The Inventor Of Modern Pop

[koganbot]

Moggy on MJ (Kids These Days): Except that this morning I've been listening to a 1Xtra tribute show and have realised a) my woeful lack of any kind of knowledge of his back-catalogue beyond a few very big hits and b) exactly how incredibly world-formingly important he was. It sounds pretty stupid but I had no idea that when people said he invented modern pop music, they actually meant he literally invented modern pop music.

Aptly enough, I was talking to my mother only a couple of hours before reading that, and she, having just heard some clips of Michael, said she couldn't hear in the music what was ever supposed to have been so innovative about it, so couldn't understand why he's considered to have invented modern pop music.

I said I was inclined to agree with her, since, while Michael synthesized elements in his work, you can't say that he invented any of its basic vocabulary.

Maybe this underestimates the inventive role of synthesis, but anyway, the story I would tell is this:

Michael reasserted the importance of gospel-based soul in the post-disco dancepop world (more the relatively smooth style of the gospel quartets and balladeers than that of the shouters and stompers, though his truncated yelps certainly drew on the latter), but he didn't create musical vocabulary in the way that, say, James Brown or Sly Stone or Miles Davis can be said to have created musical vocabulary. And postdisco dance music already used a whole hunk of gospel-based soul anyway, albeit more from the diva-shouter side (diva-shouter being another synthesis). The forward motion of music at the time of Thriller didn't seem to be Thriller but hip-hop and dancehall and electrofunk and techno and club music (other motions either had nothing to do with Michael, e.g. hair metal going glitter, or were so ongoingly pervasive that Thriller and Off The Wall can hardly have been said to be stimulating them or leading them: e.g., the integration of soul stylizations into countrypolitan and into Italianate and showbiz showoff pop and the integration of those types of music into soul/r&b; or e.g. the hard-rock guitar on "Beat It," which would only have been surprising to people who'd solidly ignored '70s funk). The actual task of working soul/r&b into that forward motion was undertaken by Prince in regard to synthpop and by Teddy Riley and the New Edition alums in regard to hip-hop. When Michael himself started working with Riley, he was playing catch up.

As I said, maybe this underestimates the role of his synthesis in "invention," and maybe without Michael having gone mega, r&b wouldn't be so pre-eminent today, but that's the work of a lot of hands, without Michael's necessarily being dominant.

Comments

also in the synthesis?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

a confident-sounding commentator on one of the now dozens of TV "tributes" i've caught a glimpse of -- don't recall who it was at all -- made a point i'd not really ever thought of (and don't really have the right knowledge to process) which is that the underlying structures and chord sequences of "off the wall" certainly and "thriller" maybe (by maybe i mean i forget if he was talking abt thriller or just OtW) are much more jazz than was the norm in pop at that time, black or white

i have no idea if this claim is true -- or what exactly s/he meant by it (there's the quincy jones backstory obviously, but i think the commentator meant something more concrete than "if quincy's involved it MUST be jazz")

james brown also often said that the centre of his music was jazz, rather than blues or gospel

Re: also in the synthesis?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(obviously if what JB said was true, then the commentator would be wrong)

Re: also in the synthesis?

[koganbot]

Well, also, "jazz" used to have a broader meaning than it now has. E.g., if Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan are jazz, then why aren't the Drifters and Chuck Berry? JB's antagonism towards the blues is well known, but that doesn't make it clear what her was antagonistic towards. About half of what Charlie Parker recorded used a 12-bar chord progression, and so does James Brown's "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag," but neither feels like blues, or like each other.

And of course a lot of JB's live vamps of, say, "Prisoner Of Love" or "I Lost Someone," were totally based on gospel. But maybe he thinks the "core" is something else?

king of the eastern bop

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i wondered as i was writing the above if JB perhaps meant something closer to the element you discussed in death rock 2000 -- about the democracy of vocal-as-rhythm (in a context of everything-as-rhythm) in his version of funk? which is a quality of some kinds of jazz and not others (well the democracy is: the democratisation isn't a turning-of-everything-into-rhythm, and it only fitfully applies to vocals...) (so probably he didn't mean this)

it seems a curious and a suggestive thing for him to have said, but the writers who quote him saying it don't seem especially interested in following it up

Re: king of the eastern bop

[koganbot]

Early JB, possibly "Prisoner Of Love" is "jazz" in the sense that Nat King Cole is jazz (but JB not jazz as opposed to gospel, since obviously this from 1:40 to 3:10 is textbook gospel, minus God)(are you sure that "gospel" was part of what JB was disavowing as central to his music? or was it just "blues" - anyway the gospel vamps, which he could stretch to eight minutes, may be the root source of "Oh, let's get rid of everything else and turn it all into rhythm).

