****

Last summer, after Michael Jackson’s death, my friend Harriet Cole, then the acting Editor in Chief of Ebony Magazine, asked me to contribute a tribute essay about the Man. I was honored, not just because I’d considered myself MJ’s biggest fan but also because this would be my first piece ever for Ebony Magazine, the mag along with Right On! that provides my best memories of pics and articles about the King of Pop. Here, to re-launch SCOTT TOPICS, I wanted to run a slightly longer version of that tribute that appeared in Ebony last summer. Hope you enjoy, and like me, remember the time…

The day that Michael Jackson died, MTV finally played music videos again. For those of us grown folks who grew up on MTV (and, thus, Michael Jackson), who remembered when MTV was one channel on the cable box and not the monolithic, multi-channeled cultural phenomenon it has become, this felt like a flashback to another time. Not only were we being entertained by the short-form music films that changed the music industry, we were watching the evolution of one of the greats, one of the titans of pop music, who’s creative music genius and gift for visual dazzle, actually made MTV into what it is. Michael Jackson created MTV as much as any music industry executive, as much as any fan who sat watching the clips—because virtually any time you see some dancing/singing/attitude-slinging superstar going through their video motions, you are seeing the wildflowers of pop culture who grew from the seeds planted by the man we call the King of Pop.

That day, that sad day for so many of us around the world, means many things to a guy like me, a guy who as a kid interviewed Michael Jackson on the eve of the release of Destiny, shortly before he’d start rehearsing for his role as the Scarecrow in Sidney Lumet’s movie adaptation of The Wiz (and interestingly, the first place he’d work with Quincy Jones, the maestro who’d go on to produce Michael’s three biggest albums). Not only was I was enjoying watching Michael Jackson mutate from child phenom to adult icon, from a tiny whirlwind of youthful energy to a full-fledged man of music and mystery and mastery, I was enjoying the company of a young college classmate, a 21-year-old white college lacrosse player named Matt who seemed to be experiencing the whole of Michael’s career in one complete moment: too young to have experienced Thriller or Off the Wall at their significant and original cultural moments, too young to have known Michael before the tabloid junkies decided he was a freak and not a legend, Matt sat amazed at the beauty and, well, thrill of Michael’s artistic and creative legacy, even pointing out the postures and poses in Michael’s videos that are real and true antecedents to the work of Usher and Beyonce and Chris Brown and Ciara.

Something about this shared moment—me, the jaded music journalist who clearly remembers seeing The Jackson 5 on The Carol Burnett Show in the 70s , and the young kat who grew up on tacky jokes about our superstar and who thought of Michael Jordan when he heard someone say “MJ”—came to symbolize the true beautiful legacy of Michael Jackson. There hadn’t ever been an artist, let alone an African American artist, who’s sheer presence and magnitude had joined so many disparate communities together in the hurtling locomotive of pop culture, taking them for a ride so memorable and fascinating and enjoyable. And here we were, me smiling through tears I wasn’t afraid to cry in front of this guy, him asking me questions about MJ’s history, enjoying ourselves even as we couldn’t really wrap around our brains the fact that this King was no longer with us.

As I write this I listen to a song playlist I made months ago, compiled of Michael Jackson duets. This playlist seems to me to very much sum up the work and life of the man. Whether doing back-ups for Stevie Wonder (“All I Do”) or sharing the studio mic with his former Motown co-star (“Get It”, Bad’s “Just Good Friends”), whether grooving with his brother Jermaine on “Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming” or singing with Paul McCartney on “Say Say Say” or “The Man” or Thriller’s first huge single, “The Girl is Mine,” Michael was always a showstopper, but never a scene-stealer. He blended with his co-stars, as he’d learned to with his brothers in the Gary, Indiana living room and the rehearsal halls of Motown, harmonizing effortlessly. And as much as I loved Michael Jackson, it occurred to me that the moments I loved him—when we all loved him most—were when I was sharing him, on the dance floor at parties and clubs, using hair brushes to lipsync to his music with my Aunt Glo (the biggest MJ fan ever when Off the Wall came out) in her Tampa family room, and now with my buddy Matt, across generations, across race and gender and sexuality and background. And that’s how Michael would want it, I think. The last song on my playlist is Michael crooning love notes with Siedah Garrett on the first single from Bad, “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” We will never stop loving Michael Joseph Jackson. Not only because he told us, with Quincy Jones, Lionel Ritchie and a host of other superstars, that we were the world, but also because, as he told us on Dangerous, he wanted us to help him heal the world. And he wanted us to do it as one. Rest in peace, Michael Jackson. You knew pain, you knew the love of millions. Without you, we’ll have to start healing all over again. Together.

