Today I noticed that CNN has devoted 11 AM – 3 PM (Central) today to the Michael Jackson memorial service.

Four hours.  On a network supposedly devoted to news.  This is why the cable news networks drive me up a wall.

It got me thinking though – I can’t imagine any other current musician/pop star getting this kind of coverage if they died.

Paul McCartney?  I don’t see it.

Dylan?  Nope.

Bono?  Maybe more than any other, but not even in the same ballpark.

To me, this just confirms that people’s interest in Michael Jackson isn’t really in his music.  It has to do with his celebrity and his weirdness.  The circumstances behind his death contribute to this too.  I think the interest in his music is just something to try to legitimize the obsession over him.

Anyway, speaking of weird, I saw this Flickr set on Boingboing a few months ago.  I’m not sure what I got out of it, it’s more of a trainwreck thing.

When Dimebag Darrell died in 2004, people started calling him one of the greatest guitarists that ever was, ranking him with Hendrix and EVH, then someone had to take it further and compare him to John Lennon. Let’s face it, the guy was a great metal guitarist, but comparing him to the all time greats is just a little much.

The same thing is going on with Michael Jackson.  Even though it typically wasn’t my sort of thing I owned a cassette of Thriller back in 1983 and with the exception of the horrible song “The Girl is Mine” it’s a pretty solid album.  That being said, he’s now being compared to Elvis and the Beatles and that’s just not right.  I lost the link to the guy, but someone on Twitter made the claim that his work would one day be analyzed the same way Michelangelo’s is today.

Really?

At the end of the day, Michael Jackson was just a pop singer.  Thriller (which is what I’m guessing is his best album) is good, but it’s not exactly Revolver or Pet Sounds.  I sometimes feel that people are desperate to cling to something from their generation as significant and if they keep saying it long enough it will come true – these are the people you see on the news who make the statement that they’ll always remember where they were when they heard Michael Jackson was dead.  Saying this on the day that it happened sounds phony to me – it’s something you come to realize as time goes on.

Anyway, with all my complaining about this, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll buy myself a new copy of Thriller.  The cassette I had back in 1983 is long gone and I’m wondering how it will sound to me today.