Re: king of the eastern bop

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

by "rather than" i didn't especially mean that *he* disavowed anything explicitly -- more that the thing he said was the centre wasn't what you'd perhaps expect him to say

so this:
james brown also often said that the centre of his music was jazz, rather than blues or gospel
means:
james brown also often said "the centre of my music is jazz", where you'd perhaps expect him to say blues or gospel -- but actually "centre" is my way of saying it, not his

on a quick skim i found this quote (from cynthia rose's book, Living in America: the Soul Sage of James Brown):
"My first influence was gospel, but my second influence is jazz. I do like some blues, but I don't really go too deep there. I probably only really like two or three blues artists. I have pretty big jazz feelings, though. I been right through that book."

Which maybe in fact does put gospel at the centre, but certainly then unexpectedly complicates that -- bcz what's the relationship of jazz to gospel? -- and I then oversimplified this in my memory, maybe? (Except I actually think it was another quote i'm remembering, which I haven't re-found: anyway, I still think this is an under-explored aspect... Rose does discuss it a little, for a paragraph, then moves elsewhere (it's a very short book, though full of fascinating stuff)

Re: king of the eastern bop

[koganbot]

Going back to MJ commentator, I wonder what a jazz chord sequence would be? (Not saying that there can't be such a thing; understanding chord sequences is not exactly my strength. Once JB went funk, a typical JB chord sequence would be I-IV-I. But the chords themselves would be ninths or elevenths or other exotica that you might indeed get from the jazz playbook.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Just a few random notes:

Michael reasserted the importance of gospel-based soul in the post-disco dancepop world (more the relatively smooth style of the gospel quartets and balladeers than that of the shouters and stompers

This sounds like a really interesting theory, and I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but I'm not sure I buy it. As you say later, "postdisco dance music already used a whole hunk of gospel-based soul anyway," but so had disco itself, all the time -- I mean, I'm no expert at distinguishing blues-shout influences from gospel influences, but certainly Candi Staton and Teddy Pendergrass (and Philly soul-style disco in general) and Loleatta Holloway and all sorts of other disco acts were hugely influenced by gospel. (Maybe somebody like the Trammps were more deep soul shouters, as in Wilson Pickett?) At any rate, it's hard for me to get how MJ could reassert something that had never gone away in the first place. On the other hand, I've always been intrigued by a possibly tossed off parenthetical in Xgau's 1979 Pazz & Jop essay -- "Four 'r&b' acts (the term is returning to favor) made the album list...crossover queen Donna Summer, comeback prince Michael Jackson, disco pacemakers Chic, and elder statesman Stevie Wonder." That was the year of Off The Wall, of course, and I'd never known that the term "r&b" went out of favor. And maybe, somehow, its return to favor coincided with a perceived return of r&b to the music, after years of it being sublimated by disco? Which might support your theory, though to my ears it was only sublimated in certain kinds of disco (the Euro- kind, especially).

other motions either had nothing to do with Michael, e.g. hair metal going glitter... the integration of soul stylizations into countrypolitan

