Man in the Music

by Joseph Vogel

  Yet in many cases, those final touches paid off. The album was coalescing and sounded incredible. “The last three days of the project, Michael and I got about four hours’ sleep,” remembered Swedien. As on previous albums, there was last-minute trimming and editing to fit the length restrictions of a CD. Dangerous was finally completed and mastered by Bernie Grundman in the early hours of Halloween on 1991. “ ‘We bumped the pumpkin,’ ” Swedien recalled Jackson saying. The artist was elated. After three years of recording, he finally felt ready to send the new music out into the world.

  “I AM PROUD OF WHO I AM”

  That November, a headline in The New York Times ran: “THRILLER”—CAN MICHAEL JACKSON BEAT IT? “That is the challenge Jackson is up against,” echoed Rolling Stone. As with Bad, Jackson played into these over-the-top expectations, telling collaborators, managers, and marketers alike that he expected Dangerous to sell one hundred million copies.

  Before long, the Michael Jackson hype machine was up and running at full throttle. The elaborate teasers, created by renowned filmmaker David Lynch, were playing on television; “Black or White” was released to radio; the artist was on the cover of TV Guide; and MTV hosted a Michael Jackson Week, referring to him by his preferred nickname, the King of Pop. (The nickname actually went back years, but Jackson felt like it hadn’t fully stuck; to fix this, the artist worked out a marketing strategy with his management that ensured MTV would refer to him by the name throughout the week.)

  At the same time, a host of controversies swirled. An MC Hammer music video took aim at the pop star, while brother Jermaine’s strategically timed song, “Word to the Badd,” asserted that Michael had sold out, changed his skin color, and lost his way. The biggest controversy, however, stemmed from the eleven-minute short film for “Black or White.”

  The premiere for Black or White was given a platform like no music video in history—not even Thriller. In the United States, it aired on FOX directly after The Simpsons; it was broadcast simultaneously on MTV and BET. The video also aired on the BBC in the United Kingdom, as well as in twenty-five other countries. In total, it was estimated that five hundred million viewers watched it around the world. It gave FOX its highest ratings ever to that point.

  Yet immediately after it ended, the backlash began. Part of it had to do with Jackson’s skin color—since Bad, it had become noticeably lighter. Sure, critics said, he might sing that it “don’t matter if you’re black or white.” But then why had he turned himself white? Was he bleaching his skin? Was he ashamed of his blackness? Was he trying to appeal to every demographic, transcend every identity category in a vainglorious effort to reach greater commercial heights than he had with Thriller?

  Jackson had been diagnosed with vitiligo in 1986, a skin disorder that causes loss of pigmentation in patches on the body, but he hadn’t spoken about it publicly. According to those close to him, it was an excruciatingly humiliating personal challenge, one he went to great lengths to hide through long-sleeved shirts, hats, gloves, sunglasses, makeup, and masks. Eventually, he decided to use products such as Benoquin, a skin cream approved by the FDA for treatment of vitiligo, which removes the skin pigment altogether, rather than having blotches of discoloration. When Jackson died in 2009, his autopsy and medical history definitively confirmed the presence of vitiligo.

  However, in 1991, the public was skeptical, to say the least. Jackson wouldn’t publicly reveal that he had vitiligo until 1993, in a widely watched interview with Oprah Winfrey. “This is the situation,” he explained. “I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin. It is something I cannot help, okay? But when people make up stories that I don’t want to be what I am, it hurts me….It’s a problem for me that I can’t control.” Jackson did acknowledge having plastic surgery but said he was “horrified” that people concluded he didn’t want to be black. “I am a black American,” he declared. “I am proud of my race. I am proud of who I am.”

  Michael’s sister Janet was glad her brother finally defended himself against the charge that he wanted to be white. “I got so sick of that,” she told Ebony in 1993, “because my brother is extremely intelligent and he’s extremely talented and he’s very, very smart. And I felt that people were thinking that he felt to be so talented or so smart he had to be acting white in order to get where he is. But I’m so happy he talked about it because he’s not like that at all. And he’s very proud of his race and who he is.”

