June 29th, 2009 6:48am
My Lonely Days Are Gone
Michael Jackson “The Way You Make Me Feel”
It would be a profound understatement to say that Michael Jackson had a very strange life. In fact, the man led perhaps the single most unlikely and bizarre life of all time, every step of the way entirely removed from what anyone could consider anything like a normal existence. This is a large part of his tragedy, but it is also something that highlights his uncanny gifts as a musician and entertainer: Somehow, despite being so totally estranged from the ordinary, he was capable of evoking and articulating the essence universal emotions, and not just in broad strokes. I am certainly not an expert on Jackson’s love life and would not ever want to be one, but I think it’s fair to assume that the scenario in “The Way You Make Me Feel” probably doesn’t match up with his own experience — the line “I’ll be workin’ from 9 to 5″ is a give away — but the man could sell the sentiment of the tune without flaw, nailing the nuances of his character’s infatuation, excitement, and confidence. His musical skill was clearly innate and miraculous, but it would not have meant that much without this incredible gift for interpreting, simplifying, and at times totally abstracting emotional experience into something so potent and primal that it could be instinctively understood across nearly all cultural boundaries. The man probably never felt normal a moment in his life, but it really seems like he understood humanity, or at least enough to synthesize his observations into these brilliant, intuitive performances.
Buy it from Amazon.
6/29/09 7:53 am
Matthew,
Much love and respect to MJ, but I think you have done a fine piece of music criticism in Pitchfork today. You nailed that Wilco Review and i thought you should know (I didn’t know where else to place my comment). I really like the album but totally agree that it’s not a step forward nor a step backward. It’s an exercise in consistency–except i don’t really care for “Sonny Feeling.” You said it much better than i have here or in my mind or on my blog. To me in comparing it to other really great albums of the year, it’s not spellbinding in the way that the last Grizzly Bear album was, but I think i really do like it better than Sky Blue Sky–except to say that no song on (The Album) quite reaches the guitar heroics heard on “Impossible Germany.” well done, sir. bravo.
6/29/09 12:30 pm
When they assign these reviews, is it just random, or do they ask for everyone’s opinion and find someone in the middle, so it doesn’t look weird when a panned album tops the best of the year list. It’s something I always wondered because most folks just credit the reviews to the publication, but it’s actually just one writer’s opinion (is that annoying to you?).
6/29/09 1:26 pm
It depends. In the case of Wilco, at least a few people pitched for it, and the editors make a decision on what take they like, etc. There’s probably other factors involved, I’m not involved in those sort of decisions at all. For a lot of regular album reviews, the writer may be the only one who expressed an interest in writing about it. I think in a lot of cases, consensus opinion matters, and in some cases, not so much.