love that my, I love it when Michael Jackson gets to a

point where he just has to invent sound to express how he feels because the words on the page aren't going to cut it. Weaponized grunting, yes. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I mean, I don't know if, like another part of me, I don't think he, ever, he never says this is on bad. This is one of my favorite songs on bad. It's the weirdest song on it's like, it's very weird

but there's a few weird songs on bad, but this is definitely like the weirdest song on bad to me. And it's like, it's like about an alien coming to Earth essentially and Michael Jackson the alien sort of giving the earthlings this message which is like, you and I

were the same. You are just another part of me. But Michael Jackson doesn't, it's not a song that's like written celestially. It's Michael Jackson in church, right? And he never says the words, he never enunciates another part

of me. He's like, you just didn't know the problem, eh? It is. You know, and he just keeps twisting, he keeps twisting the, the word, and he just, he's making up these,

the, shun, shun, I mean, I don't know, there's something about his interest in these other sounds that the human voice can make that are as satisfying for a listener to hear and replicate as actual words. And scream, I don't know what he's saying for a lot of that song. But it's really pleasurable to like hear the anger in his voice because it's so musical.

And the idea that he's trying to get janitor, up there with him because Janet maybe one other time in her singing career had approached that kind of anger and it was on Black Cat. Black Cat, yeah. Right? You know, rhythm nation it's not anger, but there's like an industrial quality

to Rhythm Nation, the song. Yes, the verses. The verses, yes, that's good. That's actually pretty close to that. But Black Cat is her like doing a rock and roll. That's her rock song. Yes. It's like Dirty Diana. Dirty Diana and Black Cat always.

struck me as being in direct conversation with each other. A hundred percent. Yeah. Does this song work for you, by the way? Scream. Yeah. Yes. I, you know, I think, I really love the idea of the mirror image of black or white with the bridge.

Like, that's a really beautiful way to look at it, like that the bridge of one becomes the whole of the other. I never quite made that connection. Like, what I knew of Scream at the time was that was another eventized video, right? Like the big deal there was like it was like seven million. Like I think this is disputed or whatever. But like this is the most expensive music video ever made. Like we flew them out to space, you know, and they're on a spaceship or whatever.

Like I remember Scream as another eventized Michael Jackson experience. But like already, you know, the vibe around him and the conversation around him is so different. It felt, you know, just infinitely less, you know, innocence than black or white. had, you know, when I was 13 and just watching The Simpsons, you know, it's just a completely different conversation at that point. I remember, this is peak Janet, right? Like, Janet's peak is like 86 to 2000 essentially. Rhythm Nation, then Janet, then yes, yes.

I mean, so this is between Velvet Rope is like, we're two years away from Velvet Rope. That's right. And Janet is, we're still, like, she's still. might have a, she might have released her last single from Janet at this point. And she is, she is at the peak of her popularity, the peak of her like commercial viability. And she is throwing all her chips in with her brother with Michael, like in the midst of all of these molestation accusations, right? Right. And she's not saying he didn't do. it. She's just saying

the idea that you would say that he did is appalling. And, you know, I don't, she's the sister. She's a little sister. I'm not, I mean, I totally understand the family politics of this.

And I can remember thinking, well, I don't know. If Janet says he didn't do it, then maybe he didn't because Janet Jackson is a perfect human. I have no objection here. Janet moves on

because she can, it's not her problem. But Michael, like, doubles down, right? Like, doesn't history,

this song is on history disc two or volume two or whatever they are calling? It's the first song on the new disc on history. Yes. History, of course,

being the two disc greatest hits slash new music compilation. Do you remember this was such a huge deal, too? Yeah. Like, because there was all this money involved.

The statues. Yes. I mean. Military dictator statues in various European cities. Leon Nafox podcast, think twice. I don't know if you listened to that. I did. It's awesome.

And Jay Smooth. Really good. Like, the two of them sort of dealing with, like, I didn't know anything about the, I mean, I knew to look at the statues that there were statues, but I didn't know. any of the stuff that hit Leon and Jay got into on that show with respect to like

what actually was going on here and all of the like creepy Russian De Provo video dude Stalin-ask yeah yeah I mean but I just I mean I have no defense of it and it did actually make me

it made me uncomfortable at the time there are a number of songs on on that disc of new music on history where I'm just like, oh, Michael. Like, you know, they don't really care about us, which I think is a great song. But it's got the, you know, it's got the, you know, the slurs.

