"I think the best is yet to come in my true humble opinion," Michael Jackson told ABC on Friday, his 50th birthday. But is it? It's hard to imagine the superstar outgrowing his past, good and bad, especially from the remote confines of Bahrain, where he settled before recently returning to America. That is, if he ever decided to make anything new at all.
And why would he? He's still getting rich off his own fumes.
Even though Jackson has been plagued with legal and economic messes for the last several years, he has still managed to go platinum with a series of repackaged reissues: In 2008 alone, he's hit paydirt with the anniversary release Thriller 25 and the retrospective King of Pop. In fact, Jackson now boasts more compilations than original full-lengths, almost all of them platinum blockbusters from one end of the Earth to the other. No wonder he's feeling so optimistic.
this audio or video is no longer availableBut Jackson's happiest days, he admitted, were behind him. According to the Associated Press, they occurred while he was recording Off the Wall and Thriller, nearly three decades ago.
"That meant very much to me," he told ABC. "I enjoyed it very much," he said.
But those days are over. Sony is recycling Jackson's creative output with ferocity, soaking every last nickel out of his backlog that it can. The music industry is on its last legs in the 21st century. We may never see another global music phenomenon like Jackson. Whether or not that is a good thing is up to the listeners.
Photo: Wikipedia
