Agent Triple P can't understand all this ghastly Michael Jackson worship at present. Page after page in the newspapers and hour after hour on TV about someone who, far from being a "musical genius" seemed to us to be a rather minor performer. ironically all of the press that spent twenty years making him out to be a paedophile weirdo are now all acclaiming him as a musical genius. Sorry, he wasn't. Bach was a musical genius. Oscar Peterson was a musical genius. Lennon and McCartney, Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan (even though we don't like him). But in the music world anyone who has more than three hits now is a musical genius.
We aren't even interested in whether he did dubious things to children in his house or that he had some very strange habits as there are no doubt far worse things going on in Hollywood at present
He seemed to be a well regarded dancer (not much of an achievement in itself, for a man), a weak singer and not much of a songwriter. Agent Triple P only recognises six song titles from the seven albums he recorded as a solo singer and many were written by others. He had some good creative people around him; not least Quincey Jones (who deserves the most credit for his "sound" and is certainly more of a "genius" than Jackson) and Rod Temperton (who wrote many of his better songs).
He seemed to be popular with black musicians for breaking down barriers for black performers (ironically, given he spent most of his life turning himself white -the skin disease story is utter nonsense). By this I think that they mean his music was played on white radio stations. American radio stations were horribly self-segregated in a way that just didn't happen in the UK. It would take a peculiar sort of women to find Jackson attractive at any stage (maybe he won the safe in taxis vote), so what his appeal was to them also passes us by. Finally, any man who liked Jackson must have been also quite strange. We don't like heavy metal but we can see why some do, we don't like rap but can see its appeal to some (non-musical) people, we don't like chamber music etc. etc. We cannot see the appeal of Michael Jackson whtsoever. Baffling!
Needless to say we have 7524 tracks on our iPod and none by Michael Jackson.
