Michael Jackson back from the dead? That was more or less the synopsis of Thriller, the historic music video that catapulted the youngest of the Jackson Five to pop music stardom. Forty-three years later, the same scenario is playing out – except this time, Michael Jackson, who died on June 25, 2009 from a drug overdose, is truly deceased.
His work, on the other hand, had not seemed as alive in a long time. The film Michael is a hit in theaters. In just three weeks of screening, the biopic by Antoine Fuqua (with Jaafar Jackson playing the role of his uncle) has already attracted over 3.5 million viewers in France. The film’s soundtrack, featuring the major hits of the “king of pop,” is topping album sales charts. On streaming sites, plays of Billie Jean and Beat It have skyrocketed, while the “moonwalk” has become a trend on TikTok. “It’s as if all the planets have aligned,” summarizes Richard Lecocq, a specialist in African-American music and author of the biography Michael Jackson – Legend (published by Glénat).
The musical icon of the 1980s
Is it a spontaneous craze or the culmination of an XXL marketing strategy? Michael Jackson’s catalog is also a capital to be exploited, valued between 1.2 and 1.5 billion dollars. To acquire half of it, Sony wrote a nine-figure check in 2024. But advertising overexposure doesn’t explain everything. “Michael Jackson truly has an iconic dimension that transcends generations. Every Halloween, Thriller returns to the charts, it has almost become the soundtrack. There is a universal aspect to his work, which is rare in pop culture. Today, we watch his videos a bit like we would watch a Tex Avery, a Disney, or a Charlie Chaplin. It is very much marked in its time, but the emotions it conveys, the scenarios, the dances, that transcends the years,” adds Richard Lecocq.
Its rediscovery is also part of an idealization of the 1980s, illustrated by the success of the series Stranger Things, and the role as influencers for a new generation of artists, from Billie Eilish to The Weeknd, who do not hide the influence that Michael Jackson had on their music.
No mention of child molestation accusations
In 2019, after the release of Leaving Neverland, an damning documentary in which two men accused the singer of sexual abuse when they were children, no one would have bet on this revival. Some radios even began to pull his songs from their program. “There were the Epstein, R. Kelly, or Puff Daddy scandals, and people had points of comparison. They realized that the accusations against Michael Jackson have always followed the same pattern, by people who first go to lawyers before the police,” explains Richard Lecocq, who prefers to remember that the only trial for sexual assault against minors against Michael Jackson ended in acquittal in 2005. However, a second trial is scheduled for November, filed against the singer’s companies by the two alleged victims named in Leaving Neverland.
These accusations were conveniently omitted in the biopic, officially due to a confidentiality agreement between Michael Jackson and the family of Jordan Chandler – the first to accuse him of sexual assault in 1993.
According to the specialized press, the Chandler case should have been the main thread of the film. Ending with the Bad tour from 1987-1989, the film does not shy away from showing the relationship between Michael Jackson and his father Joseph – a foundation for understanding the singer’s psychology, deprived of his childhood by a despotic father who turned him into a cash machine. “What touches people is also Michael Jackson’s rather sad human trajectory. He did not have an easy life. Even when he was at the height of his glory, he always had this disastrous relationship with his father,” notes Richard Lecocq.