Yeah, it's just like, what are we doing? And then DS, I mean, I didn't know who, I mean, I now know more about Don Shelton and like, maybe he did need a song about how bad a man he is. But at the time, it was like, why are you doing this to us? Why don't we, I mean, you know, just can you give us like a bunch more you are not alone except apparently like now, no, don't do that ever again. That's so like the respite on that song on that album is the R. Kelly song. It's like, well, this is a cursed object all the way around. But that's some of his best end of song church singing, some of the best he's ever done.

Of course. Just the dismount on that song is sure. but you know no just no but it's still being played on you know you listen to a light FM station

Delilah is still rocking she's still rocking you are not alone it endures you wrote so beautifully about leaving Neverlands when it came out in 2019 you know

and I have you listened to him much since then you know do you hear him completely differently now I mean, I do. I think that even as a kid, I knew something was going on

because there was something about him. I mean, I guess I wrote about this, but like I was so attracted, not sexually to Michael Jackson, but just like I wanted him to be my friend so bad. Of course. And he was constantly positioning himself as being a kid's friend.

and I didn't know how old adults were they were just adults but he never seemed like an adult to me he just seemed like a big kid by design that's why like the bad video for instance just made me laugh as a kid right like okay we get it Michael you're bad you're so bad

we know your bad friends your bad friends are here it's all it's all very bad we get it I know but it just seemed like dress up to me Totally. Totally. And I think at some point, you know, I mean, once, once, and I, you know, the trial happened, all the trials happened, I think, I was old enough to know.

I was old enough to pay attention to him. Well, I don't know. I was incorporating all this information. It wasn't like I was denying it. I just was like, well, what do I do with the possibility that he did this? And I think now as an adult, and like having sat with that movie, sat through it and then sat with it. leaving Neverland I'm talking about. I think that, I mean, I don't volunteer.

Okay. I do still listen to the music, but it is not, it's a heavy choice. I can remember when I was living in Texas, I was like, I lived in Texas for like a few months to like do some work. And I went to the gym one day.

And I would, like the reason the Texas part matters is because I just assumed that even though I was listening in headphones. Nobody here at this gym in Texas is really going to care that I'm about to get on a treadmill and listen to all of bad. I'm going to listen to every song. And nobody's going to know.

And if they know, they're not going to know who I am, I'm pretty safe. So this was 2001. I listened to Bad in its entirety, and that was the last time I did it. And I remember, I went in a long run on the treadmill, and I cleansed my palate by listening to Stevie Wonder's characters which is the companion album

that were like Michael Jackson's the song, like Stevie Wonder has a song on bad and Michael Jackson has a song on characters so I felt like I had like you know like my carbon footprint had been I had there we go there we go

offsetting okay that's the word I'd offset with Stevie Wonder that Stevie Wonder would be the person who could do that for you if anyone I think about Stevie Wonder at Michael's Memorial. Mm. Mm. Well, do you remember the song he did?

I do. I mean, he did, they won't go when I go. That's my favorite Stevie song, as grim as that might be. That was the moment. That was the moment. That was a moment. That was a real moment. And I, oh, God, you know, and I don't, you know, we don't know what he meant.

No, we don't. That's a very good point. He let the music talk. Stevie was like, I mean, it is incantimeckle, I loved you. You know, we all miss you. Here's a song. And he could have done anything. He could have done you or the sunshine in my life.

He could have done, you know, I believe when I, he could have done anything. But he did. they won't go when I go. Right? I mean, holy shit. But anyway, I just sort of feel like

that the 90s that Michael Jackson had, I mean, it was all torture. It was all, you know, it was all self-torture in a lot of ways. I'm going to make music about how unhappy I am. And then he tried to like let it go

on that, um, the last album, which I really love. Invincible, you mean? Invincible, yeah, yeah. Because he let it, he let a lot of it go and he just wanted to make pop songs, right? Um, like butterflies is really... Butterflies is the one I remember first. That is a, jam and a half. It's a great song. It is a jam and a half.

Um, but, you know, I mean, the suffering was apparent. Like, I mean, you can hear. Michael in the 90s was really he was really going through something we watched him go through it we saw the interviews we saw him talk to Oprah you know I saw him I saw Martin Bashir visit Neverland

you know we knew that this person was dealing with a lot of stuff I mean you know some of that stuff was in the 2000s but like, you know, you could, the thing about the music of the 90s that's important is because, is that the suffering was in the music, right?

