MickyDolenz said:

Cinny said:

Absolutely not overrated if you have a memory of the era and his persona. He also toured areas that did not normally get stars of his caliber, so the fainting is actually understandable.

Also it is common in certain kinds of churches, where (usually) women would get the Holy Ghost and sometimes pass out. I've seen it myself and the church was cold inside because they had an air conditioner. This church had a nurse to take care of anyone who passed out.

I was a mega fan and never got a chance to see him, not even with Jacksons in 1984.

MickyDolenz said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2017/10/30/the-top-earning-dead-celebrities-of-2017/#e82140c41f55

Take that for overrated.
Forbes list MJ as top earning dead celeb for 5th straight year.

Cinny said:

Absolutely not overrated if you have a memory of the era and his persona. He also toured areas that did not normally get stars of his caliber, so the fainting is actually understandable.

I tried to explain his popularity to someone a bit younger... it was unprecendented (almost).... there had been Univesal figures like Chaplin, Ali, Michael Jordan, Elvis, etc... but few of that calibre on an international level who reached and affected the lives of millions.

One of the greatest compliments I'd read about him was in an LA WEEKLY...someone was columnizing about "was he really special? unique? etc."

And then he included the story that in one of his waxings on this (may have been a pundit or teacher, its been years and I forget) particular day an Arab woman stood up angrily and shouted... "If it wasn't for Michael Jackson, I would have had no hope growing up. I would have never gotten out of my country. I would never have been alive"

So....

that alone is testament to the power of music. Things like that happen for many...but the dude transcended "fame"... he was a phenomenon.


Just get ready for it...

people who had never seen Prince...

they're gonna come up and say crap like this in a few years.

"Prince is overrated... Prince wasn't that good...."

...and this isn't run of the mill "sells cheap rap 'hating'" ... this is hate.

anyways.. my two cents.

In response to OP... Michael Jackson's FAME was not overrated.

I suppose u want to suggest his music was?

I don't think so either. Great from the beginning, up to the point he began writing his own, and coming into his own...etc.

I saw the Bad tour twice and I can tell you his "concert experience" was waayyyy overrated; a lot of lip-synching.

sro100 said:

I saw the Bad tour twice and I can tell you his "concert experience" was waayyyy overrated; a lot of lip-synching.

Yeah... he did kinda pioneer that sort of artifice...

Breathers and then other songs where singing was secondary to the movement...


it's truly demanding stuff... I've seen youtube vids of the same show.. some are broadcast/edited with overdubs, others are raw feeds... I've always prefered raw feeds/performance...

but stuff like STRANGER IN MOSCOW, JAM, BLOOD ON THE DANCEFLOOR, DANGEROUS, were mostlylip synced... As for BAD... which songs were?

gonna guess... parts of BAD, Most of SMOOTH CRIMINAL, parts of ANOTHER PART OF ME

2045RadicalMattZ said:

sro100 said:

I saw the Bad tour twice and I can tell you his "concert experience" was waayyyy overrated; a lot of lip-synching.

Yeah... he did kinda pioneer that sort of artifice...

Breathers and then other songs where singing was secondary to the movement...


it's truly demanding stuff... I've seen youtube vids of the same show.. some are broadcast/edited with overdubs, others are raw feeds... I've always prefered raw feeds/performance...

but stuff like STRANGER IN MOSCOW, JAM, BLOOD ON THE DANCEFLOOR, DANGEROUS, were mostlylip synced... As for BAD... which songs were?

gonna guess... parts of BAD, Most of SMOOTH CRIMINAL, parts of ANOTHER PART OF ME

The first leg in asia was all live (eg. yokahoma stadium shows). The leg where he added more songs from the Bad album (the first leg was more like tours with the brothers) is where he lip synced, mainly the album tracks. He sounds exactly like them so you know, but in all fairness, maybe those melodies weren't made for the stage performances, his previous work is easier to sing while dancing

robertgeorge said:

Adorecream said:

SoftSkarlettLovisa said:

However, when I see clips of people fainting and crying at the sight of him and had to be carried away by ambulence ... honestly, it's a little cringey.

Yeah, I don't know how I'd react if I ever met Michael Jackson (if he was still alive), but still wasn't his celebrity status a little overrated?

And people didn't do that shit before Michael Jackson, ever watched a film of any early Beatles or Rolling Stones concert - you can't hear anything but girls screaming. To me fainting at a conert and being carried away on an ambulance sounds more like something in the 1960s at a Beatles concert.

In fact in 1987, the UK did a series of stamps showing the centenary of St Johns Ambulance service and the 4 stamps had, an original stretcher of 1887, a Blitz ambulance in 1940 and the last stamp a modern 1987 ambulance pick up, the 3rd stamp said 1960s' and showed a fainting girl on a stretcher next to a "We Love you Ringo" sign.

