actually was, was a cultural watershed: a paradigm shift in the morality of a generation. Those children who had grown up entranced by Michael transforming into cars and robots in an effort to defeat a drug baron, suddenly became ‘Cool Britannia’ Blairites. But it was okay. At least they were all ‘Sorted for E’s and Wizz’.
A year previously, Chris Evans, who was also a BBC Radio 1 DJ, had been the person to premiere ‘Scream’ on UK radio. After the song’s unveiling- its opening lyric being, “Tired of injustice” - Evans immediately commenced a campaign to castrate the track: adamantly refusing to play the original version, insisting on the minimal playing of a remix (and not the ‘Scream Louder’ version, which incorporates the bassline from ‘Thank You’ by Sly and the Family Stone - one of Michael’s favourite songs).
Upon the release of the HIStory album a few weeks later, Evans then proceeded to use his popular breakfast show to disproportionately slate Michael and the album. The subsequent success of the album and its singles (‘You Are Not Alone’ laying claim as the first ever song to debut at number one on the Billboard Charts; ‘Earth Song’ outselling ‘ Billie Jean’ in the UK, with it holding the number one spot for seven weeks - including the much-coveted and hotly-contested Christmas Number One position), meant Evans then had to backtrack.
***
The AEG trial that exposed Randy Phillips’ damning email correspondence, also revealed that if Michael had lived, he could have expected to earn over a billion dollars from the This Is It venture. The unprecedented demand for tickets to see This Is It meant - had Michael been physically capable of following orders - he would have eventually played to one million people. That’s a tremendous amount of people representing a whole range of demographics who wanted to go and see Michael: a man who had essentially become a cult following during the noughties, having gone full-circle since the cult following of his band, the Jackson 5 in the sixties. Before they exploded onto the world stage.
The day Michael died, the social network Twitter collapsed at 3:15pm, exact. Upon this internationally-sensed, seismic - shock, the resultant grief expressed by the planet at such an irreplaceable loss for humanity became manifest in myriad ways.
Conspiracy theories abound: had Michael known he was going to die when he did? When he had whooped the This Is It press-conference crowd into frenzied delirium with the chant, “This is it! This is it!” – had he literally meant this - this moment – is it ? Conspiracy theories ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime: had Michael been targeted by secret NASA technology possessing the capacity to identify and exterminate any specific target on the globe – their motive being that, during the This Is It run of shows, they had reason to believe he was going to expose the insidious Illuminati elite?
Then there were those that point-blank refused to accept that he had died. A theory spawning a faction of fans who persevere in referring to themselves as ‘BeLIEvers’: a small group of seemingly sorry souls.
(I appreciate this could ostensibly be interpreted as an insensitive stance, but – from the BeLIEvers I’ve had the misfortune to encounter, at least – they promote their agenda for reasons much less fuelled by the denial synonymous with grief, and much more by one powered by necromaniacal voyeurism.)
BeLIEvers are inordinately proud of themselves for having noticed that, in the English language – on occasion – shorter words sometimes exist within longer ones (although the rudimentary rules of any language discourage those words ever being capitalised). This apparently startling syntactic revelation is the bedrock of the BeLIEver self-delusion system: an ethos that actively promulgates the idea of Michael being alive – with him merely residing on the sidelines of
A year previously, Chris Evans, who was also a BBC Radio 1 DJ, had been the person to premiere ‘Scream’ on UK radio. After the song’s unveiling- its opening lyric being, “Tired of injustice” - Evans immediately commenced a campaign to castrate the track: adamantly refusing to play the original version, insisting on the minimal playing of a remix (and not the ‘Scream Louder’ version, which incorporates the bassline from ‘Thank You’ by Sly and the Family Stone - one of Michael’s favourite songs).
Upon the release of the HIStory album a few weeks later, Evans then proceeded to use his popular breakfast show to disproportionately slate Michael and the album. The subsequent success of the album and its singles (‘You Are Not Alone’ laying claim as the first ever song to debut at number one on the Billboard Charts; ‘Earth Song’ outselling ‘ Billie Jean’ in the UK, with it holding the number one spot for seven weeks - including the much-coveted and hotly-contested Christmas Number One position), meant Evans then had to backtrack.
***
The AEG trial that exposed Randy Phillips’ damning email correspondence, also revealed that if Michael had lived, he could have expected to earn over a billion dollars from the This Is It venture. The unprecedented demand for tickets to see This Is It meant - had Michael been physically capable of following orders - he would have eventually played to one million people. That’s a tremendous amount of people representing a whole range of demographics who wanted to go and see Michael: a man who had essentially become a cult following during the noughties, having gone full-circle since the cult following of his band, the Jackson 5 in the sixties. Before they exploded onto the world stage.
The day Michael died, the social network Twitter collapsed at 3:15pm, exact. Upon this internationally-sensed, seismic - shock, the resultant grief expressed by the planet at such an irreplaceable loss for humanity became manifest in myriad ways.
Conspiracy theories abound: had Michael known he was going to die when he did? When he had whooped the This Is It press-conference crowd into frenzied delirium with the chant, “This is it! This is it!” – had he literally meant this - this moment – is it ? Conspiracy theories ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime: had Michael been targeted by secret NASA technology possessing the capacity to identify and exterminate any specific target on the globe – their motive being that, during the This Is It run of shows, they had reason to believe he was going to expose the insidious Illuminati elite?
Then there were those that point-blank refused to accept that he had died. A theory spawning a faction of fans who persevere in referring to themselves as ‘BeLIEvers’: a small group of seemingly sorry souls.
(I appreciate this could ostensibly be interpreted as an insensitive stance, but – from the BeLIEvers I’ve had the misfortune to encounter, at least – they promote their agenda for reasons much less fuelled by the denial synonymous with grief, and much more by one powered by necromaniacal voyeurism.)
BeLIEvers are inordinately proud of themselves for having noticed that, in the English language – on occasion – shorter words sometimes exist within longer ones (although the rudimentary rules of any language discourage those words ever being capitalised). This apparently startling syntactic revelation is the bedrock of the BeLIEver self-delusion system: an ethos that actively promulgates the idea of Michael being alive – with him merely residing on the sidelines of
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