Photo: Justo Ruiz
The world’s pop star dies at age 50.
I was 90 minutes north of New York City last night, getting ready to enjoy an outdoor Shakespeare performance, when the news spread across the lawn of picnickers: Michael Jackson was dead.
“Michael Jackson is dead? I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it,” the girl at the concession stand said over and over as she totaled my bill. After she took my money, she started crying.
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This morning, I logged onto Facebook.
Andy Carvin, National Public Radio’s social media guru, wrote:
“How’s this for irony – powerful, graphic #IranElection protest video, set to Michael Jackson’s ‘They Don’t Care About Us’.”
Friends from South Carolina to New York had taken the “What Michael Jackson Song Are You?” quiz and posted their results.
The BBC reported that a Nigerian DJ broke down on air, unable to complete her show, after she began talking about Jackson.
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I’m (surprisingly) in agreement with the Reverend Al Sharpton, who wondered aloud why the world that ridiculed and all but abandoned Jackson in recent years suddenly lionized him. But then I thought about some of Jackson’s best songs and collaborative projects, and realized that he used his music to remind us of our shared humanity. Here are three of his best:
“Man in the Mirror”
“Black or White”
“We Are the World”
Community Connection:
How did Michael Jackson’s music impact your life– or not? And where’s the most unusual place you’ve ever heard a Michael Jackson song? Share your memories in the comments.
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11 Comments... join the discussion!
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My first tape was Michael Jackson’s BAD.
For a man so drug through the mud, so tormented and abused, the scope of his musical legacy cannot be measured.
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Thanks for embedding videos viewable outside the states
(unlike most sites today…)
I have always been a big fan, but didn’t realize how much his music has been a big part of my life until this morning. Despite the controversy in recent years, I’ll always remember his songs and the memories I have dancing and singing to them in so many places in the world and growing up. I was really sad this morning but I feel better now after sharing the good memories and singing with other fans. He died a legend and will always be remembered as a musical genius, an amazing choreographer and the king of pop↵ -
It is such a great loss that a man with great talent like Michael Jackson dies. RIP King of POP
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I also couldn’t help but think that, before Thursday, you wouldn’t have heard is name in anything but the butt of a joke. Really makes you reconsider how and why we ridicule people.
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Michael Jackson is my favorite pop artist ever since i was a child. He is truly the King of Pop and i am saddened by this news.
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My parents tell me i started bobbing my head and rocking to his music when propped up, at 4 or 5 months. When i was bout 6 or 7, Dad brought two tapes detailing his life. I still remember scenes of him practising dancing outside of his house, late at night. The first tape i truly ‘possessed’ as a kid was ‘Dangerous’. i played it both sides at least 2 times everyday after school. I still remember being transfixed when i saw him do the moonwalk the first time. The first song i memorised ever was ‘Heal the World’. And then all the other songs on the tape. Over the years i started listening to other stuff, other singers. Then in the latter part of college what was inbred came back. I was kicked out of the library coz without realizing, i’d turned the iPod to full blast when listening to Black or White.
It is only on his passing away i realise what he meant. To my life, my growing up years, to our first visions of what LARGER THAN LIFE means. He meant so much. To our childhood.The first music we enjoyed, relished, started dancing to. None of realised it till now, or that it would hurt like this.
God bless him so much. RIP.
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My earliest memories was from the early 80s, when I was probably about 7. I would play, stop, rewind, play on the cassette player, and write down the lyrics so I could sing along. I had a big poster of him in his red leather jacket. To this day I can’t help but start to dance when I hear the first few beats of Billy Jean or any of his older stuff.
He was a bizarre character, stranger than life, and for me it’s hard to think of him as a real person, but he was. I think the problem, for all the people who say how bad he was, how deranged, strange, etc, they aren’t trying to understand where he was coming from. They are projecting their “normal” life onto him, and it’s quite clear he didn’t lead a normal life. I don’t think he molested children, no way. Slept in the same bed? Sure, he admitted that. Weird/wrong in our eyes? Yes. But he obviously wasn’t a grown man. He was a child too.
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michael jackson is a very very talented person to the point that he rose as a pop icon. he would live forever in our history books and memories…
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there would be no other King of Pop like Michael Jackson. he would always be the King.
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Michael Jackson is one of the greatest singer in our time. He is really the King of Pop and we would really miss this great person,
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