.

Dollybirds and 14 year old girly girls have been shrieking at pop idols since the Frank Sinatra bobby soxers craze of like 1943, many critics called in Sinatrauma. Then in the 1956/58 era it was Elvis and then the Beatles and the Stones in the 1960s, in the UK at least it was Bowie and TREX in the early 70s, by the mid 70s it was Bobby Sherman, David Essex, the Osmonds, Jackson 5 etc. Even today if you go to a No Direction or Justin Bieber show, it is more of the same.

.

So a poorly disguised front for another "Lets bash Michael Jackson thread"

Oh, but I'm not bashing Michael Jackson at all. My "ignorance" may come from the fact I wasn't aware of MJ until the early 2000s (did hear some of his music in the 1990s growing up and loved it).
I find it so amazing that someone as recent as MJ can gain a Jesus like following in the world like the Beatles and Elvis. It gains my admiration, not potential for "bashing MJ threads".

NO!

4 EVER - 1983 = MJ!

MD431Madcat said:

NO!

4 EVER - 1983 = MJ!

well if you get away with wearing THAT t-shirt, there must be somethng about you

TheFman said:

MD431Madcat said:

NO!

4 EVER - 1983 = MJ!

well if you get away with wearing THAT t-shirt, there must be somethng about you

Okay, now it's clear, your post was not a neutral point of view, it seems like you got a personal problem with MJ himself. Let me just say this: If you are a Prince Fan (don't get me wrong, I am 2), you shouldn't talk about "getting away with THAT t-shirt", because, well, look at what Prince got away with

And we love him for that.

Your question was about his fame, and his fame can't be overrated, because it's fact that he reached all these people who made his fame possible.

sro100 said:

I saw the Bad tour twice and I can tell you his "concert experience" was waayyyy overrated; a lot of lip-synching.

i always heard that he blew his voice out during the bad tour, there are shows where he's singing live and he sound pretty damn good, also the victory tour was all live I believe. I still don't understand how highly regarded the motown performance was because it was definitely lip synced. Great dancing sure, but he doesn't deserve any singing from that billy jean performance.

luvsexy4all said:

that voice certainly was....

funny thing about his voice, as a child he was a stone cold prodigy, great vocal control and power. as he got older, as an adult, i think he may have had some kind of mental thing where he wanted to sound like a kid, it hurt his voice in some ways, he was too light and thin which of course makes the voice thinner but on off the wall he sounds probably better than he did when he changed his style. Also, it was very impressive how he changed his voice by the time of bad, he started singing with a fantastic rough edge like Little Richard. I think he could have been an even better singer without all the affectation.

that pic is peak mike, that jacket was the coolest thing in the world for a short time, he was a great pop star, at this point, he was a teen idol, it would never be so good for him again.

ThatWhiteDude said:

TheFman said:

well if you get away with wearing THAT t-shirt, there must be somethng about you

Okay, now it's clear, your post was not a neutral point of view, it seems like you got a personal problem with MJ himself. Let me just say this: If you are a Prince Fan (don't get me wrong, I am 2), you shouldn't talk about "getting away with THAT t-shirt", because, well, look at what Prince got away with

And we love him for that.

Your question was about his fame, and his fame can't be overrated, because it's fact that he reached all these people who made his fame possible.

PeteSilas said:

journalism16 said:

I agree with Motownsubdivision, in that I believe regardless where it originated MJ took the ball and ran with the sobriquets. I feel that he insisted upon being described as the King of .... , and he his management and record label insisted upon it for appearances on any award show he went on.

I remember watching when Elizabeth described him as the King...., and I feel she did so at his request (no evidence, just a gut feeling).

Prince was his Purple majesty, His Royal badness, but good luck finding a casual fan that has heard that term, and in that respect he forced the issue less than Michael. As far as I know he only ever said real music by real musicians and that he never went away when they said he was back.

Prince alluded to the grandeur of the claims when he said in Fascination "So called King gives birth to so called Prince." My name is prince and the remix said "you must become a Prince before you become a king anyway." (Tony M rap) and "You must come to your senses, their are no Kings in this world only Princes." so even in gest it seemed to irk him.

Interestingly I never minded Elvis being the King of Rock & Roll (he was gone before I knew who he was)

I thought it was fair for Little Richard to call himself the Architect and the Originator of rock and roll in response (though in truth he was an important part but a fragment nonethless)

I think it was Michael Jackson claiming all the Kingdoms (King of Pop, soul, rock etc). I could happily call him the King of Pop I guess as it doesn't mean anything. I mean Frank Sinatra was the Chairmen of the Board.

robertgeorge said:

I could happily call him the King of Pop I guess as it doesn't mean anything. I mean Frank Sinatra was the Chairmen of the Board.

