by Joseph Vogel
Some music purists—particularly in the 1980s—lamented this new trend of merging music with visuals, feeling it detracted from the authenticity of the song. Before Jackson, many other artists—including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and David Bowie—had presented their music visually in film and on television. But the art form known as the music video was primarily a promotional tool, featuring poor production, small budgets, and little storytelling.
Jackson changed that, reinventing the possibilities of the medium. Ambitious videos, like those for “The Triumph,” “Billie Jean,” and “Beat It,” initiated this transformation, replacing cheap, montage-like promos with elaborate, fully realized short films. They featured strong narratives, spectacular visuals and effects, and Jackson’s signature choreography and dance moves. Then came the groundbreaking fourteen-minute video for “Thriller,” which cost more than $1 million to make and became the bestselling VHS home movie of all time. Thriller is now almost universally considered the most influential music video in history.
Such innovation in the medium continued throughout Jackson’s entire career, making him the defining visual artist of the MTV generation. From the pioneering 4-D attraction Captain EO (a 3-D film with additional physical effects, such as shaking, smoke effects, and movement), to the forty-minute Gothic spectacle Ghosts, Jackson was expanding the possibilities of the medium while igniting viewers’ imaginations. In retrospect, as cultural critic Hampton Stevens notes, “The oft-repeated conventional wisdom—that Jackson’s videos made MTV and so ‘changed the music industry’ is only half true. It’s more like the music industry ballooned to encompass Jackson’s talent and shrunk down again without him. Videos didn’t matter before Michael, and they ceased to matter at almost the precise cultural moment he stopped producing great work.”
Also central to Jackson’s artistry was dance. Jackson’s body was his most instinctual canvas—he was a dancer to the core. Even when recording in the studio, he couldn’t help but dance. Onstage, his body seemed to become possessed by the music. “I am a slave to the rhythm,” he explained. “I am a palette. I just go with the moment. You’ve got to do it that way because if you’re thinking, you’re dead. Performing is not about thinking; it’s about feeling.”
To Jackson, choreography was like lines in painting: it gave borders within which to operate. But it couldn’t be constrained by counting; Jackson never counted when dancing, instead relying on more instinctive, rhythmic movement. Collaborators marveled at how quickly he picked up new choreography. He approached it viscerally, allowing himself to become the “embodiment” of each piece. “When you’re dancing,” he revealed, “you are just interpreting the music and the sounds and the accompaniment. If there’s a driving bass, if there’s a cello, if there’s a string, you become the emotion of what the sound is.” This ability to fully inhabit the music is what set him apart as a dancer. Many of his moves had been done by others, even the moonwalk; but he got deep inside them, understood what they could convey, and made them his own.
As with every other art form, Jackson also studied from the greats, including Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bob Fosse, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, and Jeffrey Daniel—many of whom likewise admired him. Fred Astaire was so impressed with Jackson’s performance of “Billie Jean” at the Motown 25 special that he called the artist up, saying, “You’re a hell of a mover. Man, you really put them on their asses last night. You’re an angry dancer. I’m the same way.” Jackson said it was the greatest compliment he had received in his entire life.
SINGING BEYOND LANGUAGE
There should—and, no doubt, eventually will be—books focused entirely on Michael Jackson’s contributions to dance, television, and film (among other areas). The focus of this book, however, is his music—more specifically, the albums he created as an adult solo artist, beginning with 1979’s landmark release, Off the Wall.
Perhaps, in part, because Jackson was such a powerful entertainer, performer, and dancer, his considerable abilities as a singer, songwriter, producer, and recording artist are often overlooked. There are a variety of reasons for this—one being that assessing Jackson’s work is much different than assessing the work of a traditional singer-songwriter like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, or Bruce Springsteen. With such artists, the lyrics are out front and the main focus of critical assessments; with Jackson, however, they are not the primary entry point.