I'm not sure when hair-metal wasn't glitter. Twisted Sister's shout vocals had a lot of Slade in them; Quiet Riot covered Slade (twice); Hanoi Rocks were steeped in Mott The Hoople and the Dolls, and I'm not sure anything earlier than that even counts as hair-metal. Also not clear on how the integration of soul styles into pop country is an '80s-or-later innnovation, when guys like Charlie Rich and Joe South and Billy Joe Royal and Ronnie Milsap (not to mention black sigers crossing over to country all the way back to Ray Charles in 1962) had been doing it all along. If you're saying that soul inflections somehow became more pervasive in country starting in the '80s, I'm not sure I hear that. Though they're obviously still there.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Al Green also obviously a hugely important gospel-rooted soul/r&b vocalist throughout the '70s, though admittely his hits got fewer and charted lower as the disco years progressed. (His great "Belle," from 1978, peaked at #83 for instance.) Trying to think of what the late '70s/disco-era equivalents of, say, the Staple Singers' 1972 "I'll Take You There" and 1975 "Let's Do It Again" (actually that might count as early disco) or the Edwin Hawkins Singers' 1969 "Oh Happy Day" might have been; surely there must have been a couple. (Mighty Clouds of Joy also had a pre-disco almost-crossover almost-hit with "Mighty High," #69 pop in 1976.)

Wonder if Foreigner's 1985 "I Want To Know What Love Is" (feat. the New Jersey Mass Choir) can almost count as "the integration of gospel stylizations into AOR," or if Steve Perry's excursions into Sam Cooke-type singing make more sense from that particular perspective.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

And though he clearly dominated the r&b more than pop chart, I'd think Luther Vandross could be considered another guy who reasserted gospel-based soul in post-disco dance-pop, starting with his vocal work on Change albums in 1980/81, then with his solo "Never Too Much" also in '81, then through the '80s and '90s.

(Also, Mighty Clouds' "Mighty High" not really pre-disco if it came out in 1976 obviously. Though again, also not a big pop hit.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

The actual task of working soul/r&b into that forward motion was undertaken by Prince in regard to synthpop

This is interesting, too, and seems obvious in a way, but I'd strangely never thought of Prince that way. But while new wave synth-pop was clearly an influence on Prince starting at least with Controversey, he was hardly alone. Zapp's first album came out in 1980 (same year as Dirty Mind), and George Clinton's early '80s solo LPs had a lot of synth pop in them as well, even to the point of a Thomas Dolby collobaration or two, I believe. Though they never sold as well as Prince's biggest, I guess, and I do guess he was more influential in the long run (at least until Zapp-style robot vocals were revived by T-Pain AutoTune types decades later.)

hard-rock guitar on "Beat It," which would only have been surprising to people who'd solidly ignored '70s funk

This might be true, but I'm not sure that bands like Funkadelic and the Ohio Players (much less Black Heat or Black Merda or whoever) had worked hard rock guitars into a concise pop-oriented funk context in the way "Beat It" eventually did. What are the precedents for that? Possibly Rick James ("Super Freak"?); maybe the Isleys ("That Lady," 1973.) And okay, Donna Summer circa "Hot Stuff," I guess. So maybe it wasn't entirely new. But "Beat It" does seem to have briefly opened the floodgates for a more explicitly popwise (whatever that means) and crossover-viable rock-funk than had existed in the '70s -- Shalamar's "Dead Giveaway," Kool and Gang's "Misled," Philip Bailey's "Easy Lover" with Phil Collins," Teena Marie's "Lovergirl" all came out 1983-84.

The actual task of working soul/r&b into that forward motion was undertaken... by Teddy Riley and the New Edition alums in regard to hip-hop

Which would only have been surprising to people who'd solidly ignored Lakeside's "Fantastic Voyage," Teena Marie's "Square Biz," Denroy Morgan's "I'll Do Anything For You," New Edition's "Cool It Now," and any number of other pre-new-jack-swing '80s r&b hits that had already incorporated rap/hip-hop elements. If anything, to me, New Jack seemed like a letdown after those sorts of hits -- or a codification of them, maybe.

if Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan are jazz, then why aren't the Drifters and Chuck Berry?

