The one singer Paul McCartney said would be remembered forever
It’s safe to say that in 100 years’ time, people will be looking at the work of The Beatles the same way that they used to look at classical music.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney might not have known the first thing about music theory, but everything great about popular music today can all be traced back to the moment when they got everyone screaming on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. But while Macca was more than happy to contribute to music history, he felt that he wasn’t the only one whose music would stand the test of time long after he’s gone.
Because, really, what The Beatles started was only the beginning of what pop bands were supposed to be. People first got a taste of what the teenage pinup star was when Elvis Presley hit the stage, but given the fact that the Fab Four gave the world four different versions of Presley, it was only a matter of time before people tried to do the same thing with a bunch of kids in bowl cuts that could play a half-decent version of a Chuck Berry tune.
But the real students of The Beatles were the ones paying attention to the music above anything else. Everything they did throughout their middle period was about trying to experiment with different sounds, and you can still hear the ingenuity of everything from Revolver to Sgt Peppers to Abbey Road in every single thing they played. But if The Beatles were their own institution, Motown was a damn hit factory.
Berry Gordy had a unique vision for what a great song was supposed to sound like, and while it took the Jackson 5 a while to get their foot in the door, there was no question that Michael Jackson was bound to be a star. His charisma onstage, even as a young man, was unmatched by anyone else in Hitsville, and when he finally decided to strike out on his own, hearing him grow into a pop superstar the minute Off the Wall came out is still one of the most impressive pivots in pop history.
McCartney may have been along for the ride more than a few times when working with Jackson on ‘Say Say Say’ and ‘The Girl is Mine’, but Jackson is probably the only person who could make a former Beatle feel like an afterthought on their album. Everything from Thriller to Bad to even some parts of Dangerous were the basis for what modern pop stars were supposed to be, and by the time Jackson passed away, Macca knew that the world had lost a once-in-a-lifetime talent.
For all of the great hits that the former Beatle had to his name, he had no problem saying that Jackson’s music would live on for decades to come, saying, “I feel privileged to have hung out and worked with Michael. He was a massively talented boy man with a gentle soul. His music will be remembered forever and my memories of our time together will be happy ones.” That’s not to say that there wasn’t some bad blood every now and again.
Despite the eccentric side of Jackson turning people off and the predatory accusations levelled at him, the fact that Macca could still find time to look past all that is a testament to what Jackson meant to the world. If anyone had taken away the rights to your songs, there’s a chance you’d never want to speak to them again, but McCartney figured that any grudge that he had over Jackson acquiring The Beatles’ catalogue didn’t matter nearly as much as the magic he gave the rest of the world.
Because whether you got into his music all the way back listening to ‘I Want You Back’ or saw him bust out the Moonwalk for the first time when playing ‘Billie Jean’ live, the aesthetic of Michael Jackson is still alive and well in every major pop star to come after him from Justin Timberlake to Bruno Mars to Usher. His checkered past may have had a lot of people looking at him differently, but when it comes to the music, ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ was more than just a song title. It was the reason why people hung around through thick and thin whenever he came on the radio.