Hope you enjoy his SPB Q…I did, very much…

Name: Mark Anthony Neal

Hometown:   The place we affectionately call the “Boogie-Down” Bronx

School/Year:  State University Cat: BA/MA SUNY-Fredonia (’87, ’93); Ph.D. University of Buffalo ’96 in American Studies

Dissertation Title: Discursive Soul: Black Popular Music, Communal Critique, and The Black Public Sphere of the Urban North.  It was directed by the influential Black Feminist/Lesbian Masani Alexis DeVeaux

Favorite book:  Greg Tate’s Flyboy in the Buttermilk [editorial note: one of the best collections of essays I've ever read!]; everything changed after I read that.  Recognized that literary style and intellectual substance were not mutually exclusive.  Also Haki Madhubuti’s Enemies: The Clash of Races; my introduction to a Black thinker.

Favorite author:  It’s not PC, but I love Ishmael Reed’s fiction (Paul Beatty’s a close second)—try to tell Ish that every time we spar.  Favorite poet is Henry Dumas—want to write a critical study one day (shout to Eugene Redmond).

Favorite movie:  Love baseball movies. The Natural, but especially For the Love of the Game, for linking the grace of the game with the grace needed to survive getting older.  If my wife were to ask me, it’s The Five Heartbeats, which we’ve watched together about 63 times.

Favorite song:  You’re joking right?  Linda Jones’s “Hypnotized” takes my breathe every time.  Have pulled to the side of the road many times with Donny Hathaway’s “Thank You Master for My Soul” in the car. Every time I hear Diana’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and Jr. Walker’s “What Does it Take?” they take back to times with my parents when I was really little—attach those songs to the sweetness of my childhood.  Conjure my grind every day with Jay’s “Roc Boys”—“I wish for you a 100 years of success, but it’s my time!”

Academic text that most influences your work:  Michael Eric Dyson’s Reflecting Black, bell hooks’ Yearning and Robin Kelley’s Race Rebels gave me tools that I couldn’t have imagined before I read them.

Academic who most influences your work:  Every time I read William Jelani Cobb, I need to go back to the lab.  Daphne Brooks’ attention to detail.  Fred Moten. Damn, just no words there. Sharon Patricia Holland, who made me love theory again. Richard Iton, because he’s just a beast and one of the most generous of readers.

Academic High:  Handed Dyson a copy of my diss back in ’96 when he visited Xavier in NOLA where I started teaching.  He called me 5 hours later at 2am to tell me he dug the work.  Needed that affirmation at that time.  Robin Kelley responding to a letter I wrote a year earlier as a grad student.  Tricia Rose taking time to talk with me for 2 hours at MLA back in ’92 before I got in a Ph.D. program.  My parents being able to witness my hooding.

Life High:  Still have vivid memories of the first times I held both of my daughters;   Being able to record a 70^th Birthday tribute for my dad for NPR. My oldest daughter reciting  Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” at my Mother’s Going Home ceremony.  Minutes later when I couldn’t remove myself from the front her casket, it was my then 10-year-old daughter who came and got me.  Damn, just started tearing up thinking about it.

You’re on a desert island and can only have 5 CDs/books/ or DVDs shipped in to you. What are they?:

• Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On
• The 5 Season Box Set of The Wire
• The Collected Criticism of Amiri Baraka
• Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace
• The 9 Season Box Set of The Cosby Show

Your favorite quote: From my blog ““I am a man of my times, but the times don’t know it yet.” –Erik Todd Dellums as “Bayard Rustin” (in the film Boycott)

Guilty pleasure:  Wii Baseball; Reruns of The King of Queens; Fig Newtons

Seems like that’s all I did that year, wait. Wait for food to get delivered from the health food spot down near Malibu Canyon. Wait for Patrick to bring me shampoo and soap on his rare trips into the city. Wait for the mail guy to deliver the books I never read and the flat red Netflix envelopes of DVDs I never watched. Waiting for weight, too, it seemed, because I shed many pounds, waiting to get better, waiting to stop missing Melanie, waiting for the seasons to change when of course they weren’t going to change all that much, not here in California. That year in Los Angeles was like one long never-ending almost-summer day, poked through with some rain and some wind, but always, inevitably, summertime. So I made the seasons change with the music I played. I let Joni be the fall and Miles be the winter and Sarah Vaughn’s Gershwin concerts comprised my spring. And I prayed. Thanking God for giving Sharon and Patrick the good taste and foresight to have the sleek stereo system that they kept on some complicated altar-like shelves in the den.

