The Essence of Michael Jackson
The King of Pop Michael Jackson, he was a huge part of the music industry in the twentieth century and global music culture change. One could say since Micheal had so much talent because himself and his siblings had been performing since they were kids. They were in a way pressured into being creative artist, they were a huge family band so by the time they were around the age of nine and ten they had all been already signed to a record label known as “Motown”. As Michael got older he eventually branched off to become his own artist. Michael paved the way for male pop artists in the music industry and changed the way choreography and style can be used to explore important social issues.
He impacted the world so much with the aspect of what music and what his definition of choreography was. Many people in the music industry thought Michael was a huge change in society and change in pop culture such as, “Michael Jackson was the King of Pop he influenced the world throughout his music and famous dance moves” (Goldberg). His music was very different it was like he took soul music R&B and Hip-Hop and put them all into one. A few examples would be in, some of his first few hits were in an album included the dance classics
“ ‘Don’t Stop (Till You Get Enough)‘ and ‘Rock with You‘ by Heatwave‘s Rod Temperton (both million-sellers), as well as the slow ballad ‘She’s Out of My Life‘. Jones’ high-definition production was embellished with string orchestrations and horn arrangements scored by Jerry Hey” (Gary). He was the lead singer when he was apart of his hometown band Jackson five that included his older brothers Tito, Jackie, Jermaine,Marlon and himself.
Many people in the music industry thought Micheal Jackson was the “King of Pop”. He has won many music awards, grammys and labeled “the most popular contemporary singer” After Michael branched off and released his first album “Off The Wall” back in 1979 he was signed to his own music label in 1984 “Michael Jackson (Gary).
Along with producing many other albums, In 1982 he released an album named Thriller it was one of the best selling albums he had produced besides many other albums he had released. Thriller had multiple hits known as Beat It and Billie Jean. “Following hot on the heels of the massive breakthrough success of Billie Jean, Beat It helped ensure the status of Michael Jackson’s Thriller as the blockbuster album of the decade and all the time.” (Sullivan et.al)
It was seen as a landmark production history back when Thriller came out, the choreography shocked the media and made a huge statement, because they were not used to that type of energy in music videos. Violence was the normal for them such as gangs etc. Micheal was one of many in the music industry to change the way the society was, he was a very talented guy. Everyone knows, one of Michael’s special moves was the anti-gravity lean as demonstrated in “Smooth Criminal”. He was known for his dance moves such as the moonwalk and gravity lean. He had become one of the best selling artists world-wide. This move is possible for anyone to do, but you must have an incredible strong core. Although Michael might’ve had a strong core himself and a few of his other back-up dancers used a special shoe instead . He had been evolving since Jackson 5, it was just something about the style he had attracted the population towards him, it was a change they wanted in the media. Considering all they had known back then was racism, drugs and overall violence. Michael also he had a few kids, two sons Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. , Prince Michael Jackson II and one daughter Paris Jackson. Just like anyone else Michael had been going through personal issues and additional stress that had been causing him to have nightmares. He had been seeing a doctor about who eventually prescribed him some sort of sleeping medicine to be able to sleep throughout the night without any nightmares and try to get his sleeping schedule under control. Unfortunately he had gotten addicted to the medicine after begging his doctor to prescribe him more than usual. This lead him to sadly overdosing and passing away in 2009 due to an overdose of sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed to him to reduce stress.
There are many stories about how Michael was labeled as a crazy person, but one’s crazy could just be somebody else’s definition of normal. Now just as every famous person once they get a little taste of fame and money, they change. This doesn’t mean their personality or character usually it’s their appearance or something surgery can fix or change. This for some artist may mean just something as simple as a tan or waxing or for some other form of plastic surgery or overall some form of surgery. Mostly it’s something they truly never liked about themselves that they never had the money to be able to fix such as a nose job, tummy tuck or something so simple as straightening their teeth. Some may think Michael may have went a little overboard when he started his surgeries. First it was a repetitive nose job next jaw surgery even though Michael was born black later down the line he ended up bleaching his skin so much that he no longer appeared African-American. As an African-American community they didn’t really know how to accept how Michael had changed. It was a dramatic change, especially with all the racism issues going back then and now. Everyone just wanted answers as to why he wanted to change himself in this way. Michael just wanted everyone to know no matter black or white we’re all equal and we all should just come together as one to stop all the unnecessary rioting due to race. Many felt that this was his own way of acting out and expressing his own pain to make a statement to his people. Maybe this was just his way of trying to see where he would fit in at in the political eye. Back then when issues such as this occurred no one spoke on them because they just assumed that it was just life and how it was supposed to be and it was not any of their business.
