Bobby Debarge, his legancy continues

I was 14 years old sneaking out of middle school to Hollywood (California) unannounced to my then, mentor (and means to have a chance on becoming a Soul train dancer myself)and best friend, Jermaine Stewart. Hiking up the steep hill of Ivar, I finally arrive to the tiny cottage where Jermaine resided. Jermaine was my big brother in every way, but to my surprise, I to was about to be adopted by others that day. Robert 'Bobby' Debarge jr.

Upon my arrival I knocked on the wooden door of the landing scape of the cottage stoop of Jermaine's residence. I stood on the porch of the small house covering as the door opens, I see standing in the doorway a stranger I'd never seen, who looked as though he had been out all night and I'd just awaken him from an hour of deep sleep, scratching his tangled curly hair, stretching his thin muscular chest, pulling up his flannel pants that were falling.

"Who are you?" this stranger asked. With my childlike, widen, doe-like eyes, and speechless as a child would be when questioned by it's parent, i look up and asked, " I'm Perez. Is Jermaine, here?" He looked to me, 'wait here!" Bobby and Tommy who were members in a music group named switch. Bobby was the oldest [Bobby Debarge former lead singer to the music group Switch] of the Debarge children and Tommy was the second oldest. Bobby was the lead singer in the R&B group switch before he left the group. Bobby had a beautiful falsetto voice, and it was his voice that made Switch so popular.



And, our kindred friendship/big brother relationship.



After a week long of ditching school, Bobby sat me down, telling me during school hours I was no longer welcome to the cottage he and his younger, Tommy shared with Jermaine. At the time I thought Bobby was being an ol' meanie, but now looking back at the moment (as they say 20/20 is hindsight) he was showing me nothing but big brotherly love and guidance that i was so running away from and rejecting. I became very angry, screaming to the top of my lungs "You can't tell me what to do. You're nothing to me!" Within a beat, Bobby dashed across the room before Jermaine, or Tommy could interject, collaring me, eyeing me through slitted eyes, "I'm like your big brother!" And that was the revelation that was adequate for shaping my life.

Robert Debarge jr., (named after his father Robert Debarge), and the Debarge children are the light of life of their mother Etterlene Debarge were born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Debarge family was one of the most successful R&B groups of the late 1970's and 80s.

Etterlene Abney was 17 when she met the 21-year-old Army soldier Robert Debarge at a Detroit skating rink. Etterlene (Debarge) said "At first I didn't think he would like me, because I was so dark," Etterlene recalls. "A white man with a black woman… we were a freak show." They were married in 1953, two weeks before he was shipped out overseas. Etterlene says she'd never known brutality in her life — until she wed. "Robert was very jealous," she said with a sigh, "and an extremely abusive father." They stayed together 21 years before divorcing in 1974.

Bobby Had a lot of inner pain about living with his father Robert Debarge Sr. a lot of that pain came from childhood. You could hear that anguish in Bobby's music. He was not a bad person, he simply suffered in life like any one of us.

It began 1975, when Barry White fired a crew known as White Heat, one of his many backing bands, which included pianist/singer Robert "Bobby" DeBarge Jr., the second oldest of the 10 DeBarge siblings. The whole DeBarge family loved music. They'd sing on the radio in Detroit on Sunday mornings and perform at talent shows. Bobby's talents stood out.
"I've never heard anyone sound quite like him, and with so much ease," producer Bernd Lichters has said. "I knew I saw a star." Lichters worked with former White Heat members Bobby DeBarge and Gregory Williams (a schoolmate of Bobby's) to launch the pioneering soul-pop group Switch. Bobby co-wrote and co-produced much of the group's best music, but behind the good looks and dazzling talent lurked a tortured soul."I've never heard anyone sound quite like him, and with so much ease," producer Bernd Lichters has said. "I knew I saw a star." Lichters worked with former White Heat members Bobby DeBarge and Gregory Williams (a schoolmate of Bobby's) to launch the pioneering soul-pop group Switch. Bobby co-wrote and co-produced much of the group's best music, but behind the good looks and dazzling talent lurked a tortured soul.











Bobby's drug issues were common knowledge among the members of Switch, but his voice was too gorgeous to ignore. Still, Switch - which released five albums on Motown's subsidiary Gordy Records - almost bounded into the studio without his supple crooning. "I wasn't sure I wanted Bobby to be in the group because he was still on drugs," says Williams. But when a chance meeting in Los Angeles with Jermaine Jackson and his wife, Hazel (Berry Gordy's daughter), got them an audition with Gordy, Williams reconsidered.



