MJ IS HOT!

OF COURSE!
He's friggin sexy as in there.
I adore him


Give Yourself Over To Absolute Pleasure

That's too bad that you just never GOT History. Maybe this will help you take a 2nd look at it, listen & understand what it truly is about instead of just expecting a pop light-hearted fun album.

http://allforloveblog.com/?p=1970

HIStory: Michael’s Angriest And Darkest Album

Okay, so a long time ago I set out to reveiew all of the albums of Michael’s adult solo career. The problem: I can’t rightfully review a Michael Jackson album until there is one that just completely wraps itself around me for awhile and won’t let go. Lately, for whatever reason, that album has been HIStory, or full title HIStory, Past, Present and Future, Book I. For the record, the album was released as a two-disc set, the first disc basically being a Greatest Hits package, and the second a disc of all-new material, a fact of which most of you probably know anyway unless you’re a new or very casual fan. For my purposes here, I’m focusing only on the second disc and the material that was original to this album.

HIStory is arguably not Michael’s easiest album to digest. It’s not a happy, fun album in the way that Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad are, nor is it particularly sexy and romantic in the way that much of Dangerous and Invincible are. What it is, quite simply, is a dark album full of angst, pathos, loneliness and isolation, with the occasional glimpse of light-just enough to keep us from being buried completely. It is also, by turns, his most political and most environmentally aware album. It is his most nakedly personal, raw, and autobiographical album. It was the first album in which we actually-gasp!-realized that our sweet, shy, innocent Michael could curse! (I remember when Al Sharpton was saying how Michael should be held up as an example to young black artists because his music was always good, wholesome, clean music…apparently, Al Sharpton had never listened to HIStory!). It was the album which was his finger to the world (or maybe I should say, to the people who run it-after all, as Michael made clear in Earth Song, his problem wasn’t with the earth, which he loved, but…let’s just say, some of the people who populate it).

It was, in short, the album in which Michael ceased being a song-and-dance man. Which is exactly, I think, why it caught so many off guard. Critics heaped praise on it while at the same time remaining slightly baffled by it. It seemed that in 1995, a lot of critics were trying to figure out the same thing-exactly what was going on inside Michael’s head at that time?

For me, this is precisely why I have to be in a certain mood to really appreciate HIStory. The album has some great grooves-I love Money, This Time Around, and Scream. Earth Song never fails to give me chills, even after the bajillionth listen. Stranger in Moscow is probably the single, most brilliant thing Michael ever wrote. Childhood never fails to make me cry. The entire album is an emotional journey, but for that reason, it’s not an album that lends itself to casual listening. While I may enjoy certain tracks like Money in isolation-if I’m just cruising around and listening to jams-HIStory is the one album that I’ll usually end up punching around most, skipping this track or that track, not because I don’t like them but because sometimes I just can’t deal with going to the place where this album wants to take me. As a whole, it’s not a “fun” place. But when I do listen to HIStory in its entirety, I always come away with the feeling of a Ulysses who has just endured a very long odyssey. Ultimately, the album rewards the listener who endures; who is willing to take the plunge with MJ into that dark place. After all, an album whose next-to-last track is a song all about a little girl’s brutal murder, then wraps up with a cover of Charlie Chaplin’s Smile is a jarring and bumpy ride indeed.

To really understand what the heck was going on with Michael when HIStory was conceived, I think one has to understand the place where he was at in his life. Paranoia is a word that often gets overused when music critics are discussing HIStory. I think “paranoia” is a misnomer. Paranoia, after all, is a term implying that the fear and anxiety of persecution is all in the victim’s mind. In Michael’s case, it was all too real. When you begin to fully understand Michael’s life and what he had endured up to September of 1994, when recording of the new material for HIStory began, you realize that perhaps that’s one of the most disturbing aspects of this album-none of it is exaggerated delusion, but rather, the voice of a man who has really lived out every song. And for those few he had not actually lived (Little Susie, etc) he had nevertheless been deeply affected by the events that inspired them.

The fact was that by late 1994, there wasn’t a whole lot left of the innocent, happy young man whose big, dazzling smile and hot dance grooves had captivated the world in the 70’s and 80’s. This was a Michael Jackson who had endured the ultimate humiliation, who had been accused of a heinous crime; who had been extorted, violated, strip searched; who had been whipped by the tabloids and lynched by the media. He had been stalked by obsessed fans and politicians with vendettas; his life had been threatened on numerous occasions. His circle of friends, associates and emplyees had become a never-ending revolving door, as he began to realize there was almost no one he could trust. He had been through the hell of addiction. His marriage was on the rocks.

