As Gary Glitter found out, being branded a paedophile is suicide to your career as your records stop being played and you are resigned, quite rightly, into the bargain bin of pop music.
Somehow, Michael Jackson avoided that fate although his reputation was tarnished but not permanently damaged until now with the film Leaving Neverland appearing to make it clear that the once King of Pop was a paedophile.
Some Jackson fans will clearly deny any allegations while others will try and separate the music from the man while others will just erase the musician from their record collection.
The allegations against him are hideous although they just confirm what was strongly suspected at the time and it will be interesting to see if Jackson's music will now be treated the way Glitter’s is, banned from radio and TV, especially as Jackson was so much a bigger star than Glitter.
I was never a massive Jackson fan but his songs are part of my teenage years, especially the Thriller years, but him being a child abuser will now always trump his music which means that this is what he will become, quite rightly known for, by generations after my own.
There will be those who will make the awful mistake that an artist automatically embodies greatness because they like their work but that is a dreadful mistake to make because as hard as it is, sometimes the crimes are just so bad that it is practically impossible to separate the man from the music.
1 comment:
if he was white his statues would be removed, buildings would be renamed, and records would be melted. oh wait, when he died he was white - har har
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