I figure I’ll join everybody else in remembering Michael Jackson. Some of the younger people out there only remember him for his kinda wierd acts the last decade or so. But anyone who grew up in the 80s and early 90s has a bit of a different view.
I can’t think of anyone in recent memory that was such an ICON like Michael Jackson was. Not Britney, nor Justin, nor Fergie, nor Angelina, nor Tom. Not Christian, nor Denzel. Michael was *everywhere*. Kids at school wore his red jacket. Or the white gloves (admit it). Everybody did his dance moves like the moonwalk or pelvic thrust. I know people who use the pelvic thrust on the dance floor -to this day!- (Chris, I’m looking at you buddy).
His influence lives on even today. Go back and look at his dance videos and you see the start of popping/locking, the “slide” that chris brown does now, tuttin (or however it’s spelled) which is the isolated hand movements. And let us not forget who made the suit & fedora hat look absolutely pimp. I just brought this up a few days ago while watching So You Think You Can Dance with the Teenager. One of the dance routines featured the fedora hats, and she wanted to know why. I told her she’d understand after watching the dance video Smooth Criminal.
With that, I leave you with a couple of you tube vids. The first is Smooth Criminal music video, and the other is a live performance of Dangerous (remixed?).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex30DYwQlHU[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC1TTz2bMmM[/youtube]
yup the song on the second video is a remixed version of dangerous. it was a feature performance of the 1995 video music awards on mtv. back when artists used to put out some awesome performances for it. can u tell I’m an mj freakazoid? he was the man.