michael jackson's voice

I want to talk about something very specific here, which is difficult when you open up the can of worms that is one of the most famous people to ever walk the earth.

I think Tesfaye’s voice is actually better than Michael Jackson’s, which is maybe a controversial opinion with some spice and heat to it. Few people cover Michael Jackson because it’s pointless: you’re going to embarrass yourself. But Tesfaye—whose vocal performance is so indebted to Jackson that you can barely throw a rock and not hit someone who has commented on the Jacksonian nature of his vocals—really does just have an impeccable voice. His voice is as flexible as Jackson’s, but purer with a clarity to the elasticity that is rarely seen by anyone, but that I think does stand above Jackson.

This cover of Dirty Diana has always been a favorite of mine. It’s more atmospheric and haunting than the original, but also lacks something that is the topic of this essay. So let’s listen to the original now.

Do you hear it? Do you feel it as chills up your spine, radiating out to your fingers and toes?

My son has gotten very into Michael Jackson lately. I find this hilarious and also awesome, because, as I think I’ve mentioned somewhere in one of these essays, I have a very old memory of singing and dancing to Scream.

One of the interesting things about listening to a lot of Michael Jackson in a short time period is that I’ve begun noticing something that I guess I never did before. I mean, the influence of his vocal performance and dancing is enormous. And his c’mon-uh and aheehee and hooting and all the other little tics of his vocals have been parodied and/or mimicked by everyone you’ve ever met, so there’s little to say there.

But I suppose I’ve always thought of Jackson as having a sort of ineffable sweetness to him. Maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve spent hours with my headphones on walking my college campus listening to the King of Pop, but it’s that sweetness that usually comes to mind when I think of Jackson’s singing.

But after spending a lot of time with his music recently, I’d say it’s not the sweetness or beauty or even the vocal tics that define his oeuvre, but rage.

There’s a viciousness to his vocal performances. A sinister edge to even his ballads.

That rage, that vicious edge, gives a real texture to his vocals that make you feel him as much as you hear him. It’s so distinctive that I don’t know how I either never noticed or forgot.

And so when we go back up to Dirty Diana and compare The Weeknd to Jackson himself, there’s a lushness to the production of The Weeknd’s cover. It’s atmospheric and all encompassing, but I think this is to make up for what’s lacking in Tesfaye’s vocals. He hits all the notes and gives a lot of feeling and power to his performance. Arguably, he hits the notes better, clearer, and more consistently than Jackson.

But it lacks that vicious bite of Jackson’s Dirty Diana. That raw texture that radiates through me.

Jackson has been psychoanalyzed endlessly during his life and since his death and I’m not particularly interested in delving into all that, but I do find this to be at the core of his career. Sweetness and rage.

He spent his life making us smile, giving a soundtrack to our decades, to our lives, defining and shaping pop music and just about every other genre, and then there’s his dancing, his choreography. His choreography, maybe more than any other element in his career, has always been provocative and edgy and often aggressive.

While many of Jackson’s songs are about love or people coming together, there are also many about fighting, about hate, about spite. But maybe most frequent is his fixation on being understood.

Clearly, he was a man who never felt heard, even as his albums topped the charts and he filled out stadiums around the world.

What struck me especially after listening to the Thriller album for the first time in however many years is how often he’s more hissing his lyrics than he is crooning. There’s a violence simmering beneath Jackson, even when he’s singing about relationships and hope.

That edge to his voice is an instrument. Maybe the most powerful one he employed during his career.

Michael Jackson has been in my life since my earliest memories. He was famous well before I was born. I never lived in a world without Jackson’s music or influence and so, I suppose, I never sat down and tried to dig deeper into these sounds.

More than his dancing, more than the beauty and power of his voice, it’s the sinister cut to it that’s reopened his catalogue to me.