I hesitated to post this because the Michael Jackson media coverage has been major overkill (nothing wrong with tributes, obviously, but analyzing the 911 tape, posting the death certificate, play-by-play analysis of the funeral.... and pretty much everything that's been on CNN in the last week - so not necessary) So if you're tired of it, feel free to skip over this blog.
I think the reason people react so strongly to a famous musician's death is because of how music is so closely associated with our emotions, and the way certain songs from the past instantly bring back vivid memories and the way we felt back then. Even though I wasn't an MJ fanatic, I still knew many of his songs of course, and appreciated his music and what he did as an artist. And while watching the memorial and all the tributes I realized I had quite a few funny memories involving his songs.
When I was preschool, I was sitting at a table with a little boy and we were coloring - this was probably sometime around 1987 or '88. The little boy started coloring wildly outside of the lines, and started singing, "I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it..." I had no idea what that even was, except that I thought it was a cool song so I decided to sing with it too. The teacher was pretty quick to shut that down and told us to sing a song about being good, not a song about being "bad."This is probably one of my earliest memories I even have of anything, and Michael Jackson was involved. Go figure.
A couple years later, when I was in 2nd grade, my school at the time had a dance aerobics instructor come once a week. All the elementary school kids would pour into the cafeteria and we got to spend an hour dancing and exercising. The class was lead by this buff guy named Jerome who had day-glo exercise shorts and long braids that he pulled back into a loose ponytail. Needless to say, Jerome was pretty hot by 1991 standards. I still remember how cool I thought that class was, especially since Jerome would play actual music that was popular at the time (age-appropriate, obviously) and not the little kid music for babies. We would all dance around and shout. Two songs I remembered he played every week were "Remember The Time" and "Black or White." To this day, whenever I hear those songs, I feel happy and want to dance around like a little kid again, and remember Jerome and the exercise class. Those are my two favorite songs by Michael Jackson even still, because of the happy memory associated with them. So wherever you are Jerome, I hope you're still rockin' the MJ with your bad self, and your kids' aerobics class.
Even later on in my life.... I remember when "You Are Not Alone" came out when I was entering my teen years during a pretty rough time. I remember years after that, sitting in a jacuzzi with my friend Eva, drinking mudslides and singing along with "Billie Jean" (definitely one of the coolest - if not THE coolest - pop songs ever, musically speaking) after we'd both ended long-term relationships. I think she even recorded me doing the "hee-hee" on her cell phone.
The first time I hung out with John at his apartment after we first started dating (July of last year), that same song came on the radio. He started dancing around like a madman and moonwalking like a champ. It was then that I realized any MJ song has this effect on him - especially that one. So from then on, whenever I'd hear MJ, I'd always think of John. I even had a MJ ringtone for him for awhile. John was the first person I called when the news broke on the radio, and he was literally in tears. :(
So that's my small tribute to Michael Jackson.... one of millions I'm sure. R.I.P.