That’s not to say that his lyrics aren’t important. As he matured as an artist, the content of his lyrics evolved, and could often be quite striking. Yet to really appreciate what Jackson brings to the table, one must recognize all the ways he is able to convey meaning and emotion beyond the use of language: his nonverbal vocalizations—the trademark gulps, grunts, gasps, cries, and exclamations; his beatboxing, percussive accents, scatting, and James Brown–like staccato; the way he stretches and contorts words until they are barely decipherable.
For Jackson, the idea was first and foremost to make the audience “feel” the song as a sense impression, rather than to intellectualize it. Such “impressions” can be more difficult for critics to analyze. Jackson’s more instinctual method was learned, in part, by watching the masters of funk, soul, and rhythm and blues. Yet he developed a style that was unmistakably his own. It was a voice that could brilliantly conjure up emotional extremes, infusing the most ordinary lyric with depth and pathos. “[Michael],” observed Quincy Jones, “has some of the same qualities as the great jazz singers I’d worked with: Ella, Sinatra, Sassy, Aretha, Ray Charles, Dinah. Each of them had that purity, that strong signature sound and that open wound that pushed them to greatness. Singing crushed their pain, healed their hurts, and dissolved their issues. Music was their release from emotional prisons.”
From a technical standpoint, Jackson could move comfortably through nearly four octaves. “He goes from basso low E up to G and A-flat above high C,” said his voice coach Seth Riggs in 1991. “A lot of people think it’s falsetto [a higher vocal register used by singers outside their normal range], but it’s not. It’s all connected, which is remarkable.” A natural tenor, his chest voice (the voice from which a person typically speaks) could stretch high (as in “Baby Be Mine”) and low (as in “Who Is It”), depending on the emotional content of the song. While in his early solo career he sang mostly in his upper register and falsetto, he became increasingly adept at using his mid-range and lower register (as in songs like “Remember the Time” and “Beautiful Girl”). Occasionally, Jackson even dropped down to baritone (as in “2,000 Watts”).
Riggs marveled at the singer’s brilliant instincts, diverse palette of timbres, beautiful vibrato, and perfect pitch. Yet he was equally impressed with the hours of work, dedication, and practice that went into his craft as a vocalist. Before recording, Jackson often trained with Riggs for at least two hours. Riggs introduced Jackson to “speech-level singing,” a method that allowed one to stretch the natural chest voice without breaks or cracks. Together, they practiced a number of exercises to maximize his range and delivery. People often take for granted Jackson’s transition from one of the most gifted child singers of all time to an adult singer, but it required an enormous amount of effort, training, and development. The singer had to find new ways of approaching songs and new ways of stretching and utilizing his mature voice.
Among the highlights of that mature voice were his iconic falsetto and gorgeous harmonies. But perhaps its best quality was the range of emotions, textures, and colors it could evoke. Across his solo catalog, it could be warm and vibrant (“I Can’t Help It”); sensual (“The Lady in My Life”); jubilant and bright (“The Way You Make Me Feel”); vulnerable (“Childhood”); aggressive and gritty (“Scream”); anguished (“Give in to Me”); sublime (“Human Nature”); and spiritual (“Will You Be There”).
While Jackson often expressed a belief in the preeminence of melody, it
was his masterful sense of rhythm that most impressed music experts. “Jackson was a dancer at heart,” wrote music critic Neil McCormick, “and his vocal prowess expressed itself playfully within and around the rhythm. He liked to multitrack himself…so that he was spinning off his own vocal, providing his own calls and response. I often think that it is one of those voices that would stand out in any context, which you cannot say of many pop singers, hitting a space that is emotionally right on the button but is almost more than human, transcending all divides in the way that, sometimes, a great world singer can…moving beyond language into pure music.”
This transcendence was what Jackson aimed to achieve with his singing. Pure music. Listen to his passionate exclamations at the climax of “Man in the Mirror” or his wordless cries in the chorus and call-and-response of “Earth Song.” Everything is communicated with his voice and the music.
MUSIC AS TAPESTRY
Jackson used his intuitive musicality as a songwriter as well. While he didn’t read music or play instruments proficiently, he could vocally convey the arrangement, rhythm, tempo, and melody of a track, including nearly every instrument. “He starts with an entire sound and song,” explained producer Bill Bottrell. “Usually he doesn’t start with lyrics, but he hears the sound and the whole arrangement of the song in his head….He hums things. He can convey it with his voice like nobody. Not just singing the song’s lyrics, but he can convey a feeling in a drum part or a synthesizer part.”
