September 3rd

By Monday, September 3, 2001, radio was behind "You Rock My World." Later that week, it would debut at Number 34 on Billboard's Hot 100 from airplay alone. Entertainment Weekly found that response to "the formulaic R&B grinder ... less than overwhelming." Its mechanical melody is certainly reserved. Choruses of Michael ooze over percussion programmed so crisply it could bounce quarters. Finger snaps prop a gooey bass line. It's another approach to "The Way You Make Me Feel," but here his lead's deeper, slower, distracted even. Michael's familiar gasps start off a come-on so blasé they anticipate The Game, Neil Strauss' pick-up manipulation manual. Disinterest draws them in. So, Michael doesn't break a sweat until he's three minutes in. Even then, he seems more entranced by his own harmonizing than the PYT he's crooning to. Near the end, his exclamatory "yeah" sounds teleported from "Remember the Time."

In four days, Michael applied the same strategy at Madison Square Garden. On the first and more-troubled of a two-night extravaganza, he took the stage two hours into the show. Once there, some complained, he danced and sang like a world-class Michael impersonator. Really, technical difficulties set the tone for this five-plus-hour installment of "Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary Celebration: The Solo Years." A late start and long pauses between celebrity tribute splashes made the night's star seem indifferent or cocky. For Michael, nostalgia's always a dicey celebration. Fans want the "Billie Jean" moonwalk. Critics complain he's resting on his laurels. Someone with a reputation for deliberate precision can't accommodate false steps. Every gesture around him gathers meaning. That night, one upstaged him. In between acts, Marlon Brando monologued from a leather couch. The Oscar winner introduced himself as a "fat fuck" and admonished the audience. "While you're wondering who that old fart is sitting there," Brando meandered, "there were hundreds if not thousands of children hacked to death with a machete, beaten to death by their parents."

This Monday, like most others, Michael did little. Tuesday is his preferred start of the week. Preparations for what some called an evening of megalomania would wait. Perhaps that's why French hornist John Clark scoffed that the first show "was pretty disorganized. We only had a chance to rehearse ... twice before we had to play." Later, in a VIBE magazine interview, Michael claims he had nothing to do with organizing those evenings. He left the line-up to "trust" and to childhood friend and event planner David Gest. For the November publicity for his Anniversary's abridged television special, Michael lists his celebrity confidants for TV Guide. Among them are attendees Liza Minelli (who sang) and Elizabeth Taylor (who watched). Michael, Liza, and Liz all "come from the same planet," he explains. "It's called Capricious Anomaly in the Sea of Space," Michael laughs. "Gee, I can't name it. ... But this is true, and this is not to be taken lightly: People who grew up as child stars have the same thing in common. You're cute, they love you; you go through the awkward stage, they don't accept you anymore. Very few make the transition to adult star. And most of them become self-destructive."

Recorded music invites obsession, seclusion. Repeated listening attunes you to the literal voices in your head. Every intake of breath or melisma distinguishes itself. In public, your headphones plug you into a community of head-nodders unified by their separate worlds. Technology mediates a wily kind of limbo. Or, as Thomas Edison heralds his 1877 phonograph invention intended to fix imperfect stenography, it can "annihilate time and space." A simple wax cylinder could "bottle up for posterity the mere utterance of man." Turn-of-the-last-century entrepreneurs quickly packaged it to savor melodies. Decades before Thriller, penny arcade goers were hypnotized by the worldly disconnect made possible by the sounds filling their ears. Recorded music didn't make live performance obsolete, as some feared. It made the experience of that spectacle all the more human. Watching someone sing a song we know already from wax or digital download exposes the mechanics of memory. What impressed us at first listen accumulates an aura from its own repetition. Seeing any present-tense rendition can jar us into recognizing the very timeliness of the magic we give to that recording. Just like us, records don't live forever. Understanding our collective mortality unsettles the fantasy that replay invites. So, not surprisingly, Entertainment Weekly blames those kind of "déjà-vu-inducing gimmicks" for making Michael's Anniversary shows feel like "posthumous events." Edison's intentions live on.

Michael doesn't need to say anything to perpetuate his mystique. "You Rock My World" producer Rodney Jerkins does a fine job by himself: "Michael is a perfectionist. Oh, my goodness, I couldn't tell you how many sessions we did—so, so many. ... He's the kind of artist who doesn't allow one mistake on his records." When Michael whispers at the song's start "I don't think they're reading for this one," he's right. A Top-10 hit can only pale to any Thriller pinnacle. The lyrics of what some panned then as a "pedestrian love song" work as a parable. With its opening lines, he could be wooing Michael the moonwalker: "My life will never be the same 'cuz girl you came and changed / the way I walked the way I talked, I cannot explain."

When Michael performed the single at the end of the second Anniversary night, he came out in unplanned pants. Very white substitutes fill in for the pair he split during "Beat It." His vocals seem canned until subtle differences become conspicuous. He holds the mic close and waits until the second chorus to strut. Michael pops onto his toes, head down, like the fans will see when the video premieres. The moves update his 27-year-old robot dance with more visual creaks, a play on his older frame. Only fleetingly does Michael acknowledge his bouncy cheerleader dancers behind him in formation. His ad-libs become more impassioned than the record. They culminate with this exasperation: "Do you hear me, man?"

Then come the last 90 seconds that make the first four minutes—if not most of the evening—mere preamble. The crowd erupts when Michael bobs his head to Usher gliding in from stage right. Michael delivers two more "You Rock My World!"’s as a serenade to his acolyte. Michael touches his chest then floats to the left. The two trade robot jolts until Chris Tucker materializes to do Michael’s trademark kick. Usher applauds, “The King of Pop!” Michael falls to the floor. Whether or not it’s planned, he seems genuinely overcome. So does the crowd.