This human mystery has something of the Egyptian Sphinx and the great feathered serpent in him. Ray-Bans hiding his pupils, his mouth often shielded by a Japanese face mask, apparitions where paranoia was calculated in bodyguards, for a long time Michael Jackson haunted his own life like a hundred ghost. The king of Pop? The Howard Hughes of the disco? Even children will turn 50 one day. This legend bowed out on the threshold of his announced comeback, like a fragmented phoenix, a very strange hidden king.
He had his global coronation music, Thriller, had been released in December the previous year. With the arrival of Ronald Reagan, an America on steroids rediscovered itself in this singer with the reconstructed nose, driven wild by the Quincy Jones' chrome-plated arrangements, galvanised by the hard rock rock guitar of Eddie Van Halen. The whole world adored Billie Jean, a song about the denial of paternity, which gave the singer the opportunity to introduce his famous moonwalk, while Thriller was the pretext for a memorable clip in the style of the Night of the Living Dead...
A fascinating text, skillfully constructed, integrating short literary biographical texts on :
- Shirley Temple
- Elvis Presley
- Fred Astaire
- Myra Breckinridge
- Phineas Taylor Barnum
- Walt Disney
- Gabriele d'Annunzio
- Walter Benjamin