Bobby was determined to kick his habit before reaching Hollywood, sweating the junk out of his system on the Greyhound bus ride west from Grand Rapids. By the time anyone from Motown met him, Bobby was clean. Switch - which consisted of Bobby and Tommy DeBarge, vocalist Phillip Ingram, Williams, Eddie Flueller, and Jody Simms - was offered a contract.Released in 1978, Switch's self-titled debut featured the standout "There'll Never Be," which rode the Billboard R&B charts for 26 weeks, peaking at No. 6. The album went on to sell a million copies and formed the sonic template for future groups as diverse as Jodeci and Mint Condition.

"The night we wrote 'I Call Your Name' was a strange one," says Williams of the achy slow-jam, which was sampled in 2006 by Polow Da Don for Rich Boy's big hit "Throw Some D's." "Bobby was dating LaToya Jackson," Williams says, "and she was the only girl on his mind. One night, he started fooling around on the Fender Rhodes. I started singing along, and next thing you know we had a song. I'm not saying the song was written for LaToya, but they were in love, and Bobby couldn't wait to play her the completed song."













While Bobby was working on that second Switch album, Mark and Randy DeBarge visited Los Angeles to see what their brothers were up to. Before long Bunny, Mark, Randy, El, and James made the journey west. Lichters leased a five-bedroom house and took them to buy instruments. "Motown put us on salary, because we were starving," says Bunny by. "Because he'd lost the Jacksons, we became his pet project." Motown encouraged the DeBarges to fire their managers and sign with DePassse and Bob Jones management, which was affiliated with Motown. They eventually agreed.












friends could sense the trouble at home. "To put it simply," says Williams, who has known and worked with the DeBarges since they were all youngsters, "their father was psychotic. Bobby was always very sensitive and withdrawn," says Williams, "and there was a lot of abuse at the hands of Mr. DeBarge. Heroin became his main way to escape." Though he stayed clean for a while, after the success of Switch II, Bobby began slipping. "He was back on drugs, and his ego was out of control," Williams says. "Bobby was going around saying, 'I'm Switch.'"
But Etterlene believes her son had simply outgrown the group. "There was a lot of hating going on," she says. "People might have bought Switch records, but they were really buying Bobby's voice."






El and Bobby Debarge



















Maybe he didn't need the band to show off his musical talents, but Bobby did seek refuge at his former bandmate's California home, "Bobby's last years were hell," Williams says. "He was separated from his wife and kids, and acting paranoid toward everybody. Bobby knew his life was basically over." He moved back to Grand Rapids the following year, and his family checked him into a hospice. After riding the heroin horse since his teens, Bobby was laid to rest where he'd finally found the peace he'd long for, for so long.




My last moment of spending time with the Debarge family was Labor day, 1996, as Jermaine Stewart, James Debarge and myself set around playing with the second generation of Debarge's and talking of fond memories of Bobby. Sharing that moment was closure for my peace of self and the desist of a long chapter of growth in my period of existence, that this angel of God was sent into life to assist in my development of direction.

Bobby, I will always love you!

KANYE' WEST takes on 'Today' in latest feud

This week, we learned something about Kanye West. The defiant rapper who has made a name for himself staging interruptions at award shows and telethons can't take the heat.

When West taped an appearance on "Today" Tuesday, he was infuriated with the program producers who played clips of President George W. Bush and Taylor Swift as he discussed them.














In response, an annoyed West announced Thursday that he was canceling his "Today" performance scheduled for Nov. 26, the day after Thanksgiving, and week of the release of his anticipated album, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy."

"I'm not performing on the Today Show for obvious reasons," West wrote on his Twitter page. "I'm so happy the world got to see just a small piece of 'the set up'".











Kanye later expressed his disdain for his treatment on the show and said he forgave them. "All positive energy ... all smiles," he wrote. "Much love to Matt and the whole Today Show. I accept ya'll future apology in advance LOL!"

While reacting to Bush's statement that West's post-Hurricane Katrina "George Bush doesn't care about black people" comment was the lowest moment of his presidency, "Today" ran interview footage of Bush, prompting West to complain.

"I didn't need you guys to play the tape in order to prompt my emotion to what I'm going to say," West said.













And the tense energy ensued when "Today" ran footage of West and Swift's MTV encounter during West's reflection on that moment.

"Yo, how am I supposed to talk if you're going to run the thing in the middle while I'm talking?" West said. "Please don't let that happen again. It's, like, ridiculous."

Before Thursday's broadcast, Lauer explained that the practice of running related footage was customary. "During an interview, when somebody references a place or an event, we run the tape. There was nothing inappropriate about it. We do it all the time," Lauer said.














Spokespeople for NBC had not responded at press time to Yahoo! Music's inquiries to confirm the cancellation of West's Nov. 26 performance. However, on Friday, West's record label confirmed the schedule change with the Associated Press.

