Before the trial...Michael performed his big tribute concert with people like Nsync and Usher and Whitney doing tributes, then the Jackson 5 reunited, and then the man himself took the stage to perform. It should have been his best performance in years. It wasn't.

He looked out of it.. and/or tired.

While some of his moves were sharp, he was kind of off.

He kept holding his face, or head-mic, and touching it. I remember watching the show with someone and I believe they said, "Why does he keep putting his hand there?"

Some fans say it was due to his lips just have gotten work done to them, or something. However, I don't know if I buy this.

While it was an exciting concert I'm sure to attend (believe me I wish I could have been there - from everyone who has been there, it seems like at times, they were disapointed.)

So once and for all, people who were there, or people who saw it on TV, lets talk about this and try to figure it out.

And please don't turn this into a "Michael is a child abuser" or "looks like a freak thread." I'm really interested in the topic of this thread, and know, lots of Michael fans and observers, float around prince.org - so please just respect this for me. Thank you!

For some tracks, I think he was lip syncing. Mike has never been a good lip syncer, even since the J5 days. I think MArlon said in an interview, "Mike was terrible at lip syncing".

He was covering his out of sync lipsyncing with Nsync

There was something wrong with Mike that night. He obviously wasn´t feeling well.

dag said:

He was on painkillers, remember....strung out...

murph said:

This I believe (in the old man voice from The Whole Ten Yards)

The question everyone had. I went to both shows and there was a slight difference in energy level during the second one but that whole mouth thing was a real distraction. Some of the back up dancers said he kept putting his hand to his mouth when he talked like he was trying to hide it or obviously self-conscious. That also made his lip synching difficult. If it wasn't pain killer issues I'm sure he had to be bummed that on his biggest most hyped nights in the U.S. his mouth was almost paralyzed. The hair was yet another issue.

I thought, on the whole, he did an alright job at the shows. With that said, he did look either strung out on pills or like he was suffering from a cold. And the whole covering the mouth thing was damn distracting. I always attributed it to lipsynching

BTW, his performance with Britney Spears sucked. Mike did a good job, but Britney's vocals made the song suffer. She sounded like Minnie Mouse with Strep throat(if thats how u spell it)

i had the misfortune of seeing him at the "What More Can I Give" Concert in D.C a few years back and it should have been called "How Long Do I Have To Wait" concert. We waited almost eleven hours to see him come out on a crane and mouth the words. He covered his mouth so we wouldn't notice. But it was pretty obvious.

i always assumed it had something had to do with his nose coming off.

newskin69 said:

I always attributed it to that giant red rash like thing that showed up on his face. It didn't look very good and I'm sure he noticed it and was embarrased. He never did that before when he was lip-syching, so I'm guessing it was the red-blotchy thing. He looked like a clown that couldn't get all of his make-up off

PurpleRighteous1 said:

This man has been using make up since 1980 something..(Hello Bad music video..Michael went alittle heavy on the pancake makeup look.) So if it was a problem of not being able to cover up something, why not just use makeup?

I mean..I was watching the HIStory concert tour awhile back on VHS, and then afterwords watched his 30th anniversary performance, and remember thinking, "If only it would have went like the HIStory tour." It would have been a lot better...either way he lip synched..at least on the HIStory tour..his dancing and "overall appearance" wasn't that of someone who was worn out/on pain killers/or tired/ or all.

PurpleRighteous1 said:

He has discoid lupus. That's what it's all down to.

Ellie said:

I realize you are "in the know" in MJ's world, which is awesome, and I even looked up the "discoid lupus" and a lot of the "signs" check out with Michael. However, I was just curious, if you had a source for this, of it was just an educated guess.?

Ellie said:

Well I was unaware of this. I still think that was the reason he kept covering his mouth. I know he could've used make-up but my guess is that he didn't have the time to get enough make-up on to cover that up. It was pretty obvious and I think he was attempting to cover it, at least more often then the audience would have to see it.

He looked like he was holding his jaw on.

theVelvetRoper said:

Yeah, and his facial expression at times looked like he was in physical pain of some kind. It didn't help that he was sweating a lot and wearing white - so the sweat really showed.

ehuffnsd said:

I don't know if you're joking or not, but this is honestly what I assumed he was doing. I thought, he must feel his prosthetic nose coming loose.

I also saw some areas of brown skin around his moth that I thought he was trying to cover up.

Ellie said:

You can see it quite clearly making a mess of his hands from time to time.
It can also create ulcers in the nose and mouth.

jasonstar said:

Straight from Jermaine's mouth and court papers.

I remember this horrible show, I kept thinking
"Wooooow, they should've cancelled this effort." All the celebrities looked over worked and drugged out. Even the audience was looking crazy.
[Edited 1/20/06 5:37am]

Liza was hilarious though. I seriously couldn't prepare people for how bad her performance was, and when I showed them their jaws just dropped to the floor

Ellie said:

Which court papers? This would be interesting to read..
Thanks for the info BTW.
[Edited 1/20/06 5:52am]

The man could barely move his mouth going all the way back to his instore signing. It was like a bad botox reaction or something. That big smile was missing for months.

It's still sort of missing. Never been the same again since 2001 anyway.

Oh, the lupus thing definitely came from Jermaine. I have that interview on tape from the "MJ's Face" doc on Channel 5 - the one that all the US networks tried to copy afterwards.

Actually, the court papers I think only confirm Vitiligo when Debbie and his dermatologist had to testify for the Grand Jury in 1994.