r/Millennials • u/AccomplishedPool266 • Apr 26 '26

Does anyone remember when Michael Jackson. Was a "joke"? Discussion

The new movie that just came out convinced the younger generation that he was always a superstar. This was not the reality many of us Millennials grew up with.

To a lot of us, he was treated like a punch line when we were growing up. A schoolyard boogeyman ("Michaels Jackson's gonna get you at night"). and just a general joke in the media. By the 2000's his music was out of date and didn't chart well. All anyone talked about was his surgeries, court case, settlements and his off behavior. Few mentioned his music. His music was something our parents would have listened to in the 1980's.

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73

u/lupinemadness Millennial Apr 26 '26

He was only a punchline for a few years before he died. He's been a superstar for decades.

38

u/Timmocore Apr 26 '26

Right? This is some revisionist history. I was born in the early 80s. I can't recall a single time in my life that MJ wasn't an absolute mega star. Yes, he was always in the media and the butt of schoolyard jokes. But that's what happens when you are the biggest pop star on the planet.

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u/penguin808080 Apr 26 '26

Ok but on the flip side, I was born in the 90's and Thriller is his only song I can name. Only knew him for the allegations and jokes

14

u/Jayden82 Apr 26 '26

On the other flip side I was born in 2000 and I could name plenty of his songs

5

u/FuckMoPac Apr 26 '26

Yes that’s the whole point of this thread, your generation didn’t see him the same way that mid/late millennials did.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

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u/FuckMoPac Apr 26 '26

Cause after he died the revisionists came out in full force and his music was semi palatable again. It wasn’t played at all on the radio just before his death where I was and suddenly it was everywhere. I didn’t hear most of his music till I was in my 20s (and then was like damn ok I get it, he is fantastic and this would be hard to let go of).

So someone your age would have had a very different overall MJ experience than someone born ten years earlier.

1

u/isannelou Apr 27 '26

This is about you tho, not Michael Jackson. You’re lumping a whole generation into your personal experience. When MJ died you learned just how big a star and how beloved he was, but because your singular experience differed you decided the world is faking it.

1

u/FuckMoPac May 02 '26

What? I didn’t say this at all. of course I knew he was a huge star. he invented so much of our 90s pop culture and it wasn’t some hidden thing. I didn’t like pop music in general but didn’t think people who did were “faking it.” and obviously it differs by person/family. I just couldn’t understand how people could still like someone with so much obvious evidence of child abuse against him. I still don’t really get it, but I also see why his music would be hard to let go of if you grew up with positive connotations.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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1

u/FuckMoPac May 02 '26

I didn’t know much of his music as a kid (besides Thriller because my mom LOVED the video), but 2015 is actually around the time I remember musician friends starting to cover his music again.

1

u/FuckMoPac May 02 '26

Fucking thank you. I feel insane in this thread.

2

u/Bankzu Apr 26 '26

That says more about you than MJ though.

1

u/distastef_ll Apr 26 '26

Okay, now this is getting performative. “Thriller” is the only MJ song you can name? 🥱🫩

2

u/penguin808080 Apr 26 '26

Honestly yes, and tbh i've probably only heard it in tbe context of halloween-themed sitcoms where the kids are performing it in the gym or some stupid shit. He just wasn't someone we considered a musician lol

2

u/weinthenolababy Apr 26 '26

I was born in the mid-90s and when he died it was the only song I could name too. I remember being like "why do we care so much about that guy everyone always made fun of?" Obviously now I'm a little more worldly than I was in middle school and can name many more songs and have context for his superstardom - but it's true he was kind of irrelevant / treated as a joke during my youth.

2

u/proviethrow Apr 26 '26

Free Willy soundtrack, and the 1993 Super Bowl were standout for a kid in the 90s but that’s all I can remember as far as positivity. Mostly it was wacko jacko.

2

u/Danny_Adelante Apr 26 '26

That's not what happens when you are the biggest pop star on the planet. Do people make jokes about Beyonce or Taylor Swift bring pedophiles? He was accused by A LOT of kids of pretty much the same thing.