West has already suffered losses from his actions this week. According to the New York Post, the damage-control media trainer West hired specifically to prepare West for the "Today" interview resigned after the debacle.












But perhaps the biggest impact will be on West's pocketbook. Pulling out of the "Today" Black Friday episode creates an incredible missed opportunity for West. Performing live on a network TV morning show during the week of the album's release would have exposed West to consumers outside his typical MTV demographic -- consumers who are eager to shop and spend money on the biggest retail sales day of the year.

Last month, Taylor Swift set a record for selling more than a million copies of her latest album, "Speak Now." Performing on "Today" on Nov. 26 could have helped West pass Swift's mark and even won him more public sympathy.

We have a feeling West and the "Today" team will make amends by Nov. 26. Neither West nor NBC would want to miss out on capturing such an engaged audience. The marketing is already done. We are setting our recorders now.



But let's thank Kanye West for keeping it interesting. His "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" album will be out soon so we're sure there is plenty more sensationalistic news to come. See you later week!


Family time with Bradd & Angelina

"I'm a father of six. With that comes SUPER POWERS!" Bradd Pitt said at the 'MEAGMIND' premiere in NYC November 3, 2010. His Skills were on dispaly two days later back in Budapest, Hungary





when Pitt, 46, and Angelina Jollie, 35, took three of their kids to a park.

Gone, but never forgotten: Vonetta Mcgee

Growing up in the late 60's and early 70's, there was a change in the air. Tricky Dick (Richard Nixon) was riding the wave of Watergate, gas prices were rising, the Black Panthers were marching for the "Freedom of the people," freedom marchers were singing "Give peace a chance," even Catwoman, Eartha Kitt joined in the chorus that cause J. Edger to Black Ball her from Hollywood, but still the Hollywood scene was all of unrest, and the change continue, until it settled on tinsel town, and the era of movies with black stars was reborn.


The actor Vonetta McGee, who has died aged 65 after a cardiac arrest, was a heroine of 1970s movies, and in the greatest of all Italian westerns, Sergio Corbucci's Il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence). The year was 1983, Repo Man. The cast was a large one for a low-budget movie. It included all types: method actors from New York, punks from the LA hardcore scene, disgruntled Hollywood character actors and refugees from the theatre, but only one star. Vonetta McGee.

Not that Vonetta behaved in a "starry" fashion. She was completely approachable and a professional, always one of the team. Nevertheless, of all the actors in the film, Vonetta was the one with the credits. She was the one who had acted opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Clint Eastwood and Sidney Poitier.

Lawrence Vonetta McGee – named after her father – was born in San Francisco. Her family planned for her to have a career in law, and she began studying pre-law at San Francisco State College, but she became involved in amateur theatre and was bitten by the acting bug. Vonetta left college without graduating and joined the diaspora of American actors – experienced and aspirant – who moved to Rome in the 1960s with her then screen-writer/ producer boyfriend, Max Jullen who was pinning 'CLEOPATRA JONES' (that was originally created with Vonetta in mind to play the lead role) the soon to become Hollywood's first movie to knock the block buster movie 'LADY SINGS THE BLUES' out the number one spot, Vonetta decided to beat the pavement to find work at the Cinecittà film studios.

Her filmographies list her first feature as Faustina, a comedy directed by Luigi Magni in 1968, but Il Grande Silenzio was made the previous year and opened in Italy at Christmas in 1967. In the film, Vonetta was a pioneer woman whose outlaw husband has been murdered by a bounty hunter, played by Kinski. She hires a mute gunfighter – Silence, wonderfully played by Trintignant – to kill the killer, thus setting in train the grim, tragic and terrible events of Corbucci's film.










Vonetta gave a fine performance as the vengeance-bent widow, Pauline. She was extraordinarily beautiful: tall, dark, with enormous and expressive eyes. 20th Century-Fox bought the rights to Il Grande Silenzio and then suppressed the film, considering it too pessimistic. But it was hugely influential on other filmmakers (Eastwood attempted a remake, Joe Kidd, directed by John Sturges), and for Vonetta, a career in American movies followed inevitably.

Poitier invited her to return to the US to appear with him in The Lost Man (1969). She starred (as "the Negress") in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter the following year. Thereafter came the string of pictures which made her famous: Blacula, The Big Bust-Out (both 1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973). In essence, these were genre pictures that starred black actors instead of white ones. They proved immensely popular with audiences, but tended to be disdained or ignored by mainstream film critics.






























Vonetta disliked the "blaxploitation" label: she was proud of the black part, proud of the strong, take-charge characters she had played in the films, but did not consider them exploitative in any way.




























