Friday, June 26, 2009

Why I Wanted to Be Michael Jackson

Posted by Jarvis Holliday On 6/26/2009 1 comment
Rest in peace Michael Jackson.

There's nothing I can say here that hasn't been expressed on TV, radio, and the Internet (all over Facebook) since MJ passed away yesterday. But I'm awake early this morning doing some work, and for the past hour I've had the TV on in the background on MTV where they're playing nothing but Michael Jackson videos. "Thriller" just came on as I'm typing this!

I must take a quick detour to hop on my soapbox for a minute. To all the young people out there today who may not have seen many of Jackson's legendary music videos, understand that he took the art form to a whole 'nother level. Before him, artists pretty much only performed the song in their videos. He made mini movies. And the sad thing, which is the point I'm making here, is since you kids today don't want to pay for music and mostly want to download it illegally, record sales are down tremendously and record labels can't afford to spend much money on making quality music videos anymore. So I hope you enjoy the made-for-YouTube quality music videos you're getting today. If you want to see when they were done at their best, you can, ironically, watch many of Jackson's videos on his YouTube page, www.youtube.com/michaeljackson.

What I'm posting here is a video of the Michael Jackson performance that changed my life. It made me want to be MJ. I tell friends the story all the time about how my twin brother and I used to perform our MJ impersonations for our parents' friends when we were growing up. One of the rituals of being a black kid is dancing for your parents' friends at some kind of house party or get-together. The video below is a clip from Jackson performing at the "Motown 25" celebration. When it aired on TV, I was only three years old but I knew I was witnessing greatness.



1 comment :

  1. Jarvis, where's the picture of you and your brother dressed as Michael?! :)
    Great tribute to MJJ...

    ReplyDelete

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