Amazing what dying will do for a career, eh?
Death has always been good for business in the arts, but who could have thought old creepypants Michael Jackson could have half his life–the sordid and the pathological– wiped off the public record by overdosing on a shot of painkillers?

What is truly amazing to me is how so many people are suddenly rock solid with MJ’s legacy, and have been ‘true fans’ all along. Even through his recent phase as a cultural fugitive.
To argue such subjective bandwagoneering would be hard, but what can be objectively argued about this whole kerfaffle, is that the guy hadn’t written anything good in ages.
Did I listen to Beat It and Billie Jean when I was growing up? Of course I did. But just because something was present in my rearing doesn’t automatically turn it into gold when the author expires and I’m old enough to remember it. Jeezz. And objectively, those lame synths, piss-poor lyrics and Eddie Van Halen solos are not eternal–or no more eternal that those garish red leather suits he used to wear–they’re just passé. And everything after (and mostly including) Thriller sucks. Yes: Sucks. Amazing, the amount of nodding zombie heads that will just agree with whatever the radio tells them is legendary. That album Dangerous? It’s horseshit. Listen to it again, and tell me it doesn’t have more in common with Tiffany and Debbie Gibson than the teenage Michael Jackson who, admittedly gloriously, blew his creative load with Off The Wall.

If MJ had written songs like ‘Trouble Man ‘on the other hand…I may have shed a tear, but Marvin Gaye died like a proper rock star, and his music has aged well. MJ died like a soft option ego junkie. His leering megalomania was only more disturbing than his Diva-like travel requirements. Have we forgotten about the fucker’s nose?!
Oh wait, there seems to be a post-mortem statute of limitations in slagging off his plasticity, at least until we stop pretending he was part of our family.

I just watched Germaine sing at the funeral, by the way, and if you didn’t think that last teary gasp was staged, you’ve missed everything.

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