I totally get your point here, but was Louis Jordan considered jazz? I honestly don't know, but I've always assumed that "jump blues" of his type would have been considered to have fallen more under the "r&b" than "jazz" banner, even in the '40s. Though obviously, musically, he was bridging the two genres -- and picking up to a certain extent on where Cab Calloway (who strangely I do assume was considered jazz) had left off. (And what about Louis Prima, who was probably the Italian equivalent of Jordan? Was he considered a jazz guy? Again, I'm not sure. I expect it depends on who you would have asked, even back then.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

>>> But "Beat It" does seem to have briefly opened the floodgates for a more explicitly popwise (whatever that means) and crossover-viable rock-funk than had existed in the '70s -- Shalamar's "Dead Giveaway," Kool and Gang's "Misled," Philip Bailey's "Easy Lover" with Phil Collins," Teena Marie's "Lovergirl" all came out 1983-84. <<<

Would also add "Jump" by Van Halen, which always struck me as a synthesis of dance (synths) and hard rock perhaps made more permissible by Thriller? (Obviously, there's the Eddie connection as well.) Not that synths weren't present in some of VH's earlier tunes, and not that a lot of their earlier tunes weren't also quite danceable... I don't know, the sound of that song to my ears just seems to have Thriller all over it -- maybe something to do with how clean and sparkling the synthesis sounds? I'm kind of curious what impact Thriller had (if any) on other AOR records of the period. I've always assumed it did, but it's not my area of expertise. (I've heard and read over the years various hard rock people praise the record, like AOR radio mogul, Lee Abrams.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

The thing that strikes me lately about "Beat It," relistening to it, is the beat, which has an almost Miami-disco feel to it, and it kind of (in an appealing disco-y way, I mean) sounds chintzy, or slight, at least during the intro. (It also reminds me of the Gap Band's "Dropped a Bomb" -- which similarly layers huge slabs of thickness over top, in their case synths rather than guitars.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Don't know if I can cite specific "Beat It"-inspired tracks, but I wouldn't be surprised if Huey Lewis was listening to it before Sports, for one. Could also see Def Leppard, whose tastes were pretty omnivorous at the time; maybe Axl Rose, too. And Billy Idol. And ZZ Top, who judging from year-end Top 10 listening lists they gave Rolling Stone were definitely trying to keep up with the cutting edge of black pop and funk -- they seemed to be major Zapp fans, for instance. Though I've honestly always figured that the really big influence on the more synth-dancey end of mid '80s AOR (including "Jump" and Eliminator) wasn't an artist from the r&b/dance side at all, but rather the Cars. Maybe I should rethink that, though. (I'm sure lots of those bands were listening to Prince, as well.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

(I mean that list to be more post-Thriller than specifically post-"Beat It," btw, though obviously "Beat It" is the track on the album that rockers might've been most likely to gravitate toward.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Another odd thing about considering Prince the primary r&b + synthpop guy, of course, is that r&b and synth-pop had obviously also been merged all through the disco era, especially in Europe, since 1975 ("Fly Robin Fly" by Silver Convention) at least, only the synth-pop in question then was Kraftwerk rather than, say, Duran Duran or Soft Cell.

[koganbot]

Replying to a whole bunch of this at once: yes, disco vocals were saturated in soul-gospel which is why postdisco was too, I meant to say that, though disco (like postdisco) leaned more towards shouters than towards smoothies; but yes there were more smoothies than just Michael. I do think that Michael steers the way towards Bel Biv Devoe et al. more than Luther does, and I really wonder if without Thriller's going mega a bunch of other stuff from new jack swing to Backstreet Boys to R. Kelly to The-Dream takes the same form; the ongoing motion in countrypolitan etc. at the time of Thriller obviously is already going on, so yes of course stretches back into the '70s (and '60s). Glitter into metal is equally ongoing (though I suppose you're right that glammetal and hair metal are generally synonymous). Actually the term r&b was long out of favor, in the '60s had given way to "soul" and in the '70s to "funk" and "disco" and simply "black," so when Christgau was writing it was starting to return as a general catch-all phrase (strangely, though this is unrelated, so was "bohemian," which had clearly been relegated to the '50s and earlier, or so I thought, and then in the early '80s or so also returned as a catch-all now that "hippies," "freaks," "punks," etc. were too specialized).