  The other major controversy resulting from the Black or White short film was the so-called panther dance in the final four minutes. Just when the director (John Landis) yells “Cut!” a black panther slinks off the soundstage to a back alley. The coda that follows became Jackson’s riskiest artistic move to this point in his career—particularly given the expectations of his “family-friendly” audience. In contrast to the upbeat, mostly optimistic tone of the main portion of the video, Jackson unleashes a flurry of unbridled rage, pain, and aggression. He bashes a car in with a crowbar; he grabs and rubs himself; he grunts and screams; he throws a trash can into a storefront (echoing the controversial climax of Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing), before falling to his knees and tearing off his shirt. The video ends with Homer Simpson taking the remote from his son, Bart, and turning off the TV.

  That censorious move proved prescient. The “panther dance” caused an uproar, more so, ironically, than anything put out that year by Nirvana, N.W.A., or Guns N’ Roses. FOX was bombarded with complaints. In a front-page story, Entertainment Weekly described it as “Michael Jackson’s Video Nightmare.” Eventually, relenting to pressure, FOX and MTV excised the final four minutes of the video.

  In response to the frenzy, Jackson issued a statement saying that he simply meant to portray the animalistic instincts of a panther and show the destructiveness of discrimination. The video, however, clearly struck a nerve, posing uncomfortable questions about race, sex, and violence. While most critics blasted it, film critic Armond White called it “the most significant personal gesture any American artist has made in years….He’s already charmed the world; Black or White shows he has the courage to shake it up.”

  For all the backlash to the video, just about everyone had seen it and was talking about it. Meanwhile, the single had been added to 96 percent of playlists on American radio stations. Within weeks, “Black or White” hit #1 on the charts, where it stayed for six weeks, becoming Jackson’s most successful single since “Billie Jean.”

  In a matter of weeks, as Jackson later put it in an acceptance speech at the Grammys, the artist had gone from “Where is he?” to “Here he is again.” It was true. For more than three years, he had rarely been seen in public and had given no interviews. Now he was all over the news, on TV, on the covers of magazines. The anticipation for Dangerous was so high that armed robbers stole thirty thousand copies of the album at a Los Angeles airport terminal days before its official release and sold them as bootlegs. By the official release date in late November, fans around the world were lining up to get their copy.

  BEHIND THE MASK

  Before people dived into the music, they were confronted by the album cover. Unlike the straightforward portraits of his previous albums, the cover of Dangerous featured an acrylic glaze painting created (with input by Jackson) by pop surrealist Mark Ryden. It was described by one critic as a “sleeve so symbol-laden it could provide grist for an entire symposium of pop psychiatrists.” Perhaps not since the Beatles’ cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had an album featured such cryptic and intricate packaging (a 1992 special edition of the album was packaged as a large box, which folded open as a diorama). “It was by far my most ambitious job,” recalled Ryden. “The original was very large (for me), three square feet. It took me many months to finish the project including sketches and everything….I’ve never spent so much time making a cover. The main problem is that if you can’t move ever
ything to the small format of the CD, then it isn’t worth the effort.”

  At first glance, the cover looks like a display for the circus with Michael Jackson himself being promoted as “the greatest show on earth”—a kind of offshoot of Jackson’s short film for “Leave Me Alone.” Near the bottom of the cover, dressed in a tuxedo, is none other than P. T. Barnum, the legendary showman with whom Jackson became so fascinated in the mid-1980s. Circuses, of course, are public spectacles, and Jackson seems to recognize here, for better or worse, that this is what “Michael Jackson” the persona has become.

