It's 1988. Michael Jackson is performing at the 30th annual Grammy Awards after releasing his seventh studio album, Bad, about seven months prior. He can do no wrong. He's not up for any awards this year, though Bad's recording engineers will take home a statue. Jackson's previous album, 1982's Thriller, hit platinum and earned him eight Grammys, including Record and Album of the Year, cementing his spot as an American pop icon. After that, he will never have another album that doesn't go multi-multi-platinum and hit #1 in the U.S., including Bad. His fans number in the hundreds of millions; amongst teenage devotees, wearing a red jacket and/or one sparkly glove is acceptable any day of the week. Jackson is a demi-god.
He's also starting to get weird. In 1984, Jackson's hair caught on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial, which seems to have been the crux moment for some sort of life flip-out. His skin has been morphing into a noticeably lighter shade; in 1986 Jackson was reportedly diagnosed with vitiligo and lupus. He may also suffer from anorexia, and he ordered a pair of rhinoplasties to change the shape of his nose, as well as chin dimple-insertion surgery.
MJ through the years.
And that's not even the really weird stuff. By 1986 he'd started leaking gossip about himself, including a rumor that he slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to stay young. He bought a pet chimp named Bubbles and reportedly offered to buy the bones of Joseph Merrick, the elephant man. Jackson's erratic behavior and changing appearance earn him the nickname Wacko Jacko, which he will never shake.
And here he is, in 1988, in the thick of it all, a superstar performing live for his peers at the Grammy's. The plan is to pair up two of Bad's most popular tracks, "The Way You Make Me Feel" and "Man in the Mirror," and the beginning is quintessential MJ, with the larger-than-life dancer emerging from behind a back-lit screen. When the screen rises, MJ seems both impossibly small and incredibly powerful, gracing the stage with light dancing feet as he sings and sighs through a slowed version of "TWYMMF." He breaks it down in both regards, employing all the classic moves that defined his career, before getting distracted by a hot young lady and picking up the pace. Heartbeats quicken. MJ keeps dancing, joined by a handful of street-savvy back-up dancers, who keep up with MJ until he moonwalks away and they stand back in awe. As the song winds down, the dancers exit to the back of the stage, but MJ takes his time, all the way through the last "ooh," and then he spins and accepts his applause gratefully.
Ooh.
Out comes the hand-held mic for "Man in the Mirror," and Michael stands alone, center stage, and even when he's not dancing, his feet and his body are moving, and the music courses through. It doesn't even feel cheesy when back-up singers trot on stage around the 5-minute mark -- and at that point, we've been through a full verse and chorus, but the performance is only half done. Where else is there to go?
Then he ups the ante again with a dramatic key change and a four-minute, full gospel choir vamp. MJ is on his knees, scatting, sighing, pontificating. Whereas at most award ceremonies, the music is turned on to get someone off-stage, MJ keeps right on singing when the musical background drops out, imploring the Powers That Be to stand up, to change. Macaroni-shaped lights skim over the stage, and one of the back-up singers checks on MJ, who has collapsed out of James Brown-style musical exhaustion. All that's missing is the cape.
Later that year, Jackson will embark on the Bad World Tour, playing 123 concerts for an audience of 4.4 million people. He'll break a Guinness world record when 504,000 people -- more than half a million people -- attend seven sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium.
There is no where else to go from there.
No other artist could have made this performance last ten whole minutes, just as no other artist has lived the fever dream that was MJ's existence in the 1980's. With MJ, the performance feels perfect, well-paced, amped up at the right moments, using each key change and addition of voices to create drama and shape. I've watched this performance a couple dozen times, and I can't get over his seamless performance, how perfectly he moves from one mode to the next. He may have been Wacko Jacko, but he's also the King of Pop, and this goes down as one of the best Grammy performances in history.
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