I was actually kind of disappointed that a posthumous Michael Jackson Number One single wasn’t the big story on the singles chart this week. Above is my original seven-inch copy of ‘Man In The Mirror’ bought just after it came out in March 1988. I’d heard it on the radio one morning and raved enthusiastically to my friend Chris that it didn’t matter how many copies the album had sold, the single was so good and so inspiring that it deserved to be Number One for weeks. It would therefore have been nice to have been finally proven correct 21 years later.
Nonetheless I seem to have spent most of the week talking about the record anyway, having been contacted on Monday morning by a journalist from BBC Online who was putting together a piece about the track and just why this was the Jackson fans’ tribute purchase of choice. We spoke for about ten minutes, by the end of which I was wondering if I was going to be interrogated on the subject of what colour underwear the star was wearing on the day he recorded the vocals. That was how thorough the questioning was, but I guess in true journalistic fashion he just wanted to make sure he had enough soundbites and quotes from me to pluck the very best ones for the piece.
The fruits of these labours went up on Monday afternoon, and you can see the piece preserved online forever. Perhaps most fascinating are the comments underneath with one chap suggesting the rather more prosaic explanation for the success of the single is that it was one of the few that wasn’t on the ‘Number Ones’ album that everyone raced to buy and so they had to download this particular track as a single to complete the set as it were. Another blamed a Facebook application designed to show you your “favourite Michael Jackson song” which apparently came up with MITM as the answer every time.
This afternoon I continued the round of media whorage with a guest appearance on the Danny Kelly show on BBC WM where I followed a Bubbles impersonator on the running order. If you are reading this within seven days of posting, then you can find the show on iPlayer, I appear about 43 minutes in I think.
No matter how many times I explain it, I’m still a little startled by the surge in support for the song. When I bought the single at the time I was one of a select few, and to all intents and purposes the track was little more than a throwaway release, made at a time when Jackson was preoccupied with the Bad world tour rather than promoting singles. That a track that he did not even write, did not make a video for, which charted lower than any of his singles at the time habitually did and, lest we forget had nothing more than the instrumental version on the b-side should become the mourners’ single of choice is something to be marvelled.
I’m still happier Cascada are Number One, mind.
0 comments:
Post a Comment