  Yet in the artwork, the circus spectacle also serves as a mask, a façade that allows Jackson to conceal himself and stare out at the audience. Inspired, in part, by a triptych oil painting by eccentric fifteenth-century artist Hieronymus Bosch called The Garden of Earthly Delights, the cover is packed with fascinating details. The peacock in the center (just below his face) is the symbol Jackson famously chose to represent his vision of racial harmony in his first major short film, The Triumph. Numerous other animals populate the cover, including Jackson’s famous chimpanzee, Bubbles. We see multiple references to the Disneyland ride Pirates of the Caribbean, including the iconic skull and crossbones symbol at the entrance. On the amusement ride, meanwhile, we see a number of biographical allusions: the rat from “Ben,” the Elephant Man Joseph Merrick’s bones, child actor Macaulay Culkin, and a young Michael Jackson. In addition to Bosch’s painting, there are a number of other artistic inspirations, including a statue that recalls Sandro Botticelli’s mid-1480s painting, The Birth of Venus (which was also the inspiration for Prince’s 1988 Lovesexy album).

  Cryptic symbols abound, from the clowns on white elephants; to the inscriptions reminiscent of ancient runic engravings; to the half-white, half-black face; to a diamond-encased all-seeing eye. There is also a pin on Barnum’s jacket that reads “1998,” and the number seven is on the top hat of the little person standing on Barnum’s head (believed to be inspired by Mihaly “Michu” Meszaros, the famed performer from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus). Featured prominently on Jackson’s hand, meanwhile, is an African girl holding a skull.

  Flanking Jackson’s right is a “Dog King” sitting on a throne, clothed in a crimson robe and holding a scepter. This specific image recalls an 1806 painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, titled Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne. Jackson also memorably used dogs in his 1989 “Leave Me Alone” video to represent corporate power and greed.

  Opposite the Dog King is the Bird Queen, who wears purple, holds a compass, and is connected to a gear-driven machine that pumps life into a bubble-like globe containing a nude man and woman. Meanwhile, just beneath Jackson’s eyes is an industrial factory that seems inspired by the opening sounds of the title track. (Ryden acknowledged that he took inspiration from several of the songs on Dangerous, as well as from other well-known aspects of the singer’s life.)

  Straight through the middle of the cover is a path, suggesting that by following it inside, listeners might go beyond the mask and enter into the creative world of Michael Jackson. Mysterious and evocative, it is Jackson’s most compelling cover artwork. For those paying attention, it also signaled that this would be a different kind of Michael Jackson album. There was a lot going on beneath the surface.

  COMING OF AGE

  While it didn’t reach Jackson’s goal of selling one hundred million records, Dangerous did become his second most commercially successful album after Thriller. Outside the United States, it was his biggest album to date, hitting #1 in nine countries and selling approximately twenty million copies. Within the United States, it started strong—selling six hundred thousand copies its first week and about seven million over its initial run. Over a two-year span, Dangerous spent 117 weeks in the Billboard Hot 200, generating four Top 10 singles. In 1993, when it seemed the album had stalled, it caught fire again after Jackson performed to a record-setting 120 million viewers for the Super Bowl halftime show. Less than a week later, Jackson was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, his first televised interview since the Thriller era (this was the same interview where he first mentioned his skin disorder, vitiligo). The heavily hyped TV event drew more than eighty-five million viewers. Other than Super Bowls, it was the most-watched TV program in history up to that point. Propelled by these two high-profile events, Dangerous soared back into the Top 10 nearly sixteen months after its original release.

  The critical response to Dangerous, meanwhile, was mixed. Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Coleman wrote that the “loping, melodic electro-groove patented by [Teddy] Riley winds up fitting Jackson like a glove. This collaboration could have been a disastrous attempt at catching up….But instead of clashing or merely coexisting, Jackson and Riley’s strong musical personalities actually complement each other. There’s no mistaking it for anything but a Jackson album, but the bulk of Dangerous presents the superstar in a fresh context.” All Music Guide’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine similarly praised Dangerous as “a much sharper, harder, riskier album than Bad, one that has its eyes on the street.”

  Rolling Stone called the album a “triumph…that doesn’t hide from the fears and contradictions of a lifetime spent in the spotlight….Despite his offstage Peter Pan image, Michael Jackson’s finest song and dance is always sexually charged, tense, coiled—he is at his most gripping when he really is dangerous.”