I could hear the phone ringing somewhere inside, then Sharon’s soft voice answering like she was scared of who it might be, though she would know it was Patrick. No one else called Sharon or Patrick anymore except Sharon or Patrick themselves, if one or the other happened to make some trip out into the world. I could hear her laugh, crawling up and down some musical scale she carried around in her head, yet still a bit nervous, matching the clattering coffin-shaped wind chimes hanging over the deck. Which told me that it definitely was Patrick, calling from the car as he made his way back from his trip to the pharmacy to get me more drugs. This errand was his sole procrastination, from either sleeping all day or hovering over me, and he always called to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. I could hear the plonk-plonk trod of Sharon’s clogs against the hardwood floors as she brought the phone out to me. She turned the stereo down after she handed me the phone.

“Patrick,” I said. “Did you get lost or something?”

His laugh, too, was like an annoying musical instrument interrupting the tunes on the stereo. “I just had the funniest memory of little Jase,” he said. “And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m not dying,” I told him. “I’m still here. You don’t have to check on me every second.” I hung up the phone and handed it back to Sharon, standing right behind me, her hands in front of her in that expectant way, like we were on the verge of some breakthrough she wanted to be ready for. “When he calls back, tell him to pick up some of the Doc Bronner’s soap,” I told her. “The peppermint kind.”

The phone rang again and I turned back to watch the coyotes watch me. I think they were the same ones that had been rummaging underneath the deck the first time I’d visited three years before, for Jason’s birthday party. I’d named them, with Jason’s help, Snoopy and Benjy, because those were the names of the only famous dogs Jason had heard of. And it only fit that the coyotes underneath the house would be so anointed by fame; it was all, at that time, all Jason, or any of them, knew: with Sharon’s soap opera and Patrick’s Golden Globe and the parties and the lines of blow and the excitable air of entitlement that hung over the family like a suspicious, wavering halo, this house had been blown-through with the heavy Hollywood breath of fame. Benjy was the larger one, the mangier one, prone to growls whenever Snoopy tried to snatch something out of his grip. Snoopy was smaller and wilier, silent and cunning. And they were still the same now, truly the only things that really hadn’t changed. The fame may have eventually ebbed, as the sadness of Jason’s death eventually slowed the ambition and flowed like molasses across the glass walls and oak rafters and parquet floors, but the coyotes had stayed, roaming underneath the deck like taunting spectres of Jason’s youthful interest in them.

Screenwriter that Patrick once was, before mourning became his daily profession and, next to sleeping, his nightly hobby, he couldn’t have crafted a better scenario. Here I was, almost eight years after the death of my ex-fiancée, recuperating in the home of my ex-girlfriend Sharon and Patrick, her new husband, waiting for his ex-wife to return from Madrid to accompany me back to New York to jump-start my life. All these exes floating around like atoms in a bell jar. Since all the deaths—my Melanie and their Jason—we were all better at disconnecting than we were at connecting, and it crossed my mind that we knew it, that it was, really, how we did stay connected, grieving co-habitants in the slumbering wood-and-glass expanse of their home.

I heard a shattering smash, then a shouted curse and I turned to see Sharon, kneeling in front of the stereo, peering close at the floor. I went inside.

“I dropped a glass,” she said. “I’m trying to find the pieces.”

I knelt down next to her. “Here,” I said, handing her a towel from the bar.

She muttered thanks and dabbed at the floor with the wet towel. “Don’t walk over here without the lights on, Nick,” she said. “I don’t want you to get cut.”

“Sharon,” I said.

“You’re all healed now,” she said. “Just be careful is all I’m saying.”

“You need to go back to work,” I said.

“I like taking care of you,” she said, glancing at me then glancing quickly at my crutches leaning on the edge of the couch. “And Patrick needs me here.”

“To watch him sleep all day?”

“He goes to get you things,” she said. “He doesn’t just sleep.”

I took the towel from her and grabbed her elbow and pulled her to her feet. “Yes,” I said. I sighed. “Yes, I’m all healed now.”