It is a fact and has been proven that most mentally and emotionally unstable human beings are those that writers and or people who create, such as Micheal Jackson himself as he was an artist and song-writer which is the same amount of stress an author would go through when trying to complete a successful novel. Both of his parents were declared by doctors mentally unstable so it’s safe to say he didn’t really have a huge chance of beating the odds of being normal growing up in an unstable household. His childhood was tough considering it was nine of them growing up although it did give him a better shot of making it in the music industry due to the fact that they were able to bounce ideas off of each other’s creativity is how someone chooses to express themselves through whatever way they decide many people become artists as it is easy for them to put their words into lyrics so others can understand them better. Most artists or creators in general are stereotyped as if they are addicts ether to alcohol or drugs, just because of the amount of stress they are put under on the daily trying to keep up with the media. Creativity doesn’t always come naturally to everyone, but in Michael’s situation you could say it did because of all the pressure himself and siblings were put under from their father as children to become famous in the music industry, so their parents could make a profit off of them all. Some might say creativity is one of the main sources of a mentally unstable person. As many know after a while in the spotlight of fame Micheal Jackson was all for expressing himself in as many ways as he could, especially with changing his appearance and choreography within his music videos.
Works Cited
“Beat It (1983)—Michael Jackson.” Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Steve Sullivan, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1st edition, 2013. Credo Reference, https://jwupvdz.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/rowmanpopular/beat_it_1983_michael_jackson/0?institutionId=8945. Accessed 04 Aug. 2019.
“Michael Jackson.” The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music, Phil Hardy, Faber and Faber Ltd, 3rd edition, 2001. Credo Reference, https://jwupvdz.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/ffcpop/michael_jackson/0?institutionId=8945. Accessed 04 Aug. 2019.
“The King of Pop.” People, vol. 72, no. 2, July 2009, pp. 127–132. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=42960832&site=ehost-live&scope=site.“The King of Pop.” People, vol. 72, no. 2, July 2009, pp. 127–132. EBSCOhost,
Brackett, David. “Black or White? Michael Jackson and The Idea of Crossover.” Popular Music & Society, vol. 35, no. 2, May 2012, pp. 169–185. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/03007766.2011.616301.
Broertjes, Andrew. “‘He’s Sending His People Messages out of His Pain’: Michael Jackson and the Black Community.” Popular Music & Society, vol. 36, no. 5, Dec. 2013, pp. 677–698. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/03007766.2012.745336.
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=42960832&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
ReflectionWriting this paper was very challenging because It was hard not to turn this into a bibliography and talk about Michael Jackson’s life considering there would have been a huge broad of things to talk about . At a moment in time the instructions were unclear because I had to base the information off of creativity and not just some of Michael’s accomplishments. The audience I envisioned influenced me while writing this essay, because I knew the type of words I should use would need to be of a higher level of education due to the type of people that will be reading and analysing my essay. If I were to have more time to be able to work on this research essay I would have been able to find more and better sources and along with being able to break down my sources in to more details compared to what I have done with it now. I hope the readers that get the chance to read this essay will notice all the hard work and small details about Michael’s career that I have put into this essay. Hopefully my essay will be distinctive from others by the way I have structured this essay based on the sources I have found. If I did have time to write a completely different paper I would have due to the fact that trying to not include my own opinion or make it a biography was very difficult, so if I were to have more time, I probably would have changed my topic. Most researchers learn more the more they research a topic, if I were to keep researching about my topic Michael Jackson I would have liked to have been able to go into more detail about why Michael felt like he needed to bleach his own skin to prove a point to the media to settle much unnecessary riots about racism and religion just things of those nature. Just because it was interesting to watch Mihael be able to see the best of both worlds race wise, how he genuinely just fit in with the rest of the population and media. Some other things I struggled with while trying to revise this essay were, making all my information blend along with not including too much of his background although I did get through it by getting help from my peers and additional tutors.
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