Michael Jackson

•Q Magazine: Jackson Unmasked: Inside his Mad, Bad World

This UK music monthly could probably do with a surgical mask to cover up its embarrassment after it was unable to withdraw its July edition from hitting the stands after MJ’s death. While the editor has issued a sheepish apology stating, “no offence was intended” by the feature, the unusually frank portrait of the pop icon—which the photographer reportedly had 90 seconds to shoot in the magazine’s London office—can easily be titled Dorian Gray, 2009. Michael’s sunken cheeks and sallow, blotchy skin give him a cadaverous look while his oddly knotty nose looks like a say-no-to-rhinoplasty warning. The photograph has already invited media comment. The Daily Star, for example, notes: “The warts-and-all shot appears to show the heavy toll addictions to prescription drugs, crash dieting and plastic surgery took on the tragic star”. Only Michael’s eyes remain inaccessible, hidden behind dark glasses, like a silent reminder that not everything about him can be known.

•Rolling Stone: Not Like Other Guys

Pointing out that “tragic wages-of-fame stories are a dime a dozen”, music journalist and author Rob Sheffield eloquently chronicles how “of the many weird things about Michael Jackson, the weirdest will always be the music”. Sometimes in a positive way, sometimes not. Even in Thriller, “anyone could hear how weird and wounded he was, yet there was something heroic in the way he turned his psychosexual agonies into such impossibly exuberant music—you could hear it in the irreplicable whoops and hiccups and glides of his voice”. But as his personal life plummeted, so did his music. “...as he got older, his music got heavy and ordinary, and his voice lost that wiggle and bounce— by the time he started calling himself the King of Pop in 1991, it was a kingdom that didn’t exist anymore, and he seemed like the only one who didn’t realise it.”

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