* * *

“Hey!” Vivian shouted as she barged into the house some time after midnight, dropping her carry-on bag near the front door and rushing right to the den to turn the stereo on. “Wake up, people.” By the time I’d come in from the deck and found her in the den stripping the paper cover from a rum bottle cap, Patrick and Sharon were stumbling into the room, their robes flowing behind them, their eyelids fluttering like wings of little birds too nervous to take flight. Sharon silently took glasses from the shelf over the bar and lined them up for Vivian to pour our drinks. Patrick pointed the remote control at the stereo, bringing the sudden blast of music to a less ear-splitting volume.

“Noooo,” Vivian said. It was a nasally whine. “The ghosts are too loud here. Turn it back up.”

Patrick ignored her. Vivian poured patiently then took her glass and swirled her finger in the brown liquid as she herself swirled about the room, finally landing, legs-up, on the quilted edge of the big couch that doubled as my bed when I found the courage to sleep.

“Welcome,” Vivian said. She looked up from her upside-down state and wiggled her cocktail glass in the air, sloshing some on the couch.

Sharon went to her with the bottle and topped off her drink. “We should be welcoming you,” she said. “It’s late, Viv.”

“It’s early in Spain, dear. Earlier than I can remember.”

“Your flight was due in at noon,” said Patrick.

“I had to make a stop,” Vivian said. “Kill me.”

“All my bags are packed,” I said. “I’m ready to go.”

Vivian said, “What? You’re quoting folk songs now?”

“Those who can’t write, quote,” I said.

Sharon said, “What do those who won’t write do?”

Vivian flipped herself around so that she was now sitting correctly, her back to Patrick and Sharon, facing the glass doors leading out to the deck. Her eyes were fixed on the darkness outside. “I need a cigarette.”

“I need to go to bed,” Patrick said. He tied his robe belt tighter as if he were cold.

“It’s not like you have to go to work in the morning,” Vivian said. She didn’t turn to face him.

Sharon said, “We’re going to the cemetery tomorrow.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” Patrick said. The utter lack of passion in his voice made the offer as uninviting as possible. “I’m sure Jason would appreciate that.”

“I’m sure,” Vivian said.

• * *

In the morning, I found Vivian in the kitchen sipping from a huge mug of coffee, the newspaper damp and spread out before her like she’d eaten lobster for breakfast.

“They’re gone,” she said as a greeting. “And I’m still here.”

“Better to quote show tunes than folk songs?” I said.

She didn’t say anything. I went to the coffee maker and poured myself a cup of joe. I leaned against the counter, knocking my head against the glass cabinet doors behind me. I watched Vivian run her finger down a column of blurry words in the newspaper.

“You spilled your coffee?”

“I spilled the brandy I was putting in my coffee,” she said.

“You should have gone with them to the cemetery,” I said.

“The dead don’t give a shit about us looking at their tombstones,” she said. “They laugh at us in heaven when we do that.”

“So you believe in heaven but you don’t believe in honoring the dead.”

“I believe that you honor people when they’re alive, then you don’t have to worry about it when they’re dead.” She turned to face me. Her eyes looked spent, used up, like she’d wasted too much time looking at things she really didn’t want to see. “You’re not using the crutches anymore?”

I stepped away from the counter and did a little turn and a little ta-da move. “Look, Ma, no limp.”

“That supposed to be some kind of joke?”

“Take it any way you want,” I said. “You should have gone to the cemetery. I visit Melanie’s grave.”

“That’s guilt, and you know it,” she said. “You ran away from her that morning and you’ve been trying to run back ever since. Ran yourself right off the road.”

Then she gave me a head-to-toe once-over with her dark exhausted eyes, taking in all of me, like she was sizing me up, I imagined, for a coffin or a death shawl.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said.

“Waiting will do that to you.”

“So now it’s my fault?” She looked back at the soiled newspaper. “I guess it’s my fault that you’re still here in the mourning house instead of being back in New York living your life? I guess it’s my fault that you were cheating on Melanie while she was setting up an event at the World Trade Center, too?”

“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me,” I said. “And you’ve said some pretty mean things.”

“I’m honest,” she said. “I’m more honest than any of you.”

* * *

When Patrick and Sharon got back to the house, I was out on the deck watching the coyotes skulk around, eying each other with wary grins.

I was trying to figure out a way to capture them and bring them back to New York with me when I heard Sharon open the glass door and step outside. She didn’t join me at the rail; I knew she was watching me, trying to deduce whether I was ready for company. I saved her the work and reached out behind me. She took my hand and came to the rail then wrapped her arm around my waist, moving close. She smelled fresh as lilacs, but also sad, as if the stench of Patrick’s tears had somehow worked itself into the fabric of her blouse.

“You were out like a light when we left,” she said.

“The sleep of the dead.”

