Top 5 Michael Jackson Songs of All Time

The fact that I can even assemble a list like this is testament to the prolific figure that Michael Jackson was in pop music. I've never owned one of his albums. Of the 4,547 songs on my iPod, not one of them is a Michael Jackson song (but I did have parachute pants in 1985, and really wanted a glitter glove).

The point is, Michael Jackson was so big in pop culture that one didn't even have to be a fan to recognize and participate in the global phenomena that was the King of Pop.

So here's my minimal tribute to Michael Jackson... a Top 5 greatest songs list:

1. Billie Jean (1983): winner of two Grammy awards in 1984, this is the song that triggered MJ's success.
2. Thriller (1983): the horror-sci-fi narrative music video was the most expensive video of its time, costing nearly $800,000 (equivalent to $1.4 million today), and is the title track to the bast selling album of all time.
3. Beat It (1983): despite crass jokes about the meaning of the song, the lyrics are about defeat and courage.
4. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough (1979): MJ's first solo Grammy from the Off the Wall album.
5. Smooth Criminal (1987): the centerpiece of MJ's hour-long short film, Moonwalker (starring Joe Pesci), and inspiration for Sega Genesis arcade video game!

Thoughts on the Me Generation v. Generation Me

(extended thought from blog post on the McKenzies page entitled Online Catharsis)

The baby-boomers were at one time thought to be the most self-absorbed generation in American history, and carried the label of the Me Generation. In recent years this title has been appropriated, twisted and reassigned to the babies of those same boomers - born in the 80s and 90s - now called Generation Me or the Look @ Me Generation.

Author Jean Twenge, an Associate Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and herself a member of Generation Me - spent 10 years doing research on this group's sense of entitlement and self-absorption. She attributed it to the radical individualism that was engendered by baby-boomer parents and educators focused on instilling self-esteem in children beginning in the 1970s. American and Canadian youth were raised on aphorisms such as "express yourself" and "just be yourself."

To further illustrate her point, Twenge also found a large increase in self-reference words like "I," "me," "mine," and "myself" in news stories published in the 80s and 90s. These words replaced collective words such as "we," "us," "humanity," "country," or "crowd" found in the stories of similar nature in the 50s and 60s. This generation may be the least thoughtful, community-oriented and conscientious one in North American history.

-Information gathered from Adbusters Magazine, Nov/Dec 2008 - #80 - Volume 16, Number 6

Twitter Spoof Video

Kinda' makes you think twice about your next status update, huh?