Anyway, you seem to more than agree with me that Michael can't be said to have invented modern pop.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Okay, had somehow missed what you meant by "ongoingly"; that makes sense now. Somehow also missed that you'd mentioned New Edition, who in fact were not preceded by New Edition no matter what I imply above. Have to give the disco smoothies vs. shouters ratio more thought; occurs to me, though, that the r&b '80s may well have been more dominated by smoothies (see Debarge etc), though that may well be the MJ i influence at work too. Also occurs to me that certain early '80s pretty-haired AOR bands (like say Night Ranger or Prism) might be considered hair-metal before it grew a glam influence, though I'd be surprised if anybody actually called them that at the time.

And yeah, I definitely don't think that any one person could have invented modern pop. Though I may also be more skeptical than you are that there's even such a thing as "modern pop," which somehow for me implies a sea change in pop music that I'm not convinced ever happened; pop music has been changing all along, and it's not like there was a time in the recent past that pop didn't exist. So the idea of "modern" vs. "pre-modern" pop eras really doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Also probably worth mentioning though that, without Michael Jackson, there would be no New Edition, since the Jackson Five were clearly and blatantly New Edition's template, just like New Edition were clearly the template for New Kids on The Block (and therefore indirectly the Backstreet Boys and *N Sync) later.

Also, not sure how Jam/Lewis (as pervasive in the '80s as Teddy Riley, I would guess) fit into all this, but I was reading an essay by Steve Perry (not the Journey guy) in an old Simon Frith edited collection recently where he said that, of Minnesota's significant stable of '80s r&b stars, only Alexander O'Neal (from Natchez, Mississippi) was sonically or biographically rooted in soul of the deep South. (Which somehow connects with the smoothies-displacing-shouters formulation too, I'd think.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

And actually, all this talk about the innovations of New Edition is making me wonder about the other notabale pre-New-Jack mid '80s r&b band who were supposedly merging hip-hip with soul-vocal-group styles (albeit a couple years behind N.E., plus unlike N.E. they never eventually subdivided into several big solo careers) -- namely, Force MDs, who I haven't heard in years, and don't think I ever listened to any entire album by, even back then. (Could also be easily argued that early/mid-'80s pre-New-Jacks like Oran "Juice" Jones and Richard "Dimples" Fields and maybe even Ray Parker Jr. were drawing on hip-hop -- at least for its attitude, and for talking if not actually rapping -- and mixing it into falsetto soul and doo-wop and self-contained funk-band styles from the '50s through '70s.) (Which is not to say nobody talked before rap, obviously.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

This probably won't shed much light on the issue (it doesn't for me personally), but in the Rolling Stone tribute issue, in his piece on the making of Thriller, Alan Light refers to "the loose, swinging 'Baby Be Mine' (which, Jones points out, has a melody similar to a John Coltrane-style progressive jazz line)..."

("Jones" of course meaning Qunicy.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

[Meant to post that directly in response to the "jazz" commentary.]

[koganbot]

Not sure about the Coltrane comparison - not that I'm skeptical of it either, just ignorant, in that obv a Coltrane type melody is different from an Ornette Coleman type melody but I don't know if a Coltrane melody is something that's a Coltrane signature or just "that type of jazz melody, that Coltrane amont others would take as a starting point." 'Cause when I think of Coltrane I don't think of his melodies but of the analytical improvisations that seemed to find their way to every possible note in the chord. (Again, I haven't actually listened to 'Trane in years.) In any event, yes I can hear the jazz in "Baby Be Mine" but don't hear more of it there than in, say, Teena Marie* - or in Minnie Riperton, probably, but I'd have to bone up on Riperton to know if that's right - and since it's more of a signature for Teena or Minnie I'd hardly say, hearing a jazz-style vocal in recent pop, "Oh, yet more of the impact of Michael Jackson."

*Who has a new alb that definitely sounds real good but, leaning towards the jazz, tends - for me - to be in one ear and out the other on early listens.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

There were also clear jazz crossovers to disco/r&b around the turn of the '80s -- The Crusaders' great "Street Life" in 1979, for instance, not to mention any number of tracks by guys like George Benson and Al Jarreau and Quincy JOnes himself and maybe Peabo Bryson, etc.; so yeah, if Michael was incorporating jazz into pop r&b, he was hardly alone, or hardly the most explicit guy doing it.