“Not funny.”

“Wasn’t trying to be,” I said. “How’s Patrick?”

“He’s upstairs.”

“Vivian left,” I said. “She went to Beverly Hills.”

“How he was ever married to her,” Sharon sighed, shaking her head. But she didn’t finish the thought; the sigh did all the work any mean words could.

“She’s threatening not to take me to New York.”

“I’ll take you,” she said.

“I can go alone,” I said. “I’ll hire someone when I get there.”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” she said. “Moving’s such hard work as it is.”

“Living is hard work,” I said.

Patrick said, “It’s easier than dying.”

We turned around to see him standing just inside the glass doors. He kept his eyes right on us, avoiding the horizon. “Why don’t you guys come inside?” he said.

Vivian said, “There’s way too much glass in this house. Glass and sadness.” She did a full turn, her gaze landing on every wall. “And where are the pictures? There are no pictures in this mausoleum.”

“Mausoleums don’t have pictures,” I said.

Sharon said, “Sit down, Viv.” She stood frozen between the couch and my luggage, her arms outstretched, like she was waiting to catch Vivian when she fell.

Vivian had returned from her sojourn into Beverly Hills laden with glittery shopping bags. She’d handed each of us a wrapped gift, and sipped from her snifter, smiling and swirling around the room, sloshing drink from her glass like she could rinse away the house’s sadness with it. Patrick handed his gift to Sharon. Sharon placed it next to her own gift on the arm of the couch.

“There’s too much glass,” Vivian said, “and the coyotes outside scare the hell out of me.”

“Sit down, Vivian,” Patrick said.

“I don’t want to sit down. I could barely sleep. Now I can see why Nick can’t sleep here. This house is haunted. You can hear the ghosts all night long.”

Patrick said, “You’re high.”

“I’m happy,” she said. “And I’ll be happier still if you open the presents I got you.” She sipped from her glass. “Then Nick and I can go to the airport and fly all the way to New York City.”

“I’ll open mine,” Sharon said. She took her gift from underneath Patrick’s and gently tugged at the elegant fold on the end of it as if she didn’t want to damage the gilt-edged paper. “Thank you, Viv.”

“Don’t thank me until you’ve seen it.”

Sharon slipped the small box from the wrapping, the paper remaining box-shaped like it held the soul of the container inside. She opened the small hinged box and stared down into it, her head cocked to one side. I recognized the look on her face. She didn’t care for whatever lay inside; she was trying to find a graceful way to accept it.

“It’s a broche,” Vivian said. “It’s a symbol of death and mourning. I figured you could wear it next year when you and Patrick go back to the cemetery. It’s Greek, I think.”

Patrick held out his hand. “Let me see.”

“It’s either Greek or Turkish,” Vivian said. “I don’t remember.”

Sharon held the box out to Patrick. He stared at it as Sharon had, his eyes looking at it though they seemed to be really focused somewhere else. “This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. He threw the box across the room and it glanced off the glass front of the CD cabinet. The broche inside popped out and hit the floor hard. We all watched it skitter across the floor and slide to a stop in the corner near the deck doors.

“Well then,” Vivian said, “Open yours.” She went to the broche, picked it up and stared at the bent pin on the back. “You broke it,” she said.

“I’m going to bed,” Patrick said.

“You’ll sleep your life away,” Vivian said. “You can’t live if you sleep all the time, Patrick.”

Sharon said, “Sit down, Viv.”

“Stop telling me to sit down. Why must I sit down? Is that what you were doing when my son died? Is that what you were saying when Jason ran through those glass doors and slid off that deck into the bushes down there? Were you telling him to sit down? Is that what you say when you go to the cemetery all the time? Do you kneel at his grave and tell him to fucking sit down?”

I only remember the sound of Vivian’s glass smashing against the floor. Patrick had moved so fast I don’t even remember seeing him jump. It was like he was a ghost, flying through the air effortlessly and wrapping his large hands around Vivian’s throat with an energy and ferocity I didn’t know he’d had in him. Sharon pulled him off of Vivian and the three of us stood there watching her, again, legs-up across the couch, breathing in and out, her hands at her neck, her eyes not exhausted now but accusing, glaring at the three of us, pregnant with tears that refused to flow. Just as quickly as he’d leapt toward Vivian, Patrick was out of the den and running up the stairs. Sharon followed him. I went out on the deck. I leaned as far over the railing as I could. I looked for the coyotes but they were nowhere around. Perhaps they’d been scared off by the commotion inside. I turned to look into the den. I watched Vivian but she didn’t see me. She was at the bar, pouring herself another drink, her other hand massaging her neck. I stepped closer to the door to get a better look at her. She was tapping her foot to the beat of the song rushing out of the speakers. She sipped from her glass. When she took the glass away from her lips I noticed something interesting about her. She was smiling. She picked up the broche and fiddled with it, then held it up to the row of lights over the bar. She looked around the room, which felt different, emptier somehow; something, not just Patrick and Sharon, had disappeared. And it occurred to me, looking at Vivian and her tear-streaked cheeks: anger is sadness, just without the ghosts.

