Michael Jackson - RIP [Discuss tastefully (no cruel jokes) here]

nkay1985

Old_-_School wrote: »

Great musician. Terrible human being.

Yes, because you know him so well. :rolleyes:

Cop on for yourself.

tororosso

I think that was a bit of a harsh comment about him being a "terrible human being". I can understand where this was coming from as mud generally does stick but the charges that were brought against him in his personal life were cleared in court...I suppose it's a little like OJ Simpson as the guys career was tarnished by the stuff in his personal life and he too was cleared in a court of law. However I think there was a difference and dont believe in any of the mud slinging and I strongly believe Jackson was a lightning rod for people seeking attention/publicity (Uri Geller) and money (some of the people making allegations against him)

Very shocked and sad to hear of his death. The guy was a great pop star and his songs are classics. He really did leave his mark in modern popular culture. Just remember some of the stuff from the Simpsons right through to the Back to the Future films...

RIP Michael

Loomis

I think this perfectly highlights the effect the man had on so many people. With the news of him being taken to hospital people scowered the web looking for confirmation about his health and death.
It caused Google to offer no results when queried with 'Michael Jackon', Twitter crashed, the site for TMZ who were the first people to release the story crashed, AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo all had problems in performance.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8120324.stm

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death.

Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack. Millions of people who Googled the star's name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results. It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead. Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic".

Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public's clamour for information. The microblogging service Twitter crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service. Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages. Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates. According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.

Early reports of Mr Jackson's death and the confusion surrounding it caused a rash of changes and corrections to be made on his Wikipedia page as editors tried to keep up with events and the number of people trying to update the page.

TMZ, the popular celebrity gossip site that broke the story following a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singers home also crashed. There was a domino effect as users then fled to other sites. Hollywood gossip writer Perez Hilton's site was among those to flame out. Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.

Beginning at 2.30PM Pacific "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.

He told Data Center Knowledge that "during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%".

Dark Artist

That 'terrible human being' comment was (to put it in Jackson's own terms) pretty ignorant.

As far as I know, he still holds the Guinness World Record for the biggest donator to charity in history.

Taz86

Like him or loathe him he was a very important figure in pop history. Made a mark. Sparked debate.

I primarily like some of his tunes for their great funky basslines. Oh and of course Thriller is the bess knees.

50 is too young to go.

Mental Mickey

Old_-_School wrote: »

Great musician. Terrible human being.

Why don't you take a look in the mirror?? Very bad form, imo.


RIP Michael. I was never a huge fan, but he has left us some brilliant music.

partyatmygaff

I hate tabloid junkies who judge people from lies while they themselves have done nothing to better anyone but themselves.

Highest amount ever donated to a charity was by Him, he paid his own money to charity from the start of his career even with the Jackson 5, he didn't go around promoting "awareness" and trying to get everyone else to pay to charity while not doing anything himself.


His music lives on though, I'm glad the tabloids can't attack him anymore.

RIP

Dave Total

Legend, though its been ages since he's done anything worthwhile, with all of his media and personal troubles, in a weird way maybe he's out of his misery now.
And nobody will ever make another album like thriller!
RIP Jacko

Old_-_School

Mental Mickey wrote: »

Why don't you take a look in the mirror?? Very bad form, imo.


RIP Michael. I was never a huge fan, but he has left us some brilliant music.

At least when I look in the mirror I see someone who never shared a bed with 9 year old boys.
BTW, I'm not sure what charitable donations prove. Gary Glitter and Tim Allen both gave large charitable donations.

Basq

Get off this topic now please Old - School.

dr oatker

Yes, this thread is only for fawning praise.

Didn't have much time for Jackson personally, but I can certainly appreciate that this is the biggest celebrity death since Lennon. I think that in the light of his death people are overstating his influence in music, you'd have to give Quincy Jones at least half the credit for Thriller, and signs on, once he fell out with Quincy the quality of his output nosedived.

He'll be remembered as a great entertainer and a big "star" but as far as the music goes, apart from thriller he had a fairly ordinary back catalogue

badaulname

I would say he has had a major influence on the current music industry. Yes Quincy obviously played a major role in his success, but he wasn't the show horse that actually performed all the songs then put the unique dancing and theatrics to videos and concerts etc....that was Michael. He was a great that the current crop of stars used as a foundation with the likes of Usher, Justin, Chris Brown, Neyo all trying to be the next Michael Jackson. Jackson was on another level compared to these guys and I don't think anyone will achieve such greatness with unbelievable talent in our lifetime.