It was the Queen Of Soul who got upset Beyoncé called Tina Turner "Queen". But Aretha is always shady with other female singers. T-Boz from TLC said in an interview she wanted to curse out Aretha one time, because Aretha told her she looked better than her when she was T-Boz age. But she didn't out of respect and was a fan of her music.

James Brown gave himself many names like Minister Of The New New Super Heavy Funk, Godfather Of Soul, Hardest Working Man In Show Business, Mr. Dynamite, etc. Elvis didn't like the King title and at different times has said Fats Domino & Jesus Christ was the real King.

MickyDolenz said:

robertgeorge said:

I could happily call him the King of Pop I guess as it doesn't mean anything. I mean Frank Sinatra was the Chairmen of the Board.

It was the Queen Of Soul who got upset Beyoncé called Tina Turner "Queen". But Aretha is always shady with other female singers. T-Boz from TLC said in an interview she wanted to curse out Aretha one time, because Aretha told her she looked better than her when she was T-Boz age. But she didn't out of respect and was a fan of her music.

James Brown gave himself many names like Minister Of The New New Super Heavy Funk, Godfather Of Soul, Hardest Working Man In Show Business, Mr. Dynamite, etc. Elvis didn't like the King title and at different times has said Fats Domino & Jesus Christ was the real King.

I'll stop calling Elvis King from now on. Out of respect.

2045RadicalMattZ said:

sro100 said:

I saw the Bad tour twice and I can tell you his "concert experience" was waayyyy overrated; a lot of lip-synching.

Yeah... he did kinda pioneer that sort of artifice...

Breathers and then other songs where singing was secondary to the movement...


it's truly demanding stuff... I've seen youtube vids of the same show.. some are broadcast/edited with overdubs, others are raw feeds... I've always prefered raw feeds/performance...

but stuff like STRANGER IN MOSCOW, JAM, BLOOD ON THE DANCEFLOOR, DANGEROUS, were mostlylip synced... As for BAD... which songs were?

gonna guess... parts of BAD, Most of SMOOTH CRIMINAL, parts of ANOTHER PART OF ME

The BAD tour was the final tour where he DIDN'T lip sync. I was at the MSG show.

He lip synced from the DANGEROUS tour on. Check the Wembley Tour show in 88 and the Bucarest show from 92/3(?) for reference.

No. Did it get out of hand at times? Yes but that fame was well deserved.

Let's start with Off The Wall

The first album by a solo artist to have four top 10 singles and was the biggest selling album by a black artist until Thriller came along. The album was critically acclaimed almost 40 years since its release, it's still highly regarded

Thriller... before we talk about the videos and all that, the Thriller album reached #1 before the videos for Billie Jean and Beat It even recieved airplay on MTV. In fact, the songs were being played on radio stations across the US before they were even released as singles. The album was great. You don't sell 68 million copies of an album and it's not a great piece of work.

He was marketed as larger than life, with his videos premiering on network television at primetime, He had that "it" that so many artists want but don't have, and in my opinion, haven't had since Michael, Prince, Madonna, Janet, Whitney, and their generation.

The people passing out at his shows weren't just passing out from overheating. They were passing out from the anticipation and excitement. It was a combination of all three for a lot of people

And the whole, "a lot of songs written by others", Of Michael's 13 #1 singles in the US, Michael wrote eight of them (9 if you include Say Say Say which he co-wrote with McCartney). From 1979 to 2009, Michael released 45 singles as a solo artist. While he didn't write all of his songs, He wrote or co-wrote 32 of them of those singles

ThatWhiteDude said:

Well, to be honest, people were passing out because of the lack of air at these concerts, not because of MJ. You could also see it at their faces (red) that they were overheated. That's what lead to passing out.

To his fame. Was it overrated? Let me put it this way, I think that there are better musicians who maybe deserve the same amount of fame as MJ. But they won't ever get it because they don't fit in the mainstream.

MJ's sound wasn't really his own, it was Quincy Jones, to say otherwise would be disrespectful towards Quincy. But he got hyped for it, so I think that MJ as a pure musician was overrated, because he couldn't pull it off all by himself.

But as a performer? I think the hype for him as a performer was okay, because he was one hell of a dancer. Many people copy it, but no one (Usher, JT etc) can pull it off like MJ. They look like Copy Cats. Sure MJ was inspired by people such as Fred Astaire but he didn't look like a copy cat. You could actually see how the moves evolved when MJ did it.

So I would say, in some aspects he was overrated, but I think you could say that about everyone in the business, I mean, hype sells, right? But I wouldn't say his fame is overrated. MJ deserved his fame more than most artists.

