My nine-year-old son Ezra loves Michael Jackson. It’s Saturday morning, and we are curled up on the sofa while his mother enjoys a lie-in. YouTube is on the television, and I ask him what he wants to watch, knowing full well the answer. “Michael Jackson,” he says. I don’t know how Jackson first entered Ezra’s consciousness—perhaps a poster for MJ the Musical, ending its West End run on 28 February, or the trailer for the biopic Michael, released on 24 April. However it started, Ezra is now fully obsessed. If it were up to him, our lives would be a loop of “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Smooth Criminal.”
We put on the “Billie Jean” video, and it takes me back to the summer of 1983, when I was 12 and first heard Michael Jackson. It’s easy to see why Ezra loves him. I became obsessed for the same reasons: the way he sang, looked, and danced. I show Ezra the “Billie Jean” performance from the 25th anniversary Motown concert. Jackson seemed possessed of unearthly talent and charisma. I tell Ezra I saw Jackson on the Bad tour at Wembley Stadium in 1988. He is aghast. He looks so full of joy, and while I am happy for him, I am conflicted: there is a reason I stopped listening to Jackson.
Not that the new biopic Michael addresses it. The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey says it depicts Jackson as a well-intentioned saint who ends gang violence and cares for sick children—stopping abruptly in 1988, six years before he reached an out-of-court settlement with Evan Chandler, who accused him of abusing his 13-year-old son Jordan, and 17 years before Jackson was acquitted of child sexual abuse in a criminal trial.
We always knew Jackson was strange: the oxygen tank rumours, the Elephant Man obsession, Bubbles the chimp, his transformation from black to white. From the early 1990s, he was repeatedly accused of sexually abusing boys he had befriended, culminating in a 2005 trial that ended in acquittal on all charges. (A Channel 4 series, Michael Jackson: The Trial, revisiting the case, aired in February.)
I am not sure I ever completely believed Jackson was innocent—Johnnie Cochran, part of his defence team, also represented OJ Simpson—but honestly, I think I looked the other way because the music was just too good. When allegations against R Kelly broke, it was easy not to listen because I never had. But to live without Michael Jackson’s music? And anyway, they were just stories, he was acquitted, and how great is Eddie Van Halen’s guitar on “Beat It”?
The 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland convinced me those excuses no longer worked. Director Dan Reed told the story of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who alleged they were sexually abused by Jackson as boys. There was no criminal conviction or definitive physical evidence, but it was hard to listen to music that once sparked joy after glimpsing “the evil lurking in the dark.” So I stopped listening.
The first time Ezra asked me to put on a Michael Jackson song, I tried to say no. When he insisted on knowing why, I struggled. Just saying no wouldn’t suffice, but did I really want to introduce him to the sordid details? There will be a day when we need to have A Conversation about Michael Jackson, when he will grapple with separating the artist from the art. But what I love about Ezra is that he reminds me of uncomplicated pleasure. I envy his ignorance. There will come a time when he learns troubling facts and maybe decides he can no longer listen. For now, I am happy for him to listen and grateful he gets to spend a little while longer in Neverland.
