This Is It

Michael Jackson was perhaps beginning to have a spiritual leaning on his concert themes. His eerie title ”This Is It” not only ironically was a self fullfilling prophecy, but certainly can second as a spiritual mantra or Zen Koan.

To be followed by the tour “I Am That”

Dan

Re: This Is It

I would say that most people are aware of their impending death, on some level. 

Thanks for the “food for thought” and your humor !!

More humor: And on the I Am That tour, one of the songs surely will be: And That Was That.

:))
OM Bastet 

Re: This Is It

Whether the name of the tour was a conscious reflection of this or not, stylistically, Jackson seemed to owe a debt to Kenny Loggins and the kind of inter-lyric gutteral inflections that Loggins braught into his song about his own father's process of dying, This Is It. 

Or maybe it was coincidental that only after Loggins started using those non-word phrasings that Jackson re-vamped his vocal style to include similar uses of voice. As was my impression at the time.

~just a thought,

K

Re: This Is It

…having checked on that old impression of mine I find that it wasn't the non-verbal vocalizing that Loggins did years before Jackson, but the breathy, high-in-the-throat singing with word-long crescendos of volume and timbre, and sliding/lilting 'attacks' and 'closures'.

That was it.

Re: This Is It

One could describe yodelling that way, methinks……

Is this similar? (I might be one of the 2 people in the world who have never heard anything sung by Michael Jackson…..)

Blessings, OM Bastet

Re: This Is It

now, how did you manage that, OM? that's quite a feat! during the peak of excitement over the thriller album, it seemed unavoidable, everywhere one turned.

Re: This Is It

I'm sure you're right, Nicole. I might have heard something in the mall Muzak, but I don't listen to popular music on the radio and I haven't owned a TV set in 40 years. Perhaps it would be more precise to state that I have never heard any MJ singing that I am aware of as being him.

:))
OM

Re: This Is It

Ooops, correction: I don't listen to popular music that was created since it stopped sounding like real voices. Very very little anyway….

:)
OM