Showcasing a black artist paved the way for the popular show, "Yo! MTV Raps," and other black artists, Neal said. Soon Jackson's videos were heavily in rotation on MTV. Watch Yetnikoff talk about getting Jackson's videos played » And Pittman accused his critics of attempting to impose their musical pluralism on the channel's die-hard rock fans.īut Yetnikoff said he threatened to pull videos of his other artists unless MTV played Jackson's videos. Looking back on that era, a 1991 Los Angeles Times article quoted MTV founder and then-CEO Robert Pittman as saying the channel's format didn't lend itself to other musical styles, including R&B and country. The former president of CBS Records, Walter Yetnikoff, remembered with scorn that MTV would not play "Billie Jean" or "Beat It" because it billed itself as a rock station.
Jackson continued as a pioneer in the black culture when he broke barriers by appearing on MTV, and by breaking sales records with the 1982 album, "Thriller." Timeline: The life of a "King" » Young Michael Jackson was the first black "bubblegum teen star" in the vein of Monkees singer Davy Jones, Neal said. "You basically had five working-class black boys with Afros and bell bottoms, and they really didn't have to trade any of that stuff in order to become mainstream stars," Neal said. And no controversy will erase the historic impact."Īs the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson and his brothers "became a cutting-edge example of black crossover artists," said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University's Department of African and African American Studies. "Michael did with music what they later did in sports and in politics and in television. Next Meeting Michael: “He knew everything that had to happen in a song."Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color way before Tiger Woods, way before Oprah Winfrey, way before Barack Obama," said the Rev. Nick van der Wall, a.k.a Afrojack, the DJ who remixed a new version of “Bad” for the anniversary release. John Branca, Jackson’s lawyer and co-executor of his estate Spike Lee, who directed Bad25 as well as Jackson’s short film for the song “They Don’t Care About Us”
Matt Forger, a music engineer and producer who worked on Bad Greg Phillinganes, a musician who worked on the record and music-directed the Bad tour In honor of the seminal album’s anniversary, TIME spoke (in separate interviews, with the exception of Phillinganes and Forger) to people who were there and people living out the album’s legacy:
And starting this spring, Jackson has even found his way onto 1 billion Bad-themed Pepsi cans. In addition, a Spike-Lee-helmed documentary about the album, the similarly-titled Bad25, will debut Aug. The package also includes a DVD of never-before-seen concert footage-Jackson’s own review copy of a Jconcert at Wembley Stadium.
#MICHAEL JACKSON BAD ALBUM BREAKDOWN PLUS#
18), which includes the remastered original album, plus an album of additional tracks, including demos and remixes, and a live album. Jackson’s estate and Epic/Legacy Recordings are collaborating on a three-CD release ( BAD25, out Sept. ( MORE: TIME looks back on the King of Pop’s life and career)īad’s quarter-century milestone will be marked with due pomp. It was the first album to ever send five consecutive singles to the top of the Billboard charts, and it held that record until 2011. “He knew exactly what he was looking for.” Under the shadow of Thriller, and despite the backlash against his personal eccentricities that came to light around that time, Bad set records of its own. “When you would work with him you could just see the way his mind worked,” says Matt Forger, who engineered the record. But despite (or perhaps because of) that burden, Jackson was more involved than ever in Bad‘s artistic process. The quest to match Thriller would be a hard one. It had been five years since Thriller, the album that had arguably established the well-known pop star as a visionary-and that would go on to set the record for the most copies sold of a single album. 31, 1987, almost exactly 25 years ago, Michael Jackson released the album Bad. Michael Jackson, whose album 'Bad' celebrates 25 years this August, on stage in 1987.
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