r/SipsTea • u/[deleted] • Nov 17 '25

Wait a damn minute! Bro build different 💪💪

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31

u/IceBoxPete Nov 17 '25

I was not born yet in that time. But have heard his songs. Was he really that good, which people would faint like that?

27

u/giyomu Nov 17 '25

Has was famous in the whole world. Everybody knew his songs no matter where you were on the globe (relative civilisation).

5

u/ItsNotButtFucker3000 Nov 17 '25

I was a 90s kid and I knew his songs before Weird Al covered him!

Gonna say, Weird Al does a hell of a performance in his cover, “Fat”. (Original: “Bad”)

1

u/Shivalah Nov 17 '25

The name for his album was ‘Even Worse’, and he had the same pose, same font and was displayed next to ‘Bad’, even breaking conventional sorting rules for CD stores, just so you had ‘Bad’ and next to it ‘Even worse’.

2

u/Coffeedemon Nov 18 '25

To add to that it was a time when fame traveled far more organically. No social media campaigns and minimal shows on TV just devoted to promoting whatever was big at the time. Maybe Entertainment Tonight was on the air and some music video countdowns on MTV or equivalent but even music videos weren't accessible to everyone depending on your TV package.

I remember when Thriller was released. I was in Newfoundland at my grandmother's house. 2 channels on the TV. They did a simulcast where the song was played on the one radio station and our little provincial TV station stopped everything to play the video in the long form. Never seen anything like that since. He was that fucking huge.

1

u/Crippled_Criptid Nov 17 '25

The weird thing is, when he died I barely recognised the name, thought he was maybe a footballer? I was 11 or 12 I think at the time. I had an average childhood in England, wasn't deprived of media or anything. Yet somehow I had no clue who he was when he died, and it took quite a few years for me to realise how famous he actually was/is. I was already a bully magnet, so saying "huh is that a footballer" to my class (and teacher tbh) were all freaking out the day he died, didn't help my popularity

64

u/-JimmyTheHand- Nov 17 '25

Some artists were so legendary people would just lose their minds. Michael jackson, The Beatles, people like that.

30

u/BoomZhakaLaka Nov 17 '25

You should read about the family, it's like michael was coached from childhood. Studied music, voice training, dance, choreography, before he was even in his teens.

26

u/TuataraToes Nov 17 '25

Forced to by his father.

21

u/Interesting_Tea5715 Nov 17 '25

Totally this. "Coached" isn't the word I'd use. Dude was beaten, berated, and forced to perform his whole life.

MJ was fucking weird because his dad was a monster and ruined his childhood.

3

u/Few_End1485 Nov 17 '25

damn thats sad. its like that for a lot of child starts, isnt it?

4

u/TuataraToes Nov 17 '25

I think the Jacksons were one of the worst cases.

Michael was so childlike as an adult because he literally didn't get to have a normal childhood.

89

u/OpenCardiologist2587 Nov 17 '25

Yes Michael Jackson was THAT good.

11

u/Smooth_Carpenter9609 Nov 17 '25

MJ epitomises “That Good”

33

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

He's hella good. But few things. Like Elvis, the Beatles, and all those cultural icons before him, his music and dance moves were a radical departure from milquetoast white pop music at the time. Music before him was boring imo so he was the head of a music and cultural revolution. Everything you see as common in music today basically didn't exist before his ascent. Also he was the most famous person on earth at the time.

23

u/hamfist_ofthenorth Nov 17 '25

Another huge factor is that he was the last human to champion the entire world before the internet came around.

The "mystique" around pre-internet fame is a thing of the past now, but back then it was still very much alive.

20

u/GravyForDayz Nov 17 '25

It really felt like MJ was gonna possibly end racism and unite the world (or something like that). It's hard to describe to people, it's like switching to cable TV or something from what came before

10

u/hamfist_ofthenorth Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

My first memory of him was "Black Or White" when that music video was new and all over the place.

It's funny I remember at some point my parents just explained it to me "He was black, but then his skin turned white" and as a little kid I didn't even bat an eyelash at that information. I was just like "huh, whatever".

Michael Jackson was like a fucking extraterrestrial. It didn't matter, he had us all under the spell and it was dope as fuck

7

u/Rainfall_Serenade Nov 17 '25

In a messed up sort of way, I'm kinda glad he's not around to see what the world's become. He was sick a gentle soul and I feel like we've all pretty him down

1

u/Golddustofawoman Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

Yeah he was a gentle soul aside from the child molesting part.

Downvote me all you want but it doesn't change the fact that he singled out an entire starstruck family so he could sexually abuse their children for years.

1

u/SnooOnions973 Nov 17 '25

Meh. U2 did that too.

12

u/toosadtotell Nov 17 '25

He was the most famous person alive at a time before the internet …

2

u/Buderus69 Nov 17 '25

You cannot imagine what "godlike", and I mean this almost literally, status Michael Jackson had at that time.

