“Tell the angels no, I don’t wanna leave my baby alone, I don’t want nobody else to hold you, that’s the chance I’ll take, maybe I’ll stay, Heaven Can Wait!” – The King of Pop
Peeping through the tiny fingers of my 4-year-old hands, I was struck with a mix of horror and confusion — who was this scary man chasing his girlfriend down the street, and why were all these dead people climbing out of graves?
Of course, I didn’t get it then, but as with most my age, Michael Jackson became more and more integral to our pop culture lives as we got older. We watched Tommy Davidson parody the “Black or White” video on In Living Color, we sang the Free Willy song in our elementary choirs, and we all tripped and made asses of ourselves during cumbersome attempts at the sacred Moon Walk. And, admittedly, we were a little creeped out by the eerie idiosyncrasies surrounding Mike’s personal life, but it was always (and still is) readily apparent whenever someone was swagger-jacking Mike — which, today, would be about 80% of the pop and R&B pantheon.
On my way to work this morning, I blasted “Off The Wall”, a track from the album of the same name, and my favorite lyric never seemed more important than it does today:
“Life ain’t so bad at all, when you live it off the wall.”
And that, he did.
Michael Joseph Jackson
1958 – 2009
Vocalz is a truly dope music journalist hellbent on highlighting ugly truths and unnoticed talent in the entertainment industry. Tags: Michael Jackson, People
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