I grew up listening to MJ's songs. In the small town of Aligarh where I grew up, my brother and I were among the first ones to buy MJ's new albums on audio cassettes, some of which I still possess. Can you believe it? They are very old but still in good condition. His songs kept us awake at night when we were preparing for our exams. In those days we did not get to see any of his older song videos - only audio cassettes. The first song of his that I ever saw was in 1987 from album 'Bad' when I was earning my bachelors degree. And I remember being totally fascinated by some of his dance moves. But there were some of his other dance moves which, at the time, I found kind of 'vulgar' specially the ones in 'the way you make me feel' and I mentioned this to a couple of my college friends who couldn't care less :(. Of course, now I think that those moves were not that bad, really. I also remember my brother and I memorizing the lyrics of all the songs in 'Bad'. His songs gave way to the interest we eventually developed in Western Pop music. And, recently I found one of my co-workers at Google who was an even bigger fan of MJ and he and I would regularly plug into 'Dont stop till you get enough..', 'Billy Jean', and 'Black and White' while working! I am not kidding. We copied his CD on our computer for easy listening and praised MJ every now and then.
Despite all his craziness and all the bad name he got (none of which I ever believed), he was such a great great man! And the greatest dancer on earth! He wrote and composed beautiful melodious music (except for, may be, 'they dont really care about us' lyrics :) and sang beautifully. He looked graceful in all his interviews and always spoke in his typical yet peculiar soft voice, though his answers were sometimes like that of a person in total denial. Specially the part of the interviews where he was asked (by different interviewers) if he has had surgeries. His answer would be either 'No, I have not had any surgery, this is a skin disease I have' or 'I have had only one surgery that of my nose' and then when asked 'are you sure just one?', then he said 'may be two'. mmm. Makes me sad thinking what he must be going through that he did not even know what was happening to him. I dont know what really happened that changed him so much. But I was in tears when I watched the program 'The Man behind the music' on 20/20. I still cry when I listen to his childhood song 'I'll be there'. I dont care what people say about him I will always always love his music. Some of my favorites are 'Will you be there (free willy)', 'dont stop till you get enough', 'remember the time' and 'world song'....great songs, great videos.
I was watching this interview of Randy Phillips on CNN, the producer of MJ's last tour 'This is it', and he said this incredible thing that I would like to add here: 'did you have any concerns that, given the history, he (MJ) would back out of this concert?' and Randy says 'the answer is yes, it would be untruthful of me to say I wasn't....but you know what, very few times in your life you have a chance to touch greatness, to me it was worth taking that risk. If you were to ask me if I would do this all over again, and the answer is hell yes.' Wow, that says it all.
See full interview here:
We missed Michael for 12.5 years. We will miss him even more now.
