'Michael', 20 years of hits fundamental to the flavour of an era

There are examples in pop culture capable of transcending the times and even the characters that generated and conveyed them. Certain songs travel clinging like ivy to people's lives and one notices their inexorable durability, endurance because they participate in a kind of shared soundtrack, beyond choices and tastes. Like those of Michael Jackson, which remain in everyone's memory, flags that have never been lowered. This is confirmed by seeing and especially listening to the film dedicated to him, with a title that can't be more naked: 'Michael'. Two hours in which to recount twenty years of hits that are fundamental for the flavour of an era, across generations and latitudes, from when he was a child and led the band of his brothers, all older, the Jackson 5, to when, having gradually detached himself from a cumbersome and oppressive family, he became the symbol of an unprecedented discography in terms of numbers, fame, glory: devoid, moreover, of joy and that light spirit that age and above all certain brilliant motives should have transferred to him first.

In 'Michael' by director Antoine Fuqua, mediated by commercial expectations and the need to balance and tame the narrative needs and interests in the field (all the brothers, the record labels, lawyers ready to tear each other apart), it is better to concentrate on the music, the choreography, the density of compositions brought to a film as formally impeccable as a commercial, for the enjoyment of fans and the merely curious. Totally absent are certain reference figures (his sister Janet, the only one to have had a career of her own, or Diana Ross who had protected him in the jungle of business), and the problems of a disastic life, including records and jobs that were far more contrasting than they would seem, however, those songs that built the myth, despite controversies, accusations, assorted oddities, parade by. The songs that we punctually find in an album, a useful refresher to refresh the memory, are confirmation decades later of the impressive inventive and communicative quality of a pop symbol par excellence, assisted by a transversal monument of music like Quincy Jones, who led him like a new Virgil into the miracle of 'Thriller' (1982), still the best-selling album of all time. Beat it, Billie Jean, Human nature, and Thriller itself, rendered in a historic clip by director John Landis, once again underline the ability to impose himself thanks to a formidably gripping language, iridescent and free of all wear and tear. Michael Jackson in voice, in physicality was a superb performer able to lay down the law without fading over time: twenty years ago the Guinness Book of Records celebrated him as 'the most famous human being on the planet'. These songs help, even today, to understand why.

Michael (soundtrack), Sony, Double vinyl 36 €, Cd 18 €, Music cassette 20 €, Mp3 11 €