In short, Michael Jackson in the mid-90’s had little to celebrate, but a heck of a whole lot to be pissed off about. And Michael in 1995 was one pissed off individual. Not just pissed off, but ready to let the world know he wasn’t gonna take its *beep* lying down.

“They really wanna fix me, hit me
But this time around I’m taking no *beep*
Though you really wanna get me
You really wanna get me…”-Michael Jackson, This Time Around

In hindsight, I don’t think HIStory could have come out any other way. Sure, Michael could have come out with a hugely commercial, happy album if he’d wanted to-but it would have been the height of hypocrisy. It wasn’t where his head and heart were at. Sometimes the greatest art has to come from the darkest places. It’s what I often tell my composition students, who sometimes will shy away and pull back just when their writing is on the verge of taking that plunge. That’s often the point at which they will suddenly draw back, and resort to generalities. Because they are afraid to really go there, to the place where it hurts.

I tell them, good writing is all about going to the place where it hurts.

For HIStory, that’s exactly what Michael did. He went to the place where it hurt, and delivered perhaps the most brilliant if sometimes most misunderstood album of his career.

And more than just an album of personal angst, HIStory was also perhaps the album that came closest to fully achieveing Michael’s environmental and political objectives, with Earth Song becoming pretty much the poster song for environmental awareness a full decade before issues like global warming became a woldwide concern, and bringing attention to racial profiling and inequality in They Don’t Care About Us (a song that in itself generated controversy when some of its lyrics were misunderstood out of context to be anti-Semitic). Billboard credited Michael as being partially responsible for Rio de Janeiro becoming “a model for social development” after filming his historic video for They Don’t Care About Us there.

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/michael-jackson-remains-a-global-phenomenon-1003990447.story?pn=1#/bbcom/news/michael-jackson-remains-a-global-phenomenon-1003990447.story?pn=1

The album was generally well received critically (although some took the expected jabs at the album as an exercise in self-indulgence) and was a commercial success as well, debuting at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and certified seven times platinum as of 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIStory). Yet, the contrast between the singles that charted in the USA as opposed to the rest of the world says a lot about just how fragmented and disparate Michael’s global reception had become. For example, while I remember Scream and You Are Not Alone being huge hits (not to mention that there was no escaping those two videos every time you turned on MTV), it would be several years before many US fans caught on that Earth Song and Stranger in Moscow were actually huge hits…on the OTHER side of the Atlantic! Earth Song, in fact, became Michael’s biggest selling single ever in the UK, even topping such juggernauts as Beat It and Billie Jean. Yet, in the US, this brilliant, operatic homage to the environment remained a footnote at best. When This Is It came out, there were many in the US who admitted they had never heard Earth Song before.

Well, I had certainly heard Earth Song prior to This Is It. However, like many US fans, as I began to discover those “hidden gems” of HIStory like Stranger In Moscow, I couldn’t help but feel cheated. Where were these songs in 1995, when they deserved to be heard? Yes, HIStory was big here, thanks to Scream and You Are Not Alone. But had they released Earth Song and Stranger In Moscow (two songs that took the UK and Europe by storm) HIStory just might have become a phenomenon on a par with Thriller. The big question remains: Why didn’t they? Was there some general consensus that America wasn’t ready? That we wouldn’t be receptive to a Michael Jackson who could deliver more than just a romantic ballad or a funky groove?

Stranger In Moscow, for sure, is one of the standout songs of the album. Lyrically and musically, it is one of the most perfect songs Michael ever crafted. Its origin, according to many sources including Michael himself, goes back to late ‘93 when the first allegation broke in the media. Michael, who was on tour in Moscow, felt the tide of public opinion turning against him-the persecution; the cold stares and cold shoulders; and generally, the loneliness and isolation of being in a strange land, so far from home, at a time when he needed the warmth of familiarity and loved ones the most. James Hunter of Rolling Stone remarked that the angst of Stranger In Moscow rivaled that of any Seattle grunge rocker’s.

