Goodbye MJ

It took a long while to sink in....but the King of Pop is no more. When you grow up with an icon, they are indestructible and they are immortal. Though there were very visible ad obvious signs of the strains of the public eye on him, MJ would live forever. It was very difficult to accept that he is gone. Very difficult to look at the situation and have that little voice say that this is not possible.

Maybe it's a hoax. Maybe it's a publicity stunt. Maybe Michael just wants to see if he is still loved. Whatever it was, it cannot be that he is dead.

You then see the reviews, the post-mortems, the news and culminating in a memorial service which was touching and slightly inappropriate. Gold casket below a stage where every sang and danced. Not very Asian. But after all that, we now have to get use to a life without Michael Jackson.

Like most poorer kids in my generation, we didn't really get a chance to enjoy music until our teens. Our parents weren't exactly music people and I didn't have a radio at home until I was 13. It wasn't those mini-compos which were a real fad then but those cassette players that has a dial for radio and everything was button and levers. No electronics, nothing fancy. It was junk and looked like junk but it was our radio.

The first songs I heard was Abba "One of us" and Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". I hated it and still do. When "Beat It" was played later, I remembered that it was sung by this whiny voiced pansy guy called Michael Jackson who sang a terrible song "Billie Jean" but "Beat It" was kinda cool. So they song I paid attention to, blew my mind literally. I was hooked on "Thriller". At that time, the music was called New Wave and the world was preparing itself for a second British invasion after the Beatles.

We had Duran Duran, Wham, Howard Jones, The Police, Nik Kershaw, Yazoo, Kajagoogoo (I am not making these names up. These were really band names that we were really into). MJ stood out and resisted the British invasion sweeping awards after awards. I remember watching "Thriller" music video at a very popular CD outlet called Victoria Music Station in Sg Wang after school which we snuck out to. I just couldn't move away. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen!

I began to seriously pay attention to MJ then and I was hooked. He went on to become a huge megastar with people going crazy over him! Crying when the saw him and having all these emotions flooding towards him.

Sadly though, that didn't last. To reasons only known to him, MJ became....."weird". For all his shortcomings and all his doings, he will remain forever an icon for perfection, artistry and philanthrophy. Very few people come into the world and leave with the knowledge that they have made a difference. MJ is one of them. We will miss him and his music and we won't be the same again. God Bless and rest in peace.....finally.