The anger was in the music. The sense of injustice and wrong, they were in the music. And he never truly did the crass thing. He never turned fully, you know, Johnny Cochran, Al Sharpton, on us by saying, like,

my, I mean, he didn't, he did do it occasionally, but the music wasn't about, you know, our people, we come from a people who were always being persecuted. It was just about me. Y'all are after me. And the closest he ever got to me was,

they don't really care about us, right? But then he just started, you know, the, I mean, in the kids, the beginning of that record, right? It starts as a playground thing. with like these girls kind of chanting like all I want to say is that they don't really care about us and then the music kind of comes in

I was very definitely done right like again hiding behind children using children to like shield your children problem the thing I struggle with Rob honestly is and whether and I'm not a big

intent person when it comes to criticism I don't care what the thing. I don't, well, I care maybe what the thing was trying to do, but it doesn't, in terms of how I'm evaluating it, that's not that important to me. But the thing with Michael Jackson that I struggle with, and I don't know where you are, but I really struggle with intent.

Like, what did he know? And listening to think twice, I mean, he clearly, everything was conscious except the things that were unconscious. Right. Right. Like I feel like if anybody presented, think twice to Michael Jackson, and like, yo, Michael, these two dudes made this show about your whole life in relation to the problem that you say you don't have. Right.

But I just want you to hear what there are cases that you have this problem. Is there anything in this that, like, is resonating with you? or that you disagree with, you know, because it's fair to him. It's unsparing, but it's not, you know, they say they're not denouncing him, but just laying out the facts and just laying the timeline of his personal life over the music he was making from moment to moment. I, there's, there's intent there. Of course there is, you know, and putting a children's, you know, choir in a song in 1995, you know, means what it means. right yeah yeah

I don't know I just but at the same time before I talk to you today I listened to scream again and I was like oh my lord where is the dance floor right now because I got to get to it

where is the treadmill back to Texas yeah in this case like I would have I mean oh man like that song I mean there's so many Michael's songs that are just you know you you want to do

your body wants to do something in a response like my favorite Michael Jackson song to dance to is can't let her get away on Dangerous Wow all right I mean because he had like he had the thing that was so great about dangerous yeah is that he had like where Michael was like inventing new sounds

on off the wall thriller and bad like you were just hearing things you never heard before Dangerous was tapping into a sound that was hot at the moment, which was New Jack Swing. New Jack Swing, right. And the question, and he was working with some of the great New Jack Swing producers on that album. And, you know, they gave him their best shit, right? The, like, the hardness of the swing on Can't Let Her Get Away, you know?

Or she drives me wild. In the closet? Um, in the closet is good. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think that song is a great groove. Um, and the, I mean, everything about that song is like locked in. He is dialed into the groove of that song, right? Um, but there's something about, I don't know, there's something about the like, the, the open, the openness of his vocal in the, in the verses on, um, can't let her get away. It's more melodic.

It's more pleasingly melodic than in the closet to me. Sure. Well, of course. But in the closet's a good song. I just think it's ridiculous. But the drama of it, right? We're like, you know, when he gets

to the pre-chorus, you know, whatever we say, whatever we do, and the music's dropped out. And then there's a rest, right? And he's just like, keep it in the closet. and the chorus Oh well there is a chorus

It's like something about you baby That makes you want to give to you But like the great part of the song Is the Just the break Yeah Before he gets to like Whatever the next part

I think it's only before the verses And then it dismounts that way And it's just such a Like he has thrown his jacket over his shoulder And he's just sauntering out With his hat cock to the side Turn into a panther again. I'll turn it to a panther again.

Anyway, I mean, man, why do you do this to me, Rob? Get me in here feeling good about Michael Jackson. I'm sorry. This is my fault. I mean,

it's Michael's fault. It should have sucked more. This would have been a lot easier if he was like, if you were terrible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if he were like Millie Vanilly, this would have been no problem.

Well, that's a good place to wrap this up. We survived. This has been wonderful, Wesley. Thank you so much for talking. Thank you for living through this with me. It's an honor. Thank you. Thanks.

I love the show. Thanks so much, man. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Wesley Morris. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales, and Jonathan Kermah. Thanks to Chloe Clark for additional production help. And thank you very much for listening. And now, if you want,

go listen to Blacker Way by Michael Jax. We'll see you next week.