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/michaeljackson/albums/album/312830/review/5943497/history_past_present_and_future_book_1


Stranger In Moscow
I was wandering in the rain
Mask of life, feelin’ insane
Swift and sudden fall from grace
Sunny days seem far away
Kremlin’s shadow belittlin’ me
Stalin’s tomb won’t let me be
On and on and on it came
Wish the rain would just let me
How does it feel (How does it feel)
How does it feel
How does it feel
When you’re alone
And you’re cold inside
Here abandoned in my fame
Armageddon of the brain
KGB was doggin’ me
Take my name and just let me be
Then a begger boy called my name
Happy days will drown the pain
On and on and on it came
And again, and again, and again…
Take my name and just let me be”-Michael Jackson




The video for Stranger In Moscow likewise received much critical acclaim as a cinematic masterwork . Though not based on film noir in the truest sense of the definition, it retains the element of film noir in its use of stark, expressionistic black and white photography, emphasizing the isolation and loneliness of the video’s six characters, one of whom is Michael himself, walking the streets in an atmosphere that must have been reminiscent of the many nights he claimed to walk the streets alone, just looking for a friend-that is, a REAL friend-to talk to. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_Moscow).

For me, personally, the part of the song that gets to me most is near the end when Michael sings out, “We’re talking danger” followed by the even more desperate cry, “I’m living lonely/I’m living lonely, baby.” Michael forces the listener to feel his pain, to experience that pain with him. There’s no escaping it. Which is why I say, if you put HIStory into your player or punch it up on your Ipod, you’d best be prepared to go where he is about to take you. The only escape is the “Off” button.

Unfortunately, for Michael, the “Off” button was not an option. This was his life, as raw, intense and real as it gets.

For myself, I have a personal relationship with HIStory as I do all of Michael’s albums, each for its own reasons. As I’ve acknowledged, it’s not the easiest MJ album to listen to, but there are moments I’ve shared with this album that no one can take away. Like one particularly warm, gorgeous Sunday afternoon when I was driving with my windows down, and D.S. blasting. As Michael sang, “They wanna get my ass dead or alive” I came to a red light. Just at that moment, a sheriff car pulled up right alongside me, in the left lane. So here we are,both our windows down, and I am blasting DS away at full volume as we sit idling side by side. The light changed, and I took off, the sheriff car still in the rearview mirror as Michael screamed, “Dom Sheldon (cough Tom Sneddon cough) is a cold man!” You just know…it had to have been one of those moments when Michael was grinning mischevously down from Heaven.

Which brings up as good a point as any to close out this review. Sure, HIStory is not exactly Michael’s most cohesive album. I have to agree somewhat with James Hunter, who, though he may have praised the brillaint angst of Stranger In Moscow, also said the album “jerks you around all over the place.” But usually, the difference between a critics’ and fans’ perspective is that we understand the place the album is coming from. It all goes back to something Michael himself once said, which was that the whole world loved him as long as he was “in his place” and being “just a song and dance man.” But once he became too powerful-once he had broken The Beatles’ and Elvis’s records; once he owned the Beatles catalog, and had succesfully negotiated to become a co-owner of Sony/ATV Music Publishing-he was suddenly a very real threat. No longer just everyone’s favorite “song and dance man.”

And maybe that’s what I love most about HIStory. HIStory is a testament to this turnabout. It marks a point at which, for Michael, there was no turning back. The point at which, like the bullied child on the playground, he finally turned and fought back. The point at which he said, enough’s enough. The point at which he finally said, “I’m nobody’s song and dance man anymore.” Which, of course, as we also know, was simply a polite way for Michael to say to Sony, the Chandlers, Tom Sneddon, the tabloids, the media and every other entity out to bring him down: “This black man ain’t your *beep* no more.”

It was a message not everyone was ready to hear. Even now, its not a message everyone is ready to hear. There are some who would still prefer that their Michael Jackson should forever be the zombie werewolf boy from Thriller or the moonwalking sprite in his fedora and glittery socks from Billie Jean. But for those of us who can get past that, to a deeper appreciation of Michael Jackson the artist, HIStory will always be an important album.

It’s the album that marked the official end of the song and dance. And the emergence of a hardened but wiser artist and man, ready to take on the new millenium.

A few of HIStory’s standout tracks (besides the ones you probably heard on the radio in 1995)

Stranger In Moscow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLDeFOxKdyk&feature=related

This Time Around:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjB68F4i428

D.S.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=026_wXsJFWc

Money

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuFMiGz0mgM

Tabloid Junkie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8kUYr2ZC6U

Little Susie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S69ED28a84I