Human Nature for Michael Jackson
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Michael Jackson was definitely an icon. With a few musicians, I’ve had moments when something in one of their songs impressed me so much, I thought, “Wow, I have to listen every single song this person has ever recorded.” That happened to me the first time I heard Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue, The Who’s Bargain, and NWA’s Boyz in da Hood (yeah, I’m on board with gangsta rap). I suppose that inclination hasn’t been limited to musicians either – I experienced this after reading Kerouac’s The Town and the City, his shot at a Thomas Wolfe, family-themed legacy novel that is far from his best work – I found something in it for me, though. But the first time I was blown away enough to decided to follow someone’s entire output was after hearing Michael Jackson’s Human Nature.
The Thriller album was a smash hit for virtually every song on it, but to me, Human Nature was something new. There is a sincerity about the human condition in that song that can’t be faked. It’s a gorgeous singing performance – almost a whisper, really – and I think in many ways it’s as close as Michael Jackson ever came to recording … him. I don’t know how the song was captured, but I’ve always wondered if he sang parts of it in the booth, alone.
A decade later, Michael’s oddities took over for his performances, and while I completely bought into his being nothing more than a big child – like most people – I stopped listening to his music. I have read other writers and bloggers comment on how he transcended cultural and musical boundaries. In his case, it’s absolutely true. I wanted to see him make a comeback, for him, not so I could feel better about once liking him. I just wanted to see him do well. How many other celebrities would I say that about? None that I can think of.
What Michael left behind was his music, and no matter well or awful his comeback would have been, I doubt he would top anything he’d done before. I feel some responsibility for what happened to him, which I waver on from feeling absurd to completely accurate. We made him a celebrity at five – his father had more to do with it, but a following prolonged it. We watched him go from singing prodigy to a well-put together young man with dance moves and a pristine voice, to a fallen apart shambles of celebrity with detachable nose and childlike imagination.
Thanks to wealth and fame, he was able to maintain his perspective and retreat into himself and his elaborate ranch. As clinical as this sounds, I believe he was trying to experience a childhood he never had. The stories and allegations about him sharing a bed with children in non-sexual contexts were asking too much from a man so strange. How could you believe him? Or worse, how could you tell anyone else you believed him? Take it back now to Human Nature. The song is basically about Michael looking out onto a city – New York, I believe – and wanting to experience it like anyone else would. Of course, he never could. When Michael asks, “Why? Why? Tell em that it’s human nature.” I don’t know. That says something to me about the way he saw world and how inaccessible it was for him.
