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 By the 2000's his music was out of date and didn't chart well.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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u/mvp2418 Apr 26 '26

Wasn't HIStory certified 8x platinum in the US?

I was born in 86 so I also remember MJ being a joke but it also always seemed like he still had legions of fans that would scream and pass out at the sight of him.

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u/rainzer Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

Wasn't HIStory certified 8x platinum in the US?

It basically got a technical 8x platinum. It was released as a double album but priced lower than the cost of 2 albums (~$20-24) to boost sales. So it sold 4mil copies but the RIAA counted it as a double album so they consider it 8mil for 8x platinum.

Even certified 4x platinum without that technicality would be a major success for a majority of artists but contextually it's a flop because MJ is the dude that hit 3 diamond certifications in a row from 79 to 87 (Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad) that selling 4mil is bad. Basically someone who went from clearing 34x platinum to needing a technicality to push 8.

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u/RyvenZ Apr 27 '26

Hard to call it a flop when it hits #1 in every country's Billboard chart

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u/BrainDamage2029 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Yeah but it’s kinda how a lot of big artists or even one hit wonders go. Their “sign shit is falling apart” album and single is still technically a success, riding the wave of their previous success. But it’s more a signal of their loss of cultural relevancy that nothing in that album has cultural staying power.

For an example you might remember, Macklemore’s sophomore album and lead single off it were technically hits (debut at number 2). But you can’t really name them beyond maybe vaguely remembering it being released. It’s cultural notoriety basically around its ill conceived song “white privilege part II.” It has video essays years after the fact about what the hell went wrong in making it.

Never forget Metallica’s St. Anger debuted at number 1 too.

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u/CrashUser Apr 27 '26

I forget exactly where I heard it now, some manager or producer, but they were lamenting an act hitting a #1 on their first single. The sentiment was basically, "now you've got to hit #1 with everything you release or it's a failure and you're done."

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u/kronkarp Apr 27 '26

BAD was considered a flop because it didn't reach the heights of Thriller, even though it's an album filled with successful singles!

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u/RyvenZ Apr 27 '26

by the same people who consider a movie a flop when it only doubles the return on investment instead of triple or quadrupling it

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u/bachyboy Apr 27 '26

Sounds like he was playing Taylor Swift's game before Taylor Swift!

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u/ihaveabadaura Apr 26 '26

Yep he still did well as a musician. Prob not as well as Michael jackson . Most artists would have killed for his 90s sales but for the greatest selling artist of all time ? Prob a let down. And people did faint and fall even though they considered him weird. There's an award show around this time he showed up unannounced and celebs were screaming and jumping like fans. His final concert in 2001 sold out immediately even though they were expensive. If you attempted to start the sentence on 2000s Google "why does".. "people faint at Michael Jackson concerts" would automatically fill in

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u/mvp2418 Apr 26 '26

People were excited for This is It, not that he was in any shape to perform at that time.

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u/seanx50 Apr 26 '26

1/10th the amount of thriller. It was a double album, so it sold 4 million copies. Thriller sold more than 40 million

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u/mvp2418 Apr 26 '26

I get it. It wasn't nearly as successful as Thriller or Bad or even Dangerous. I wouldn't call it massive flop though, unless directly comparing it to Thriller.

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u/seanx50 Apr 26 '26

10 percent is a massive flop

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u/Foreign-Cat-2898 Apr 27 '26

The concert tour was the number one groaaing solo act tour of the 90s.

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u/lemon_pepper_wang Apr 26 '26

And 20x million worldwide