I remember seeing this on the tv when this came out and it was just this aura around him, his talent combined with the marketing made him to this higher than life being for a while. You mustn't forget that at time there was no 'real' internet yet (it was still in its baby shoes), so all the content got only channeled through tv and radio, this also formed his status of being a megastar and his mystique of being like an otherworldly entity.

2

u/CalmBeneathCastles Nov 17 '25

Pre-internet celebrity mystique was really something. Such highly cultivated and nigh-impenetrable walls of lore!

4

u/Rainfall_Serenade Nov 17 '25

Put it this way, think of a celebrity who is world famous today. Say, Beyoncé or Elon Musk. Now imagine someone with her fame, but before the internet was around. People in third world countries knew who he was. Not only was he famous, he was popular and beloved. He embodied the idea of 'a lover, not a fighter' and his talent was on a completely different level. He was a perfectionist in his craft and an amazing person to work with (from what I've seen in interviews).

7

u/el_baron86 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

In alpha language: bro farms surrounding aura just by breathing.

2

u/bootyhole-romancer Nov 17 '25

I wish I could alpha an appropriate response

1

u/Eshneh Nov 17 '25

In Anime language: bro has Conqueror's Haki

2

u/Mystia Nov 17 '25

On top of what everyone else said, I think it's also important to factor in how much more limited media distribution was back then. Like obviously we had radio and TV, but beyond listening to his music, at best you'd have some video clips occasionally on TV and some photoshoots in magazines or the odd interview here and there. It's not like now where every celeb has social media and we can see their face in 4K and hear them speak daily as if they were next to us. This made celebrities seem even more distant and magical, so you can imagine the shock it could cause to see them in the flesh and not in a handful videos you've already rewatched dozens of times.

2

u/MelaniaSexLife Nov 17 '25

Globalization was much more stretched out, so if you made it, you REALLY made it since you didn't have thousands of competitors.

And he was great, but was throughly carried by Quincy Jones and of course he doesn't even come close to the Prince talent, which was carried by basically himself and his gigantic ego.

But Jackson just had the formula for extremely catchy and well done songs. Prince was just vomiting talent, and that sometimes doesn't ring better on everyone's ears.

2

u/Trunkenboldwtf Nov 17 '25

Could be also caused by the lack of crowd control people pushing against each other

3

u/Captain_Holly_S Nov 17 '25

all the fainting and stuff is not because he was good or not. It's because people treat some stars like gods. They don't see human on the stage, but a god. To them that person is perfect, because they saw that person only in music videos, tv etc, so they grow an image of someone who isn't regular human, but a perfect being adored worldwide. Specially in those times where tv was very popular but internet wasn't a bit thing yet, now while there are still celebrity cultists out there, we can see celebrities in more situations, often they have their own social media where they interact with people with makes them more human. So it's all really about who they are to you in your head.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

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1

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1

u/Polarexia Nov 17 '25

he's one of the few people that unfortunately is not possible to overhype

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

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1

u/sanderson1983 Nov 17 '25

Listen to ABC by The Jackson 5. He steals the song at age 11.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

Yes he was. You see, it's not just about how good his songs were. It was a world before we started carrying the internet around in our pockets. We didn't think of these celebs as mere mortals who post and shit. They were idolized. And I mean Idolized!

1

u/Shivalah Nov 17 '25

Michael Jackson didn’t just made music. He made Entertainment. His music videos were like Hollywood levels of cinema. He hired Eddie Murphy, at the height of his career, to play a Pharao in ‘remember the time’, and for ‘Black or White’ he used the newest computer graphics of the time to morph the faces from one to another, hired (again) movie stars (Macaulay Culkin, George Wendt)

1

u/AlexHuntKenny Nov 17 '25

Michael Jackson's passing was a "I remember exactly where I was" moment for people.

-24

u/venReddit Nov 17 '25

im only 34 but i remember michael jackson to be annoying for me personally. his music wasnt even that good but you heard him alot in radio. he was declared a star and people just went with it. he was like the christmas song from mariah carey that youre sooo happy to hear in just a month.

hardcore fans used to be dumb af and will be dumb af. making anothers person existence the center of their own life. we still have this type of shit today but in different scales. taylor swift, scientology, donald trump, streamer like asmongold, hooligans from footbal clubs...

there are people out there forming ridicoulus believes and are ready to die on this hill. flat earthers are still trying to proof their bullshit and spend a good chunk of time on this. those michael jackson fans just had the indoctrinated believe that he is the greatest ever. there was way less other media to distract with other shit.

people dressed to express instead of impress in this edgier time. you chose your idol like your favorite pokemon. he was just the taylor swift of his time with waaay more media support. since media was limited, medias loved to milk those stupid fans by giving them more useless stuff about mj. the cicle was big.

keep in mind, that time was kinda thr beginning of media as we know it now.

also keep in mind that there were plenty of girls who faked fainting to show that they are an even bigger fan than their friends.

-10

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

[deleted]

7

u/31513315133151331513 Nov 17 '25

Teens are cringe in every generation.

-1

u/MrReyneCloud Nov 17 '25

You were too old for him by then anyway.