mj

My current job is labour intensive, so during working hours I don’t have access to a computer and by default any News services either.

I first heard of Michael Jackson’s death from a colleague halfway through last Friday’s shift – he had told us of the singer’s demise in a casual fashion:

Shannon: Hey guys, did you here Michael Jackson died?
Me:...And? What’s the punch line?
Shannon: No punch line, he’s really dead. Cheryl heard it on the radio and told me ten minutes ago – thing was, I thought she was leading into a joke as well. He died of a heart attack.

This is what happened for the rest of the day, people were informed of Jackson’s death only to assume it was a build up to some peadophile reference. It was only a couple of months ago that somebody had sent me a link to the top 101 Michael Jackson jokes – meaning that the humour had become so prolific that they had to cull the list just to get it to a manageable triple digit figure. Kind of a shame that such a promising young talent had grown up into a living punch line.

The general mood at work was one of apathy tinged with a “good riddance” mentality. My workmates are a mixture of AC/DC and Chemical Brother fans, if anybody liked Jackson’s music (and there are surely a few) they would never admit it. It hasn’t really been “cool” to be into Michael Jackson since Reagan was president and ALF was on the air waves, but it was more the problem of the singer’s surreal personal life that soured opinions (and those pesky molestation charges certainly didn’t help).

However, his impact on the music scene certainly cannot be denied. Thriller still stands as the greatest selling album of all time (109 million copies sold, a good 60 million more than the closest competition), and the music video for the titular track still ranks as one of the best ever made (compare the film clip for Thriller to anything that’s come out in the last decade or so).

At the end of the day this was not a guy you could see settling into his twilight years smoking a pipe in his rocking chair at the age of 80. Still, it came as a bit of a shock to see such an icon shuffle off this mortal coil – especially considering his huge tour was kicking off in just over a fortnight.

All that is really left to do now is churn through the media onslaught that accompanies any celebrity premature death. Of course this will involve the punitive eye witness reports, as dozens of people close to the star come forward to tell of how he looked “perfectly normal” only days before his death (or as normal as that skeletal Martian could muster).

One thing is for sure, DJ’s will still be filling dance floors to Billie Jean, and cover bands will be ripping out the Jackson 5 tunes long after the likes of Pink and Kanye West have become faded memories.