Michael Jackson

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MJ died overnight as I slept in the UK.  While I am not going to go into details of his life (follow this link to WikiP if you want that stuff) his contribution to music is worth comment.

MJ  is significant to Real Rock and Blues for 2 reasons.  Firstly, it is difficult for many (younger) people to appreciate that in the early 60’s there was white music and there was black music, certainly in the USA – less so in the UK.  The Jackson 5 used rock guitar (white rock guitar) on some of their (black) pop music.  For association with that action that helped breakdown racial divides in music MJ is worthy of mention.  Not that as a young boy he would have been the main decision maker, but he was there.

Secondly, when I was asked to write an article about 10 records that changed the world of music Thriller was in there.  Until Thriller each album spawned one or two singles.  With Thriller the paradigm changed. 7 of the tracks were hits in the USA.  All around the world singles taken from Thriller were hits, and lots of them.  Post Thriller, music companies were looking for albums to be mere collections of hit singles rather than somewhere where an artist could breath (alright getting carried away a bit there).

One thing is for sure Thriller is the biggest selling album of all time.  It is likely to remain so as so many people now download their music.

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Posted in Departures

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