'Off The Wall' & 'Thriller' & 'Bad'

If getting me to dance is your end, laying down some Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson is a very good starting point. Nothing makes me shake awkwardly and just behind the beat like that album.

I first heard the song "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" in high school when I was at my mother's house and she had VH1 and they played the video. I thought it was probably the perfect dance song. The whole album is like this.

Most musicians would kill for two straight albums of the caliber of Off the Wall and then Thriller. Most would kill for Thriller. There's little doubt that it's a fantastic album and the best pop album ever. I can't imagine there being anything like it ever again. How do you feel about that hyperbole?

Bad is when everything went ... bad.

In 1984, Jackson was severely injured during the filming of that Pepsi commercial. Thus the spiral began, little did most know. This was the turning point in Jackson's life. Trace everythign back to this incident all the way to his unfortunate death in 2009.

The comestic surgeries started. Then the rumors of his anorexia and other ailments. He bought a monkey and tried to buy the bones of the Elephant Man. He did Captain EO. He kind of went off the deep end.

Bad resulted. It was released in 1987. It's when the excessive use of the high-pitched "woo-hoo" and various other intonations. At times, his singing voice is barely discernible. Bad was no Thriller and Jackson would never approach that level of success again.

The resulting 20 years would prove disastrous. The child molesting junk. The theme park and becoming a recluse. Danging babies from windows. Then his death.

There's a whole generation of people that don't really know what Jackson was all about. Surely by now they've heard "Thriller" and other singles, but generally they don't realize what a cultural phenomenom he was. There was no one bigger.

A little Bad anecdote: In elementary school, we'd line up in the gymnasium and would first warm-up and the lesbian physical education teacher would push "PLAY" on the cassette boombox. There were five songs that were in the rotation. One was "The Way You Make Me Feel." I liked it, but at seven I didn't know who it was by.

However, I was always entertained when my friend, Andre, would pantomime the lyrics along with the back-up singers.