Jackson/Prince: Whose Era?
The first in an ongoing series thinking about musicians, starting with two heavyweights from the 1980s
If you’ll indulge me and let me draw on my English graduate education… there’s a famous article by the critic Marjorie Perloff entitled “Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?” Occasioned by the publication of Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era that asserted Pound’s place as the preeminent poet of 20th century Modernism along with the debate and discourse that followed it, Perloff notes the split between those who agree with Kenner and those critics who saw Wallace Stevens as the poet that defined that era.
I guess it’s not exactly a new or novel framing device (choosing between one or the other).But when you take it in the particular context (choosing between two major figures who seemingly defined a moment in time for a given art form) it’s one I return to and want to make use of here.
Throughout popular music history, in all its periods and genres, you can find these inflection points where there are two figures who are discussed as defining an “era.” Appropriately enough for more easily digestible popular music and in a modern media environment, these “eras” pass quicker than they did in the world of poetry. But you can have these same kinds of debates as the literary critics had with Pound and Stevens.
In my mind, one of the most interesting pairings to insert into this paradigm is Prince and Michael Jackson. Though their respective careers started in the 1970s (Jackson with Off the Wall in 1979, after the various Jackson 5/Jacksons iterations and Prince with his early albums), they came to real prominence in the 1980s with Jackson’s Thriller in 1982 and Prince’s Purple Rain in 1984. Both men brought forth a melding of R&B and modern pop into a both radio and MTV/video friendly package as they dominated the popular culture of the time. Thriller had 7 singles in the Billboard Top 10 while 1999 put 4 of its 9 songs into the Billboard Top 10.
When one looked back on the 1980s in the immediately following decades, they probably saw Michael Jackson as the one who defined that era and had the lasting legacy. Just with the “Thriller” video, Jackson turned the music video from merely a promotional tool to another work of art.
Whether you think this was good or bad, you cannot deny that Jackson through the videos off of Thriller (you could also put “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” in this conversation too) changed music.
Our very ideas of what a pop star should be for decades came from Michael Jackson. That was the model. Jackson’s proficiency as a singer, a dancer, and a performer was what all the boy bands and R&B stars of the late 90s/early 2000s had to follow. Justin Timberlake does not happen without Michael Jackson as a north star to follow.
You also have Jackson branching out and bringing in musicians from other genres (Paul McCartney, Steve Pocaro, Eddie Van Halen), which is something we would see in music going forward.
Speaking for myself, much of my life if you asked me who the major r&b/pop figure was, who really defined that sound and moment, I would have said Michael Jackson. I listened to him more and I thought he was that major figure. But as time went on, I started listening more to Prince and I do feel that from our 2022 vantage point, it’s hard not to say that Prince was the one who defined so much of popular music going forward.
I’m going to cop out here and not address/recount the allegations against Michael Jackson and point to them as a reason he fell so out of favor, but… I certainly think it factors in.
Pop music in recent years really bears the fluidity Prince possessed. You’ll have hip hop and rap musicians putting out songs that sound like they belong on a late 70s classic rock album. “Rock” bands have robust electronic elements. You have Childish Gambino aka Donald Glover moving from hip hop to 1970s funk and soul.
What distinguished Prince from Jackson in that arena was that he just made music that fit in those genres. Jackson would bring in major figures of those different genres to work with him and allow him to tap into those realms. Prince just wrote and performed those songs with his bands.
“I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” sounds like it could be a driving power pop song (it shouldn’t come as a surprise, Prince wrote “Manic Monday”). “Purple Rain” features guitar heroics that would make the greatest guitar gods envious. “Starfish and Coffee” would seem at home on Sesame Street as much as a Prince album (and that is me paying it a high compliment).
The man could really do it all on his own and the way in which that overlap has been internalized by the musicians that came in his wake reflects Prince’s persisting influence.
It’s also worth noting Prince’s eccentricities and the ways in which he so aggressively challenging our notions of what a major figure in popular music should be. There’s an element of transgression to Prince and his music, not just limited to sexuality though one’s mind cannot help but start there, that still lives on. Lil Nas X? Frank Ocean? We don’t get them without Prince.
So I ask you, whose era was it? Was it the era of Michael Jackson or the era of Prince? And which pairing should I consider next in this series?
Tough call, but I think the tie goes to Jackson. For anyone younger readers, it's hard to overestimate just how much of an "event" even his video releases were. I mean, who else from then could do a world premiere in prime time? Who could pull it off today?
Another point in MJ's favor is that a Prince song could be covered/performed by any number of different artists (see the Goo Goo Dolls cover of "I Could Never take the Place..." as Exhibit A)- that speaks to his brilliance as a writer and being attuned to what makes a pop song great.
But an MJ song was an MJ song. Period. No one's covering "Thriller."
As for the next pairing, I'm going to have to think about that one!