Can we still listen to Michael Jackson? Short answer – No
Anyone who made it all the way through HBO’s harrowing four-hour Leaving Neverland documentary might have a tough time hearing Michael Jackson music now.
Not everybody feels this way, of course, and let’s not judge, but to hear such sickening detail of how Jackson secretly abused and used little boys removes any shred of doubt that he was a monster. It wasn’t a surprise. The Beaverton headline summed it up nicely: “Nation in shock as documentary confirms everything they already knew about Michael Jackson.”
Don’t feel guilty for being fan all this time. There was that level of doubt we gave him the benefit of. After all, Jackson was acquitted of child molestation in a court of law. But that doc is pretty convincing – and the boycott is well underway. Radio stations are removing songs from their playlists; The Simpsons has taken the Michael Jackson episode out of rotation; statues are being toppled around the world; famous people have condemned the superstar they once loved; and the only stories you’re going to read about Michael Jackson from now on are going to be bad ones.
Where law enforcement, the justice system, even the kids’ parents failed the victims here, it took a fucking documentary by journalists to bring the truth to light, and to spur action. Ditto R. Kelly.
Yet the question remains: It still OK to listen to Michael Jackson? It may require a giant mental leap to separate this particular artist from his art.
Edmonton music guru Danny Fournier (former musician, record label rep, founder of the Edmonton Music Awards, and currently an artist manager-consultant) has some thoughts. He says he wasn’t really a fan of Michael Jackson to begin with, like many people aren’t – though probably every adult human being on planet Earth has at least heard one Michael Jackson song, and knows who he was. It may take an even greater mental feat to overcome that kind of reach.
“Let’s think about the lyrics,” Fournier says. “Does it change perception of Billie Jean. Or Bad? Are you going to stop playing Alien Ant Farm’s Smooth Criminal? What about We Are the World, he’s on it. What about that duet with Paul McCartney? What about the Jackson Five stuff, are you going hear ABC? What’s going to happen at Halloween? Can we watch Thriller?”
Fournier had his own unpleasant experience with a band he actually was a fan of: Lostprophets, whose singer Ian Watkins was sentenced to 29 years in prison in 2013 for sexually assaulting young children.
“I was a big fan of Lostprophets,” Fournier says, “and to this day, I have a hard time listening to any of the songs because I feel guilty knowing what this guy did to children. I’m envious of fans that don’t know about this, and can still listen to their music.”
Artists have been thrown under the bus for lesser crimes. Hedley (right) used to be all over the radio – and since singer Jacob Hoggard’s sexual assault charge in 2018, it’s as if the band never existed. Former fans of Ryan Adams are crying bloody murder over recent sexual misconduct allegations against him. Meanwhile, Morrissey is a racist. Pantera is associated with white supremacists. Ted Nugent is a raving lunatic who spits when he talks. The list grows.
Fournier says, “I was actually OK with Nugent until I saw him live and he was spewing the stuff on stage, too. At that point I decided, nope, this is not for me.”
In some weird grandfather rule, music by older disgraced rockers seems to get a pass. As time goes by, some popular music gets disconnected from its creator. One hundred years from now, no one’s going to care who sang Rock and Roll: Part 2 – a popular rally song at football games written by a convicted sex offender (Gary Glitter).
“What about Bing Crosby?” Fournier asks. “It’s well documented how he beat his kids, but at Christmas I still hear his music. It’s disconnected. And look at Vince Neil from Motley Crue – he killed somebody! Drinking and driving, he killed somebody. But did they stop playing Motley Crue? No.”
In fact the Crue enjoyed a thriving career for years after Vince Neil did his time. Fournier thinks the impending movie version of their tell-all book The Dirt might bite them in the ass (out on Netflix March 22).
“It’s some of the ways they treated women,” Fournier says. “There are stories in the book about seeing how many women they could sleep with before taking a shower. One woman, they called her the moose – because they said she had the face of a moose. How is this movie going to impact them?”
We come now to the horns of a dilemma.
“Maybe it’s better to stay naive,” Fournier suggests.
Like, try not to think how Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin. Try not to dig too deep into the alleged sexual indiscretions of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, or Pete Townshend of The Who. And yet in wilfully ignoring the “dirt” until it becomes too much to take, fans may actually be enabling these misbehaving rock stars.
What to do? At this rate, sensitive people may only be able to listen to music by wholesome virtuous music stars. Many years ago, that would’ve been a band like Moxy Fruvous – and oops, bad example. Frankly, since the Jian Ghomeshi affair, Moxy Fruvous’s music hasn’t been missed. Same with Hedley.
Michael Jackson, on the other hand, is on a whole other level.
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