Which reminds me that Herbie Hancock was obviously yet another guy merging synth-pop, hip-hop, r&b, jazz and rock into pop chart hits at the time.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Plus female r&b singers like Patrice Rushen and Anita Baker etc. regularly incorporated jazz into r&b through the '80s (which may have paved the way for Whitney and Mariah etc. as much as Michael Jackson's own singing did.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

In response to the question of "inventing" modern pop, I don't know, it's a conundrum. In the '80s and '90s, Prince's impact seemed more obvious and prevalent; direct homages to his sound seemed to show up in all sorts of places (of course, I can't recall a whole lot of them right now... I'm thinking obvious stuff like Ready for the World and Natural Selection and less obvious things like "Boys of Summer," which could be a Purple Rain backing track), whereas Michael's impact seemed harder to gauge (except, as noted, in some of the hard rock-dance fusions... I recall at the time making the connection between "Beat it" and "Rock Box," for instance). Maybe his impact was more diffuse, probably it was more in the vocal side (Ann Powers recently suggested that his vocal stylings can be felt deeply in today's female r&b singers). Maybe what he "invented" wasn't a sound or a style, but a mindset? A he-opened-dozens-of-doors sort of thing? (But was he particularly unique in this regard, or merely the most celebrated or famous example?)

[koganbot]

I recall at the time making the connection between "Beat it" and "Rock Box"

Except the obvious precursor to "Rock Box" was the Treacherous Three's "The Body Rock," which precedes "Beat It" (but wasn't a national hit or prominent outside of hip-hop, so maybe "Beat It" helps prepare the part of the general populace who hasn't heard Funkadelic et al. for "Rock Box" or "Walk This Way").

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I was familiar with "The Body Rock" before "Rock Box," but maybe the connection wasn't obvious enough for me. I mean, now that you mention it, I can hear the guitars in the former, but they never seemed like a big deal to me at the time, perhaps because they are used more subtly, not so much as central hooks but as padding. (I haven't heard the song in ages, so I could be way off here.)

[koganbot]

I think my basic point is that "Walk This Way" or something equivalent was going to occur regardless of Michael because hip-hop was taking up the rock-funk-punk mixtures that were happening everywhere they could in NY, and "Beat It" was hardly the template. LL (or Rick Rubin) isn't going to say to himself, "Oh, because of 'Beat It' I am inspired to sample 'Johnny B. Goode.'" It's not because of "Beat It" but because of Flash and Bambaataa and Funkadelic etc. etc. that sampling "Johnny B. Goode" is an obvious move.

(I always thought "Rock Box" was clumsy and kind of boring, and thought "Sucker MCs" rocked a lot harder, actually, despite the latter's not having a guitar.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Don't think I was claiming that "Beat It" was a template -- of course it's just one among many. Though I do think because it was so huge and in the air at the time (and I recall lots of talk at the time about how "revolutionary" an idea it was bringing Eddie Van Halen into the fold -- regardless of whether that WAS a revolutionary thing to do or not) it may have been more directly an inspiration than, say, Funkadelic or Flash or Bambaata (the latter two of whom I assume you list because of what they would play as DJs, moreso than what kind of records they made).

[koganbot]

And actually it may be specifically because of Chuck Eddy that Run-DMC does "Walk This Way" (Doug Simmons told me he was convinced of this, the Voice having printed Chuck's piece relating "Walk This Way" to hip-hop six months before the Run-DMC track came out, though Doug told me that Rick Rubin denied the connection; and I do recall Run-DMC talking of their love for Aerosmith back at the time of their first album).

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

My memory is that the initital press release came out just a few weeks after my Aerosmith Done With Mirrors review; John Leland reported (in the Voice and later in Spin I believe) that my review is where Rubin's idea came from, though right, I'm not sure whether Rubin ever admitted that. I also recall though that, while Run-DMC may have liked Aerosmith's music early on, they didn't even know the name of the band -- thought they were called Walk This Way. But they apparently did like the song and its beats, at least.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I never made that connection, either. Always like "Body Rock"; never thought of it as sounding "rock", even if it did. Though there were other rap singles incorporating hard rock guitars before "Rock Box" -- Adventure's "Phantasy Eyesland (What Is Your Phantasy)" on Sweet Mountain Records in 1981, for instance.