Oftentimes, Jackson would vocalize a new song into a tape recorder until he could get to a studio; other times he would call a musician or producer and dictate to them directly. “One morning [Michael] came in with a new song he had written overnight,” recalled assistant engineer Rob Hoffman. “We called in a guitar player, and Michael sang every note of every chord to him. ‘Here’s the first chord, first note, second note, third note. Here’s the second chord, first note, second note, third note,’ etc., etc. We then witnessed him giving the most heartfelt and profound vocal performance, live in the control room….He would sing us an entire string arrangement, every part. Steve Porcaro once told me he witnessed [Jackson] doing that with the string section in the room. Had it all in his head, harmony and everything. Not just little eight bar loop ideas. He would actually sing the entire arrangement into a microcassette recorder complete with stops and fills.”
Once Jackson got down the foundation of the song, he would begin fleshing it out, layer by layer, a process that would sometimes take a few weeks and sometimes take years. “Music is tapestry,” he explained. “It’s different layers, it’s weaving in and out, and if you look at it in layers, you understand it better.” He liked to allow time for the song to reveal itself. If it wasn’t quite there, he would move on to something else and come back to it later. Those who worked with him speak of his patience, focus, and genuine commitment to his craft. “He was a consummate professional,” recalled technical director Brad Sundberg. “If his vocals were scheduled for a noon downbeat, he was there at 10:00 a.m., with his vocal coach Seth [Riggs], singing scales. Yes, scales. I would set up the mic, check the equipment, make coffee, and all the while he would sing scales for two hours.”
In the studio, particularly later in his career, Jackson would often request a scalding-hot drink with cough drops to relax his vocal cords. He always liked the playback loud—so loud his collaborators often had to wear earplugs or leave the room. He also liked the lights off, as the darkness allowed him to feel less self-conscious and able to totally immerse himself in the song. As he sang, he often danced, stomped, or snapped his fingers. If he didn’t have the lyrics written yet, he would simply scat through the song or make up words as he went along to block it out.
In the Thriller and Bad sessions, in particular, he liked to bring animals into the studio, including his chimpanzee, Bubbles, and his python, Muscles (who enjoyed the warmth of the control board and terrified Quincy Jones). As strange as the artist seemed to the outside world, it is nearly impossible to find anyone Jackson worked with in the studio who doesn’t speak positively of the experience. From techs and assistant engineers to high-profile producers and fellow musicians, all describe him as possessing a certain “aura”—but, unlike many stars, being generous, humble, and polite. “He’ll say: ‘Can I hear a little more piano in the earphones, please?’ ” recalled recording engineer Bruce Swedien. “I turn up the piano in his cue mix, and then he’ll say, ‘Thank you.’ This is an industry where you don’t hear those words a whole lot.”
Collaborators also recall his sense of humor, penchant for pranks, and “boisterous” laugh. They describe his curiosity. They point out his passion and excitement for each new project. “All of Michael’s recordings were done with a sense of joy that I have never experienced with another artist,” recalled Swedien. “Not just fun and laughing and stuff, I mean real musical joy….His passion for what we were doing was boundless.”
Producer Bill Bottrell, who worked closely with Jackson during the recording sessions for Bad and Dangerous, praises Jackson for challenging and stretching him as a fellow artist: “[He] just started asking me to take more responsibility, play more music, write music, play more instruments….He changed my life. And it never stopped feeling that way.” Songwriter and musician Brad Buxer, who worked intimately with Jackson for twenty-five years, recalled the thrill of finding just the right chord or beat. “When you did something [Michael] liked,” Buxer said, “he would say, ‘That’s it. That’s perfect. Lock this in cement.’ We called the versions that were special ‘Bible versions.’ We’d go through thousands of versions, but we’d put ‘Bible’ by the best one.”
