WEEKS before the final curtain fell on Michael Jackson’s remarkable life, I noticed a startling similarity among some of my favorite artists that went far beyond the musical genre.
As I scrolled through my iPod library, thousands of songs of some of the world’s best R&B, I thought about the artists I listened to most often.
Sam Cooke. Dead. Otis Redding. Dead. Marvin Gaye. Dead. Curtis Mayfield. Dead. Barry White. Dead. Luther Vandross. Dead. Even Gerald Levert was dead, but I still kept listening as if pressing the play button would bring them back to life.
There are plenty of living legends in my collection — Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan. There are even a few, like Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson, who were actually born in the last 30 years.
But somehow, I always find myself turning up the volume on the ones who were — to borrow one of Michael’s songs — “Gone Too Soon.”
Michael wrote that song for Ryan White, a young AIDS victim the star befriended before the boy’s death. Who knew we’d be listening to it and thinking of him?
“Born to amuse/To inspire to delight/Here one day, gone one night/Like a sunset/Dying with the rising of the moon/Gone too soon.”
There are many who believe Michael’s death happened just the way it was supposed to happen. One commentator put it this way: “Can you imagine seeing an 80-year-old Michael Jackson?”
We like our icons young. Forever. Like Jack. Like Bobby. Like Elvis. Like Lennon.
If we can freeze the art in time, then why not the artist? Let the others grow old, the one-hit wonders, the American Idols.
So, give me Otis at the dock of the bay. Let me listen to Lennon, so I can imagine, like he said. And turn the volume up on Michael, all the way up, and let us heal the world.