Quincy is one of the greatest producers of all time with a roster of wonder musicians to fulfill what he wanted, but most importantly, he was working with a incredibly creative artist who also knew what he wanted and could write and compose one hell of a song and knew how to execute it. They worked wonderfully together because they were creative geniuses and had respect and love for each other to make it happen. Thriller couldn't have happened with just Q putting things in motion and it definitely couldn't have happened without MJ.

ThatWhiteDude said:

MickyDolenz said:

Quincy had nothing to do with The Jacksons albums like Destiny, Triumph, & Victory. Even some of Jermaine's songs had the sound the brothers had like Gotta Have You and songs Marlon produced for Betty Wright & Janet. Jermaine never worked with Quincy. Jermaine wasn't even on We Are The World with the other brothers & LaToya. If Mike sold becasuse of Quincy, then Patti Austin, James Ingram, Brothers Johnson, Rufus, Siedah Garrett, etc would have sold just as well and be as popular as Mike. Also Quincy's albums under his own name would be huge sellers. I doubt Q's Jook Joint & Back On The Block sold as much as Dangerous & HIStory. Mike continued to have success after leaving Quincy, when Quincy's jazzy Westcoast AOR sound fell out of popularity when hip hop & New Jack Swing hit.

But these albums weren't as groundbreaking as Thriller, wich has Quincy's sound. You do know that Mike was the one who said that Hip Hop is dead, right? And he still needed Teddy Riley for the New Jack Swing sound.

Quincy said someone told him Michael said that

PeteSilas said:

luvsexy4all said:

that voice certainly was....

funny thing about his voice, as a child he was a stone cold prodigy, great vocal control and power. as he got older, as an adult, i think he may have had some kind of mental thing where he wanted to sound like a kid, it hurt his voice in some ways, he was too light and thin which of course makes the voice thinner but on off the wall he sounds probably better than he did when he changed his style. Also, it was very impressive how he changed his voice by the time of bad, he started singing with a fantastic rough edge like Little Richard. I think he could have been an even better singer without all the affectation.

Listening to the recent leaks of multitracks, DAMN his voice was such an instrument it's frustrating that around Bad, he started overdoing it with the certain ticks that he became famous for and faux gruff that he was doing (Man had such a smooth voice when you hear the acapellas of Rock With You, Human Nature, P.Y.T., Man In The Mirror, and other songs)

SoftSkarlettLovisa said:

Graycap23 said:

SoftSkarlettLovisa said:

Don't get me wrong. I love Michael Jackson, like millions on this earth. Of course, he made some of the greatest music ever.

However, when I see clips of people fainting and crying at the sight of him and had to be carried away by ambulence ... honestly, it's a little cringey.

Yeah, I don't know how I'd react if I ever met Michael Jackson (if he was still alive), but still wasn't his celebrity status a little overrated?

Some of those folks were on the payroll.

Nah...

You stand in a crowd of thousands of people in the summer at a concert (where you had to run into hours before the show started) and during all the excitement, SOMEONE is gonna pass out

There's a reason why they would spray fans down with a huge hose during the Bad and Dangerous tour shows in Europe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15PEzd9r64Y

[Edited 11/15/17 23:31pm]

Graycap23 said:

SoftSkarlettLovisa said:

Don't get me wrong. I love Michael Jackson, like millions on this earth. Of course, he made some of the greatest music ever.

However, when I see clips of people fainting and crying at the sight of him and had to be carried away by ambulence ... honestly, it's a little cringey.

Yeah, I don't know how I'd react if I ever met Michael Jackson (if he was still alive), but still wasn't his celebrity status a little overrated?

Some of those folks were on the payroll.

-

I keep forgetting this fact.

It's widely reported that many of those Bobbysoxers pulling their hair out were paid plants.

And I read somewhere that this thing goes all the way back to the composer Liszt.

bboy87 said:

PeteSilas said:

funny thing about his voice, as a child he was a stone cold prodigy, great vocal control and power. as he got older, as an adult, i think he may have had some kind of mental thing where he wanted to sound like a kid, it hurt his voice in some ways, he was too light and thin which of course makes the voice thinner but on off the wall he sounds probably better than he did when he changed his style. Also, it was very impressive how he changed his voice by the time of bad, he started singing with a fantastic rough edge like Little Richard. I think he could have been an even better singer without all the affectation.

Listening to the recent leaks of multitracks, DAMN his voice was such an instrument it's frustrating that around Bad, he started overdoing it with the certain ticks that he became famous for and faux gruff that he was doing (Man had such a smooth voice when you hear the acapellas of Rock With You, Human Nature, P.Y.T., Man In The Mirror, and other songs)

songs like bad, dirty diana required that more butch rock edge and it worked great. the ticks and tricks i guess, well, elvis did the same thing, did they overdo it? i guess so.