[koganbot]

Well, here it is, hard rock/hard funk, the guitar isn't as prominent as the bass but it was the guitar that jumped out at me as unexpected. The date of the single is 1980, not 1983 as the YouTuber claims. He's probably got a reissue.

In any event, this stuff, rather than "Beat It," is what's pointing the way to Run-DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, etc.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

How many people heard "Body Rock" compared to "Beat It," though? Was it even a major r&b hit? Not at all clear why both songs couldn't have paved the way toward later rap/rock hybrids, and why "Beat It" might not even have been the bigger influence, given how inescapable it was in '82-'83.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

...and given that, in "Beat It" unlike in "Body Rock," the guitar is undeniably the prominent instrument (not to mention a big part of the story that people told about the song -- don't recall people making an issue of "Body Rock"'s guitar, though I could be wrong.)

[koganbot]

Btw, I'm not claiming that "Body Rock" is particularly important - I like it, but I wouldn't really know its importance, or what part of it kids in the South Bronx or Queens would be making a big deal of. It's more illustrative: rock going into hip-hop and vice versa is going to happen regardless of "Beat It." I guess I'm going by my ears here: the zeitgeist that gets Rubin and Beasties and Run-DMC and LL moving is already so pervasive that a "Beat It" hitting or not hitting isn't going to make a difference, esp. since "Beat It" doesn't sound a lot like the hip-hop rock hybrids that emerge.

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Last point: one of the things that has struck me most regarding Jackson's death is finding out just how strong his appeal continues to be to younger people, by which I mean kids, people not even born during the era of Dangerous, never mind Thriller. Kids seem to be genuinely aware of and interested in the guy in a way I don't think they are of Prince or any other pop icons of any era earlier than the present one. Doubly strange as he hasn't had a bona fide hit in eons. (Some of this may of course be due entirely to the fact of his death; I was distraught when Nixon resigned from office in '74, despite not fully grasping any of it. Still, there seems to be a genuine appeal and interest in him well beyond people who grew up with his best music.)

[koganbot]

Kids seem to be genuinely aware of and interested in the guy in a way I don't think they are of Prince or any other pop icons of any era earlier than the present one

Well, don't know about kids these days, i.e., 2009 in specific, but I'd say in general kids tend to take very well to the Sgt. Pepper's-Yellow Submarine-era Beatles, not just because the Beatles are now basic features of the landscape but because they're particularly kid friendly. And maybe that's true of MJ too, though it's not quite as obvious why, except maybe kids relate to his Peter Pannishness as well as his sounds. Unless you're looking for it, it's easy not to notice the darkness of "Billie Jean" or "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (generally relegated to the lyrics) or to take the darkness to be horror-movie type fun in e.g. "Thriller."

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

No, I agree -- kids will respond well to Beatles and all sorts of other things (my 7-mo old daughter apparently has a real fondness for uptempo doo-wop, especially when her dad sings the bassman parts), I'm just saying that Michael almost seems to be part of their DNA or something. I mean, that's the impression I've gotten from hearing kids on television talking about him. He somehow still feels like a present figure in their version of a pop world, maybe the starting point.

[koganbot]

Michael reasserted the importance of gospel-based soul in the post-disco dancepop world (more the relatively smooth style of the gospel quartets and balladeers than that of the shouters and stompers, though his truncated yelps certainly drew on the latter)

This is the crucial story, nonetheless (I mean, as far as Continuing Impact On Pop Music, not necessarily the crucial story of what moved me most about his music). Which isn't to say that the sweet vocal soul style wouldn't have been reasserted without him (Prince or New Edition could have done it anyway*). But there's also the possibility that, without the success of Off The Wall and Thriller, this stuff ends up getting relegated to "urban adult contemporary"/"quiet storm" and doesn't remain linked to the youthbeat.

*and of course the diva/shouter soul was already imprinted into club music, proto-house, proto-techno etc.

[koganbot]

I haven't been searching through this week's and last week's onslaught of Michael commentary. Have people like Ryan Leslie, The-Dream, etc. been offering their insights?