Vivian caught my eye. She smiled, awkward and childlike, like she’d made a new discovery, and her tired eyes gleamed moist in the moonlight. She held the brooch out to me. “I fixed it,” she said.

She had.

Later that night I slept. And when I dreamed about Melanie, as I always did when sleep gripped me into those cruel nightmare-edged vigils for her, she was smiling, and quietly saying my name, and not screaming.

* * *

I was packing my luggage into the trunk of Vivian’s rented Pathfinder when Patrick came out to the carpark. He stood there watching me fit the luggage around Vivian’s shopping bags, his hands shoved into the pockets of his wrinkled khakis.

“I wrote some last night,” he said. “Two pages.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Really.”

“You don’t have to leave, Nick.”

“Yes, I do.”

“He’d be eight now,” Patrick said. “Eight years old.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew my lines for this scene but I didn’t feel like playing it again.

“You know he was happy here in Malibu,” Patrick said. “He loved having the ocean right outside his bedroom.”

I closed the trunk shut.

“Maybe we’ll come to see you in New York,” he said.

I nodded. “That would be good,” I said. “Maybe you can write there.”

“Sharon said the same thing.”

“Sharon’s a smart girl,” I said. “Speak of the devil.”

Vivian had come out into the carpark with Sharon following close behind her. Sharon took Vivian’s bag and put it in the back seat of the car. She slammed the door shut and turned to me. She held out her arms and I stepped into them, hugging her close. Vivian didn’t say anything to anyone. She just got into the car and started it, waiting for me to say my goodbyes. I hugged Patrick then climbed into the passenger seat. I looked back at Sharon and Patrick through the back window. They had their arms wrapped around each other’s waists, and they were both leaning slightly forward to look into the car. Truncated by the concave curve of the glass, they looked like they were about to jump, like a couple on the cusp on some big decision.

“Be careful,” Sharon said. “And watch your legs.”

Patrick just nodded.

My legs didn’t hurt at all. I did consider going back into the house to get my crutches, just in case. But I decided not to. They’d be happier here in Malibu.

Here’s the thing: to make a musical, one needs first a sense of rhythm, the kind of rhythm that understands that the heightened reality of bursting into song and dance to express inchoate emotion demands imagination in the combining of elements like music, movement and narrative momentum. And none of these directors/producers seem to me to be prepared to dance that tango or name that tune. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe I shouldn’t complain until I see the work on the screen. But I do know this: if any of these musicals feel as stiff as Dreamgirls or as inert as Rent or as silly as The Producers, I’ll always blame the rise of Rob Marshall: how he managed to make Nine, a play about film, even more boring on film that it was on stage is beyond me.

That said: here are some of my favorite movie musicals, adapted from Broadway or created from scratch, in no particular order…some of them are flawed yes, but none of them fail on the level of musical/dramatic/narrative integration (scenes from a few of them are below, too; compare any of that Fosse staging or Jerome Robbins choreography to Rob Marshall’s work in Chicago. Or Gene Kelly’s tap dancing to Richard Gere’s in the same flick. Or the narrative work done by the music and staging to Chris Columbus’s Rent):

Cabaret

Singin’ in the Rain

West Side Story

The Bandwagon

On the Town

Funny Girl

Grease

Cabin in the Sky

An American In Paris

The Wizard of Oz

Fame

The Sound of Music

“Captain Jack”

