MJ made the best videos on MTV for quite awhile. I watched a few of them today on youtube. I especially like the Billie Jean video where, as he dances down the sidewalk, the squares light up underneath his feet. It’s a great video, song, arrangement, dancing, everything. He was a genius who broke new ground for many years.
He also, as was made obvious by his ever whiter skin color, bizarre surgically altered face, and fantasy neverland ranch, became more and more psychotic as time went by.
It’s an occupational disease. It doesn’t happen to every big star, but some of them, especially if they become globally famous at an early age, develop the delusion that they can have whatever they want, do whatever they want, ingest whatever they want, without consequence. It is a disease of youth in general, but most of us run into limitations fairly quickly that disabuse us of this bad idea.
For Michael Jackson, or Elvis, or Janis, or Jimi, or Jerry, it must have looked like a not so unreasonable notion, until it was too late.