I dont think we can blame him for his weirdness in his later years, the fact is he was troubled psychology and the question is why is it that no one ever tried to intervene and try get him decent help instead of surrounding him with yes men? The current celebrity culture is dangerous and can be seen for the most recent off the rail star in Britney Spears. She was having problems and the family intervened and I def dont think she is outta the woods yet and she is more or less a glorifed show pony now but she is staying outta trouble and is recieving treatment. But all that is for another thread.

Rest in Peace. Truly an icon.

slave1

a very sad day , this is not the way it was meant to be :mad:, biggest loss since Lennon, a greater loss in some respects, let's hope history remembers the music and not the last 25 years of tabloid scutter, a gap that will NEVER be filled

joe123

Absolutely gutted. Have had a lump in my throat since I found out. Had tickets for one of his shows aswell and couldnt believe I was actually going to see him live.

Its a very very sad day.:(

RIP Michael.

cena

i can't believe people are looking for their money back on the tickets already. I think all the should go to charity. michael would like that. this is what i think

animalcrazy

It's so sad, I still can't believe it, poor man was driven into the ground, RIP

I made this tribute to him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWF_UncUNoI

Barr

RIP - its so sad to watch his music videos now , what a legend

hellodolly

It's very sad news. He was a true music legend. Fair play, he got major bad press but don't forget he was found not guilty in a court of law in
the last case (bloody cash-hungry vultures).

He was such an innocent, niave person and it caused him the greatest of damage ...but no-one can take his music away from him. Thriller, Bad, Annie, Billie Jean... and all the rest, absolute classics....RIP MJ. Peace.

niallon

Putting aside a life of hardship and controversy for one second, Michael Jackson led one of the most incredible musical careers ever seen. Nobody will ever come close to the sensational creative heights he reached though many still try. Forget Elvis, he was the King. R.I.P

hellodolly

niallon wrote: »

Putting aside a life of hardship and controversy for one second, Michael Jackson led one of the most incredible musical careers ever seen. Nobody will ever come close to the sensational creative heights he reached though many still try. Forget Elvis, he was the King. R.I.P

Bang on boss...Elvis who? :-)

Sir Molle

The world just got a lot less talented.

x in the city

Never made much of him until he is gone you realise how good he was.

As a singer and entertainer his 80s and 90s performances are going to be unsurpassed.

The Vault just did a MJ tribute I think, must have been on all day

He also cared alot about the world and society with his songs, a lot more so than the singers now.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

minxie

Scien wrote: »

Can someone tell me if Thriller is still the biggest selling album of all time?
I see some papers reporting this but i was under the illusion that The Eagles Greatest Hits has surpassed it a few years ago.

Sure is

Rip Michael ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_worldwide#Over_100_million_copies

Basq

Scien wrote: »

Can someone tell me if Thriller is still the biggest selling album of all time?
I see some papers reporting this but i was under the illusion that The Eagles Greatest Hits has surpassed it a few years ago.

The Eagles 'Greatest Hits' is not even close!

See here!

EDIT: minxie beat me to it!

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

minxie

Scien wrote: »

Possibly 109 million Thriller Ablums sold. :eek: Its an unbelievable record and with the digital era now in full flight, one which is unlikely to ever be broken.


Have been listening to MJ for the past 24hrs straight. He was just an incredible showman who created timeless, masterful pop music.


Michael Jackson 1958 - Armageddon.

A truly amazing feat one of the best showmen around
had a great little singalong myself last night...


hopefully hes at peace now

The Pontiac

hellodolly wrote: »

Bang on boss...Elvis who? :-)

I know you're half joking (I hope), but Elvis is the King and always will be. Elvis and The Beatles have had the greatest influence on 'popular music'. Probably Dylan too.

I do recognise Jackson's and Quincy Jones' musical legacy and the genius of the Thriller album. A hugely influential artist in his own right. He very evidently influenced a lot of current 'chart' music stars like Timberlake and the like.

This is a good thread on Jackson in fairness. It sure is a lot better than the tabloid forum, that is After Hours.

JAMM222

R.I.P Michael Jackson thank you for the music you really made a difference

hellodolly

<Ollie> wrote: »

I know you're half joking (I hope), but Elvis is the King and always will be. Elvis and The Beatles have had the greatest influence on 'popular music'. Probably Dylan.

Sorry, don't mean to offend any Elvis fans; he was before my time is all. I do like him but MJ was the coolest thing i'd ever seen when i first started getting into music.

I grew up with Jacko's music. His Thriller video scared the livin' bejaysus outta me when i was a youngster and i still get a real kick out of it today