The music world suffered a seismic shock on June 25, 2009. The day Michael Jackson died in Los Angeles at 50. Twitter crashed. Google briefly mistook the surge in searches for a cyberattack. Wikipedia recorded nearly a million visits to his page within an hour, among the highest in its history. Overall, web traffic jumped by 11 per cent.
For a final moment, ‘MJ’ did what he always had — bring together people across age, race, and geography. From global capitals to Indian cities, front pages carried his story.
Now, with the biopic ‘Michael’ in theatres, that enigmatic presence returns in a different form. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring his nephew Jaafar Jackson, the film traces Michael’s journey from the ‘Jackson 5’ years to his rise as a global icon.
Responses have been mixed, with some critics railing that the portrayal glosses over blemishes — including allegations of child abuse — that marred his image. Others, meanwhile, note that the film focuses only on the first 30 years of his life; and a second part is expected to follow.
The debates around the film, however, have not discouraged audiences. Reels are trending across social media, and theatres are turning into concert-like spaces, with people singing along to the music he created over the years.
For many, it is about revisiting the music, the persona, and the scale of what made him the ‘King of Pop’. Despite controversies raging on, what continues to pulls the audience is the question of what set him apart. It’s a question we explore through the imprint he left on those who heard him, studied him, and carried parts of him forward.
Retired businessman Raju Subramanian recalls first listening to Michael Jackson in the early 1990s although he had been reading about the musician’s hold over his audiences, and his Grammy wins since the early 1980s. “Western music was familiar to people in Tamil Nadu in the ‘80s but we didn’t have stereophonic systems to listen to songs in. We had access to those systems only in the ‘90s,” he informs.
“So one day in the early ‘90s, my college friend and I went to a cassette shop and saw that the shopkeeper had a Michael Jackson cassette. We made the shopkeeper play his songs and I listened for the first time. That is how I shopped for my first Michael Jackson cassette — the ‘Thriller’ album. After that we were roaming around shops to collect more of his cassettes,” Raju says, noting how the pop legend’s songs would make him move and sway.
Singer and musician George Peter got his hands on two cassettes in the late ‘80s, one of which was ‘Thriller’, that his uncle gave him. “I played them endlessly,” he admits. A former frontman of the 13AD band, George remembers being fascinated by the detailing. “The vocal arrangements, the layering, the call-and-response patterns — harmonies behaved like instruments,” he gushes. “Each album felt like a sonic kaleidoscope. He could move across pop, funk, rock, soul, and R&B within a single record, yet it all felt cohesive. Even the basslines had intent.” That sense of intent, he says, is why Jackson continues to connect with people.
The intent was also always made apparent in the words he wrote, highlights Aravind Suresh, a venture capitalist. Referring to the ‘Earth Song’, he says, “It was probably the first time a global artiste took a stand and urged people to think as citizens of the world and worry about the damage we are doing to mother earth.”
It is the effect the King of Pop had over people’s collective thinking and on individuals to reflect that astonishes Aravind. “His song ‘Man in the Mirror’ has so much depth and I truly believe it helped me shape myself as a person,” he reflects.
Actor, composer, and DJ Sekhar Menon also highlights that many of Michael’s hits carried social messages on subjects like racism, poverty, and environmental degradation without sounding rhetorical or activist-like. “They were delivered heart-to-heart through music quite beautifully,” he says.
Not just the music — MJ’s dance left an equally strong imprint. The moves he introduced, especially the ‘moonwalk’ and the ‘robot’, became trends among youngsters and children, and continue to hold that appeal even today.
Babu Footlooser’s, a pioneer of breakdance in Kerala and founder of Footloose Crew, remembers the frenzy of the 1980s. “We used to hunt for his posters in tabloids. People grew their hair, wore hats, tried to look like him… That influence has still not faded.”
“People often reduce him to breakdance, but he brought together disco steps, footwork, tap, and more,” he says, with a tinge of childlike excitement. “I was drawn to his moonwalk, the gliding, the rapid spins…all done with incredible finesse. I even tried to recreate his costumes at a time when readymade versions were not available. Almost every prominent dance master in Kerala was influenced by him.”
Michael’s influence also touched individual lives in surprising ways, reaching people far beyond the stage and screen. Divesh, a support analyst and musician from Chennai, says that he began reading up and researching about the global figure after the biopic was announced, although he had been introduced to his music much earlier in life by his father. “It was Michael Jackson’s kindness that stayed with me. The way he loved children, surrounded himself with animals, and even celebrated Christmas only at the age of 35, it all reflected a sense of innocence, politeness, and compassion that I deeply admire and want to carry into my own life,” he tells us.
Comparing the late singer’s music to today’s pop singers, Divesh notes how many today rely on obscene language to get their point across. “MJ became famous without any of that.” Aravind too makes this comparison. “Today’s pop culture is more about flare than the essence of what music can do to you. MJ was more focused on his musical sense and dance added to it. He was a true pop guy. He was completely original and kept evolving. Today’s artistes are very repeatable, they mimic one another and the originality is what is missing,” he expresses.
Sujit G Ponoth, who runs JD’s Jukebox in Kochi with a collection of over 6,000 vinyl records, sees that legacy play out in real time. “Michael Jackson records never stay on the shelf,” he says. “People come from various corners asking specifically for his music. If not available, they don’t pick an alternative. They just leave.”
Clearly, the MJ sway remains constant. And maybe that is the simplest way to understand it: his music didn’t belong to a time. Time kept dancing up to it.