  Others, however, saw it differently. “On Dangerous,” wrote David Browne for Entertainment Weekly, “humanity lets Michael Jackson down at every turn. Even the most acute studio skills can’t compensate for the hole-in-the-soul that haunts the album. The love songs replace warmth with an unsettling sense of hostility, and even Jackson’s pop-gospel songs sound forlorn, not uplifting.” Even more dismissive was The New York Times’s Jon Pareles, who described Dangerous as Jackson’s “least confident album since he became a solo superstar.” Disregarding the massive experimentations in sounds, production, and personnel that had occurred within the record, Pareles concludes: “He sounds so eager to reclaim his popularity that he has ruled out taking chances.”

  But Dangerous has experienced a major reappraisal over the ensuing decades. Many critics and fans alike now feel it represents some of his best work. In a 2009 review, The Guardian’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas dubbed it Jackson’s “career high”: “In all the swooning at Thriller’s album sales and Jackson’s pre-surgery beatitude,” he wrote, “Dangerous risks becoming even more underrated than it is now. That would be a tragedy—for me, it’s his finest hour.”

  In her book-length study of the album, published in the 331⁄3 series, music scholar Susan Fast acknowledged that Dangerous is “baroque,” “noisy,” and “excessive on every level,” but viewed these elements, finally, as part of what makes it great. They showed Jackson was stretching, experimenting, and maturing. She called Dangerous Jackson’s “coming-of-age album.” The record, she wrote, “offers Jackson on a threshold, finally inhabiting adulthood—isn’t this what so many said was missing?—and doing so through an immersion in black music that would only continue to deepen in his later work.”

  For those who felt Jackson had gone “too pop,” Dangerous indeed marks a decisive shift back to black, from the street-oriented hip-hop of “Jam” to the organ-inflected New Jack Swing of “Remember the Time” to the gospel fervor of “Will You Be There” and “Keep the Faith.” Some saw it as his blackest album since Off the Wall.

  It was certainly his most expansive. Dangerous wasn’t as culturally momentous as Nirvana’s Nevermind, particularly in the United States. But over the long haul, it may have been more influential. After the ’90s, rock faded, as hip-hop ascended. The way Jackson bridged hip-hop with R&B on Dangerous was a game changer, as was his multigenre, maximalist approach to the pop album, establishing blueprints that are still being followed by artists today.

  THE SONGS

  1. “JAM”

 
Written by Michael Jackson, René Moore, Bruce Swedien, and Teddy Riley

  Coproduced by Michael Jackson, Teddy Riley, and Bruce Swedien

  On Bad, Michael Jackson wasn’t yet sure how to incorporate hip-hop; by Dangerous, he’d figured it out.

  The first thirty seconds of “Jam” make that clear. You hear the slamming beat, the scratching effect, the deejay-like callouts repeating in the background, the dissonance and noise.

  The song begins with shattering glass—effectively symbolizing the breakthrough. Gone are the pristine, cinematic fantasies of Bad; in their place is something grittier.

  Jackson allows the listener plenty of time to settle into the new sound, maximizing the anticipation. Other than some percussive breaths, we don’t hear his voice until fifty-four seconds in. When he finally begins, it hardly sounds like the Michael Jackson people expected. The verses more closely resemble rapping than singing.

  The lyrics, meanwhile, paint an ominous picture of the present: he speaks of “confusions” and “contradictions”; he speaks of a changing world, of being “conditioned by the system”; he speaks of “predictions of doom.” The way he delivers these lines conveys a sense of prophetic urgency. Listen to the way he gulps and gasps between lines, or the way his voice subtly moves up a key in the second verse, heightening the tension.

  Yet amid the swirling chaos he tells us we have to find a way forward. To “jam” is to come together, to let the music bridge divisions, give us hope. The chorus effectively releases the pent-up pressure. That one word—jam—hits right with the beat and the keyboard. It’s a galvanizing declaration of defiance and resilience. “It ain’t too much for me,” he shouts. He offers no detailed prescriptions in the song; just music, jamming. The suggestion, as with previous tracks like “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” and “Beat It,” is that whatever we’re dealing with—as individuals or societies—music can help us “work it out.”