Today the world says goodbye to a deeply disturbed man who produced some of the greatest pop music of all time.
I first heard the story indirectly on a Spanish language radio station, where the DJ presented it as like some weird morbid trivia teaser that they never gave the answer to: Guess which huge music star of the 80s had a cardiac arrest 15 min ago! then I switched to the hip-hop/R&B station where they said that TMZ had reported his death.
I was completely shocked, then they played Billie Jean, which I normally think of as just a perfect dance pop song, but given the context it just seemed unbearably sad. The fact that some reports say it was a suicide, on top of all MJ's other problems really does elevate it to the level of a seriously fucked-up Greek tragedy. When I got home I went on Facebook and literally every one of my friends' 20 newest status updates were tributes and/or expressions of shock. My eyes started welling up watching CNN this evening, which does not happen to me often. Maybe it's sad that this get to me more than what is happening in Iran or any number of world tragedies, but such is the unique force of nature/freak of nature that was Michael.