Does anyone write epic seven-minute pop narratives of suburban angst like Billy Joel? Perhaps I have a soft spot for Joel because, like him, I was a Long Island kid with big dreams of the creative life. But it’s also a bit more than that. One of the most contested of contemporary singer-songwriters, Joel’s prolific 30 year run of Top 40-meets-Tin Pan alley throwback-meets-classic rock records has nonetheless produced some of the sturdiest and most popular songs pop radio has seen. Sure, he’s ripped off The Beatles to no end, from harmonic structures to phrasing (then again, who hasn’t, though Joel seems to have been criticized for it more than anyone). Sure he’s descended into some obvious moon-June rhyme schemes that don’t always hit the ear all that elegantly. Yes, there were moments where we wore his pop star insecurities like a defense shield against the rough-and-tumble rock hierarchy that sometimes treated him like just a suburban commuter to the serious big-city world rock-stardom. But for all his critics, he’s lasted longer than most and the fans understand. And they understand very well that it’s because of records like this one: “Captain Jack”—from Joel’s Piano Man album—is a finely etched portrait of suburban malaise, a true-feeling investigation into the complicated rhythms of post-war American masculinity. But it’s also just a terrifically rendered song, almost short story-like, drenched in melodrama and sadness. Set against a typical melodic Joel piano line, with a tension-filled chorus backed by some nice high-stakes guitar work, the lyrics recount some fraught moments in the life of a druggy fallen middle-class kid trying to find his way, blending Joel’s gift for conversational detail (“Your sister’s gone out, she on a date/You just sit at home and masturbate/Your phone is gonna ring soon, but you just can’t wait/For that call…”) with his epic sense of narrative structure. By the time the crashing organs are punctuating the final choruses, bathing Joel’s growling vocals in grand emotion, you can feel Joel reaching out to connect with the listener the way the kid in the song needs to connect with his dealer, for the hopeful headiness of that next high. “Captain Jack” will, indeed, make you high tonight, or anytime you hear it.

Listen to it here:

Who knew what to expect from the former Wham! pretty boy when the shiny British duo—which relied so heavily on a slick Euro take on the Motown sound and big 80s dance pop—split up and went their separate ways? Did we think he’d drop an album of such burnished crowd-pleasing beauty that he’d place 6 singles in the Top 40 and suddenly begin to be thought of as a versatile artist getting mentioned in the same breath as Elton John and Michael Jackson? Some might have but I certainly didn’t, and I was a big George Michael fan. Sure, Wham! had given us some ear-candy treats, none more notably great than the funky, blue-eyed soul of “Everything She Wants”, but I really didn’t think George Michael had more greatness in him. Then I heard “Faith”, and selfish pop fan that I am, I was convinced he’d made it just for me…It had all the things I love in a pop record mix: Acoustic guitar? Check. Hand claps? Check. Ultra harmonic background vocals? Check. Running time less than four minutes long? Check. This was pure pop polish with an edge raw enough to inch the man closer to real, honest-to-goodness, honestly-sincere singer-songwriter territory. Of course it helped that he ripped off the right sorta rock sound, wrapping his velvet vocals and radio-ready lyrics in a tight rockabilly-meets-Bo Diddleyesque swirl of guitar and drum. And, by golly, it didn’t sound like anything else on the radio at the time: This was 1987 remember, and the big radio hits were either big slabs of loud over-emoted pop-rock anthems like “Living on a Prayer” and “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight” (both of which I love by the way) or slickly-produced crossover r&b like Whitney’s “So Emotional” and Club Nouveau’s “Lean on Me”. Other than maybe Suzanne Vega’s “Luka”, there wasn’t a lot of nuance in the air; bombast ruled the day. But George seemed to know that a little ditty that sounded slightly old-wave might make him seem slighty ahead of things and still catch the kids where their dancing hips met their romantic yearnings. “Faith” was just sign of things to come.

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“I Wish”

When I interviewed R. Kelly in 2007 about his then-upcoming release Double Up, I was eager to find out how much legendary crooner Sam Cooke had influenced the singer-songwriter, if Cooke—perhaps my all-time favorite male vocalist—had been a conscious touchstone for Kells’ style and approach to vocalizing. This is what he told me when I asked about “I Wish” (to my mind, his most Cooke-ish moment of them all): “I usually don’t hear my influences til the song is over with. While I’m writing I’m so into what I’m hearing on the radio in my head that I’m just, like, ‘Wow I can’t wait to finish this so everybody else can hear what I’ve just heard.’ Once it’s done it’s like ‘Oh man, that riff right there is like some Same Cooke shit!” Then, sitting there in that Chicago hotel room, coincidentally getting his hair braided as we we’re talking, he sings some “I Wish” lyrics—“Come on and braid my hair”—to make his point.  I’ve always contended that R. Kelly was the true songwriting heir apparent to brilliant r&b songwriter/producers like Gamble and Huff and gifted singer-songwriters like Stevie and Marvin. Even when dabbling in over-the-top sex jams like “Bump and Grind” there was still always this incredible melodic sensibility and sturdy song construction that betrayed Kelly’s obvious commercial imperatives. Kelly’s best songs—and “I Wish” is one of his best, one of the best r&b records of the past 20 years—are scarred and bruised paeans to joy and pain, hinting at extremely complicated emotions. “I Wish” wins so much because its sad loping, acoustic rhythms perfectly match the song’s lyrics of loss, blending Kelly’s gift for colloquial expression that doesn’t pander with his dramatic renditions of outsize emotions. There is an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink quality to some moments: the gospel chorus, the kids’ shouts, the expansive and commingled references to the deaths of his mother and two friends which inspired the song. But Kelly somehow balances all of it, using his best Cooke influences and wedding them to his own rugged elegance. The best popular music stands the test of time not just because of a great chorus or fabulous vocals; sometimes good old-fashioned craft can turn a song in a timeless moment. “I Wish”—sad, hopeful, elegiac, and defiantly of the streets—is crafted like the best of them. Mr. Cooke would be proud.