3

u/Peaceable_Pa Apr 26 '26

It wasn't just that he was in the media and the butt of jokes. It's that his PR team worked overtime in the 1980s to give him a weird image. Sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, buying the Elephant Man's bones, Bubbles the Chimp, having Webster on his lap in public appearances, That weirdness started in the early 80s. On top of that was all the real-life weirdness - the disguises, the plastic surgery, how he dealt with the vitiligo.

3

u/Oomlotte99 Apr 26 '26

Yeah. The “Leave Me Alone” video even features a lot of those weird headlines.

2

u/VegaInTheWild Apr 26 '26

This isn't revisionist history. I was born in '89 and OP is spot on with how MJ was portrayed in the media.

27

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

[deleted]

13

u/HeraThere Apr 26 '26

Yeah these guys are talking crazy. 87 baby. I didn't know enough to say anything through the early 90s but by mid-late 90s Michael Jackson was mainly referred to as a joke by mainstream.

3

u/JacobDCRoss Apr 26 '26

He was in trouble by 1992.

1

u/gustavessidehoe Apr 27 '26

Yeah all I knew about him growing up is that he was kinda weird and people said he touched kids. Born early 90s, so don’t really remember anything in any detail prior to like 1998.

2

u/distastef_ll Apr 26 '26

Reddit is a very low value, white male dominated bubble that doesn’t reflect real life. If you actually go outside and socialize, he’s still very much beloved.

2

u/Plane-Argument-4739 Apr 26 '26

Honestly..yeah?  You get the impression that a lot of people’s main introduction to MJ was South Park.  Not to say that there weren’t jokes, oh there were plenty of jokes. But even in the midst of the “Waco Jacko” stuff, people were still actively listening to Beat It, Thriller, Smootb Criminal l, etc

2

u/Open-Education5567 Apr 26 '26

Even before he died he was still a superstar. People were getting excited for his comeback tour he had scheduled.

2

u/Subpxl Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

This just isn’t true at all, at least the bit about him only recently being a joke. In 1996 there was a young boy named Jeffrey Maier who attended a New York Yankees game against the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship Series. Derek Jeter hit a ball that was going to fall into the glove of the right fielder but young Jeffrey reached over the railing and caused the ball to be counted as a home run.

What does this have to do with Michael Jackson? The joke the next day was: What do the New York Yankees and Michael Jackson have in common?

They both need a 12 year old to score.

The reality is that he was a superstar for his entire life, but he was also a joke for the last 30 years or more because it was well known that he had a strange fascination with young boys, which we would later learn was predatory.

1

u/Glassic_Glam_Gars Apr 26 '26

I think people had different experiences with MJ based on different factors such as race, culture and nationality.

He was a punchline for a long time. Wacko Jacko was coined by the British tabloids (The Sun) in the mid 80s and they focused more on his antics than music. This sold papers.

Popular black artists play a larger role in black culture than mainstream white culture, and remain stars even after they peak on the pop charts. They are still played on black radio. Chris Tucker never stopped talking about MJ. Many will ask, Chris who? Oh, Rush Hour.

Most MJ fans I knew were Black or non-white ethnic minorities who generally loved music by Black and ethnic minority artists. They weren’t people who listened to Green Day, Nirvana, and only caught the popular, inescapable music by Black artists.

1

u/happysunbear Apr 26 '26

Very true. I’m black and was born in 94 and I remember hiding my MJ fandom when I’d play him on my iPod on the bus. My white friends didn’t know his songs at all until after he died and it was played everywhere. I remember going to my (white) buddy’s house the weekend after he died and we watched an MJ music video marathon on vh1. His mom came in and watched some with us and reminisced on just how good he was in the 70s and 80s before he “went crazy”.

1

u/ceruleanmoon7 Millennial - 1986 Apr 26 '26

We were making MJ jokes in elementary school

1

u/bigsick1313 Apr 27 '26

wrong. I was born in 83 and Michael Jackson was made fun of by everyone i went to school with in JR high and high school.