RIP Michael Jackson

[Shady]

Terrible

Doubt I need a source

[Andrew G. Doe]

Shocking...

[Chris Brown]

Incredibly tragic news.  He was such an electrifying entertainer, singer and writer.  

A very sad day indeed.

[Shady]

Had tickets for two of the gigs in london 

[8o8o]

Come on, his death has not even been confirmed (yet).

[Alf64]

  Let's wait for an official confirmation.

[Nicole]

I can't believe this...hopefully TMZ is wrong, they're the only ones to "confirm" it so far.

[Shady]

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06252009/news/nationalnews/michael_jackson_dies_176101.htm

Seems he's gone

[hypehat]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

they haven't got it yet though. TMZ are the only ones.

Still, it seems pretty conclusive. What a shame....

[matt-zeus]

This is crazy sh*t

[Nicole]

It's true...RIP! You'll be missed.

[Shady]

Ya, 100%, Michael has died.

RIP

[carlydenise]

OMG!  That is a shock....we lost 2 20th century icons today, Michael and Farrah

[mikeyj]

Wow this is so sad Didn't expect to wake up and read this. RIP and thanks for all the music you've given us.

[SG7]

Big sad face here 

Will play some of his stuff tonight. Dang first the dude from the seeds, Farrah and now this??

[Amy B.]

I can't believe it. I had a Jackson 5 compilation and Off the Wall but was only a casual fan.
But I was 8 years old when Thriller came out and he was the BIGGEST thing in music. The one silver lining is that I'm guessing people will recall what a talent he was, something that got overshadowed when he was alive. He really was incredibly gifted.

[MBE]

The Jackson Five were a fantastic band and I will always remember him in his pre Thriller days when he seemed to have it all.  I am shocked and sad.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I'm torn right now...it's no secret I wasn't exactly a fan of the man or the performer, but yet I'm still saddened.

[pixletwin]

This is interesting. If it is true it would right one of the biggest wrongs in modern music history:

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/10457

[Don't Back Down]

Have the Thriller album on and title track is playing now. Been a big fan of Michael since high school.
R.I.P - Michael Jackson, King of Pop

[Alex]

Can't say I'm gonna miss Jacko...but he was great at one point in time (when he was still black!!).

[The Heartical Don]

May he rest in peace. I am no fan, but I always felt for him. He's a modern version of any great Greek tragedy. Odd... despite his enormous wealth (which has evaporated, I am told), he never seemed egotistical. He seemed to want to give more than he received, in a childishly honest manner. But too many things worked against him - childhood abuse (too grisly to talk about in detail); the grinding mill of showbiz; his obsessions with his looks (perhaps his worst 'own enemy'); his seeming inadequacy to enter an adult relationship (I am writing this without the slightest bad intention). For me, dangling his toddler over that railing at that hotel was proof of his nervousness. Quite the impulsive act of someone wanting desperately to be with those normal folks down there.

[Music Machine]

I was never much of a fan, I have a few favorite songs. I agree with Heartical Don, he had a vary troubled tortured life and I'm glad he's not suffering anymore.

[donald]

I liked his stuff when he was a young adult.  Didn't like what he became and didn't like him as a child.   Like Ike Turner, his reputation will forever tarnish the memory and legacy.  Such is the way it is.

[Alex]

ex-Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page wrote a piece about about Jacko's death in a Canadian paper:
http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=1739965

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What more could he give?

Michael Jackson's music united people like none before it, but that power crippled him

Steven Page, Weekend Post  Published: Saturday, June 27, 2009


The first time I ever heard someone say the word "n*****" was on a school bus in south Florida in 1983. We had moved to West Palm Beach for the year to live with my grandmother while my father worked on his doctorate at the University of Miami. The schools there had only been racially integrated for less than a decade, so we were bused all over the district to get to school. I was in Grade 8 and came from a quiet, suburban existence in Scarborough, Ont. The kids on the school bus called me "chum," because of the slightly small, army-green 1050 CHUM T-shirt I often wore, and "f****t," because of my soft, high voice and my pudgy pre-adolescent breasts bulging embarrassingly through the call letters. The kids on the bus chewed tobacco and horked into notebook paper spittoons. They listened to country music. And they ignored me until we got close to the stops nearest the school, where the black kids would get on.

"Hey, f****t," they'd call, "sit with us, so you don't have to sit with the n******." Ashamed of my choice, I'd get up and sit on the edge of a seat next to one of the kids from the trailer parks. The divide was clear, and every morning, it was like a blow to the skull of the quiet, doughy Canadian kid.

The music down in Florida had been something of a revelation for me. Informed by the recent appearance of MTV, there was New Wave, Hard Rock, and -- something very hard to come by in rockist Southern Ontario-- R & B. One day, a jukebox arrived in the cafeteria, and we were allowed to play music from it. I stayed away, allowing the alpha males to dominate the lunch music. The music alternated between metal and country and New Edition, until Michael Jackson's Beat It would come on the speakers. The whole cafeteria would stop and listen. The song would play again. And then again. Occasionally, Billie Jean would play, which I silently preferred, particularly after my mind had been blown by his performance of it on the legendary Motown 25 television special, but it would be quickly followed once again by Beat It. With abandon and a complete lack of self-consciousness, kids would dance, sing and shout along. The band, consisting mostly of rock musos from Toto, and featuring Eddie Van Halen's searing, visceral guitar solo, melded perfectly with Jackson's angry, plaintive R & B vocals. Beat It, years before Run-DMC and Aerosmith teamed up for Walk This Way, became the common ground for kids both black and white. Although my new Walkman was filled with the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Genesis, I ran out and bought the LP. I never bought the spangled glove. I never learned to moonwalk. I wasn't that kind of fan, but he had moved me in a bigger way. He opened my eyes and allowed me to keep myself from being cynical about music, race and popular culture.

Michael Jackson understood the power of his music to unite, and struggled for the rest of his life with that responsibility. Where Jackson failed was in his confusion between the power of the persona and the power of the music itself. He strived to appear unsexual and unracial, a Jesus to the children of Bosnia, Asia, and the Soviet Union, where cultural divides were not along colour lines, but along economic and ethnic ones. The perversity of the self-proclaimed King of Pop aggressively grabbing his crotch was lost on few, but he did understand that the world's problems were not just about black and white. What he did not understand, however, was his role in solving them. The more he sang about it, the less he helped. Michael Jackson was never more important and valuable than when he focused on his music, and not what his music was about.

Years later, in 1999, Barenaked Ladies were invited to perform at an event called "Michael Jackson and Friends: What More Can I Give?" at the Olympic Stadium in Munich. The venue itself was already charged with such racial meaning, as it remains in the world's memory as the site of the 1972 massacre of members of the Israeli Olympic team. Jesse Owens' 1936 Berlin Olympic triumph was also not far from our minds, either. Now, Jackson, the self-styled saviour of children, was asking "What More Can I Give?" Such a confusing question: Was he declaring his exhaustion or his commitment?