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The first time I heard Sade’s dulcet tones I was sitting in the nasty kitchen in Perkins Hall at Brown University, with a bunch of other 17-year-old freshmen, trying to act grown.  See, that Friday night, instead of going to the Ratty (the dining hall), we decided to cook in our dorm, so there we were, eating pasta and drinking wine, with the evening’s soignée entertainment consisting of a boombox playing some new artist whose name many of us were pronouncing as if a “Marquis de” came in front of it. It was Sade’s first album, Diamond Life, which took us all by storm that night, and in me, created a lifelong Sade fan. Flash-forward a coupla years and I’m driving back to Providence from NYC with my friend Gordon, and we sing along, many many times, to what would end up being maybe my favorite Sade recording: “Nothing Can Come Between Us”. I think I love this song so much because, not only does it seem to be about a close friendship as well as love affair,  it displays Sade’s playful side without losing the elegance and lush emotion so much of her music trades in. And also (mainly?) because of the incredibly indelible backing vocals of Leroy Osbourne, especially that sexy-as-hell “yeah, yeah” that he interpolates into the second chorus like a suave little eighth-note of love. This song is the closest Sade’s ever come to a full-on duet and with its samba-like rhythm and in-the-pocket bassline it gives the sorta-meandering Stronger Than Pride album a firm and meaty anchor. As beautifully as Sade’s lead vocals caress her typically lovelorn lyrics, there’s also a roundelay of haunting improvs and choral shouts accompanying the vamp that closes the song, giving it even more power and resonance. This is the kind of record you have to play three or four times in a sitting; it makes you happy, it sounds like heaven, it’s sublime.

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Before hearing this record, I never thought I’d ever dance to a song by Everything But the Girl. One of my favorite bands through college, they were the group I turned to for sad, pretty songs about love, lost and found, when my own inchoate emotions confused me about, well, everything. I luxuriated in their blend of jazz-inflected folk and soothingly melodic pop, appreciating more than anything Tracey Thorn’s sad-as-can-be vocal expressiveness. But then one day in late 1995, I’m in the backseat of a Town Car, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, and suddenly the radio speakers are popping with a familiar-sounding lyric, only this time mixed into the bass and thump of a crazy house beat. I soon found out that EBTG’s little song from their 9^th album Amplified Heart had been re-mixed by legendary club producer/DJ Todd Terry into this scorching-hot house track. Not only had the pulse and tempo of the song gotten bigger and deffer, the lyric, and the plaintive vocal that expressed such outright sexual and romantic longing, seemed to take on even more urgency. Had there ever been a house jam with so much heartache and longing in its grooves? Of course the simplicity of Thorn’s lyric (“like the deserts miss the rain”) made “Missing” perfect for the Terry re-mix—we tend to sing along with the track when we dance, and these lyrics seemed made for sing-along status—and Terry exploited every nuance of the lyric’s hesitant, heartbroken emotion to fill in the beats with extraordinary effects. Then again, Terry had always been adept at taking the drama quotient of any of his deep house cuts as high as the crowd could take it (check out classics like “Bango (To the Batmobile)” or “A Day in the Life”).  And as much as I’d enjoyed the song as the album version’s guitar ballad, it wasn’t until after hearing the re-mix of “Missing” that I started to wonder something about the object of affection Tracey Thorn sang about: who exactly was this “you” who “could be dead” and was always “two steps ahead” of every one else? What kind of number had he done on homegirl to cause her to get on that train and walk down his street, again and again and again?

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