While Jackson was classified as a solo artist, the process of creation was never an isolated act. The idea might come in a moment of solitude, but it was brought to fruition in much the same way as a director brings a film into the world: through a dynamic interplay of creativity. Jackson loved assembling talent and being part of a creative team. Once he found the right people, from the earliest Off the Wall sessions with Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien to his later projects with people like John Barnes, Bill Bottrell, Teddy Riley, and Rodney Jerkins, the motto remained the same: music first. The quality had to go in before the content went out.
So too did the innovation. Jackson was constantly trying to create “sounds the ear had never heard.” In 1985, he created a company called Experiments in Sound. Its sole purpose was to develop fresh and interesting sounds that could be used in music. To this end, he worked with some of the brightest synth programmers in the world; he purchased the newest studio gear before it hit the market; and he sent collaborators out “in the field” to record things—breaking glass, clanging metal, sweeping brooms, fireworks—that might be incorporated into music. In his 1991 song “She Drives Me Wild,” he built the entire foundation of a song around street sounds: horns honking, doors slamming, sirens. The consistent pioneering and innovation of sound from album to album may be the single most underappreciated aspect of Jackson’s solo catalog.
The music that resulted from such efforts reinvented the parameters of pop. It contained elements of R&B, disco, funk, jazz, soul, electronic, industrial, hip-hop, gospel, classical, and Broadway. It pulled from Africa (“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ”) and Asia (“Who Is It”), Latin America (“Whatever Happens”) and Russia (“Little Susie”). Jackson was often criticized for this eclecticism, with critics claiming he was simply targeting demographics; but he defended himself by arguing for a borderless music. “I don’t categorize music,” he said in a 2001 interview. “Music is music….How can we discriminate?” This was his philosophy, and it is the hallmark of his work and artistry. Just as the Beatles made rock inclusive enough to contain elements of Eastern music, folk, R&B, psychedelia, and classical, Jackson made “pop” limitless in its range of sounds, styles, and possibilities.
ARTISTIC EVOLUTION
In spite of his creative ambition
, however, the conventional wisdom from many music critics for decades was that Michael Jackson reached his artistic peak with Off the Wall and Thriller. Everything that followed, they claimed, reflected a slow and steady decline.
In its 2009 obituary, The New York Times referred to his post-Thriller career as a “bizarre disintegration.” Similarly, in Time’s 2009 retrospective, Josh Tyrangiel wrote, “Given the tumult in his personal life, it’s no surprise that the 1990s were a barren period for Jackson creatively.” Tyrangiel and other critics didn’t explain why personal tumult was often so creatively fertile for other artists but not for Jackson. They also overlooked Jackson’s prolific creative output during the ’90s—he wrote and recorded at least as many songs (if not more) in that decade than he did in the ’80s—which was far from a “barren period.”
Music critic Jon Pareles at least offers a slightly more specific criticism, claiming it was Jackson’s loss of innocence that led to his artistic decline. “The underlying sweetness that had made Mr. Jackson endearing, even at his strangest, had curdled,” he wrote. Yet, as sweet and joyous as many of his early songs are, there is always a dark side as well, as seen in tracks like “This Place Hotel” and “Billie Jean.”
Even as his sales numbers and cultural impact in the United States declined (it is often overlooked that his popularity grew through most of the rest of the world), the richness and depth of his artistry blossomed, particularly in the 1990s. Listen, for example, to a song like “Stranger in Moscow,” a haunting expression of loneliness and alienation that could rank among the best work in his entire catalog; or to the Gothic pop masterwork “Is It Scary,” which turns a mirror on an accusing society, forcing it to look at its own grotesque reflection; or to “Morphine,” an experimental piece of industrial funk that was as raw and honest as anything Jackson ever recorded. As cultural critic Armond White observed, “Jackson’s career arc from beloved child star to dazzling young adult to ever-perplexing world conqueror shows a restless imagination. He pushed the culture forward—challenging it—as he also challenged himself. His idiosyncratic nature proved puzzling and alluring, yet it also torments the status quo—which is highly ironic for pleasurable pop art to do.”