She was a smart woman, who saw no difference between the roles she played any different than what her white counterparts of what society considered popular entertainments were portraying.A role in Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction (1975) and an increasing amount of episodic television work followed. Vonetta then suffered health problems and took a break from acting.
















Repo Man marked her return to the screen. When making the film, she talked about her work in Grande Silenzio and about working with Corbucci. He was the nicest man, (how appropriate, given the savagery and sadism that characters in his extraordinary films). "And he never tried to put the make on me! His wife, Nori, was usually on set, and they were such a happy couple. They made it a great environment to work in."

Vonetta's two lessons to young, up and coming actors, "Do not try to put the make on your leading lady, and make a nice environment for each actors to be creative in." This was excellent advice. In Repo Man she was both elegant and a perfect action heroine: diving into the fight sequences with gusto, demolishing a pair of blond brutes played by Biff Yeager and Steve Mattson.

In the mid-80s, Vonetta appeared in Cagney & Lacey as the wife of a detective played by Carl Lumbly. She and Carl married in 1986 and had a son, Brandon. In 1990, she appeared, briefly but memorably, opposite Sy Richardson and Danny Glover in Charles Burnett's fine film To Sleep With Anger.

Last year, a major movie studio tracked Vonetta down to hire her again. But the word came back that she had "absolutely" retired, and was living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

She is survived by husband, Carl and son, Brandon, and by her mother, Alma, three brothers and a sister.

• Lawrence Vonetta McGee, died 9 July 2010.










You may be gone, but never forgotten.

The Internet is dead? say it isn't so, Prince!

So this week, while all the blogosphere was abuzz about George Michael's SEVENTH car crash, LeAnn Rimes' controversial canoodling pics with boyfriend Eddie Cibrian, Crystal Bowersox's new teeth, Liz Phair's credibility-killing new musical direction, and the Grammys' revised eligibility rules, the World Wide Web itself was under attack by Prince, aka The Artist Formerly Known As The Internet's Biggest Supporter. Yes, online readers, according to His Purple Majesty's new royal decree, the Internet is kaput. Over. Finished. You may as well turn off this website and go back to your abacus now. .

"The Internet's completely over," Prince declared to England's Daily Mirror, sounding like he's ready to party not quite like it's 1999, but more like '79. "I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else [digitally]. They won't pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can't get it....All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."








Prince's rejection of all thing Interweb came as quite a shock, considering that the man was once seemingly completely besotted with the digital revolution. For a man who very publicly battled with his record label, Warner Bros., because he wanted to release more product than Warner was willing to, a guy with hundreds of unreleased songs under his purple belt, it seemed like the perfect means to get all that music to the fans, eliminating the middleman.







So after Prince escaped from the clutches of Warner Bros. in the mid-'90s, he released a series of increasingly little-heard albums on his own label, NPG Records--some of which were only available through (you guessed it) the Internet. And even as recently as March 2009, Prince was introducing a heavily promoted new subscription website, LotusFlow3r.com; for an annual membership of $77, fans would theoretically not only get the digital version of the three-CD set he was releasing through Target at that time, but loads of new and unreleased material unavailable anywhere else. But as the Wall Street Journal reported this past April, the website turned out to be a bust, at least for the disgruntled followers who never got the stream of rarities and bonuses they were expecting. And just as the mercurial Prince put the kibosh on his New Power Generation Music Club subscription site back in 2006, early this year he gave the order for the LotusFlow3r.com site to be shut down as well.
























And now it seems like Prince wants ALL sites to be shut down--including iTunes!










While Forbes writer Quentin Hardy surprisingly sided with Prince (in an article self-explanatorily titled "Prince Is Right. The Internet Is Over."--which, ironically, was widely read on THE FORBES.COM WEBSITE), most musicians weren't so quick to turn their backs on the entire Interweb. Even soft-jazz saxophonist Kenny G--a man no one ever thought would seem cooler than Prince--spoke out against Prince's remarks, jokingly telling the Associated Press: "If the Internet is dead then I must be dead too, 'cause I use it all the time. Maybe I've got a sixth sense, and I only see dead people." The very-much-alive Mr. G then expressed every intention to continue distributing and promoting his new album, Heart & Soul, digitally. Additionally, many other, hipper artists who've embraced online distribution--Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Beck, and Lil' Wayne and countless other mixtape-popularized rappers--hardly jumped to Prince's defense, and not even Metallica's Lars Ulrich, once Napster's most angry opponent, spoke up.










Maybe all this is a sign o' the times, so to speak. After all, it's understandable in this post-Napster age that artists might no longer be in favor of a completely open Internet, since many industry pundits argue that it is illegal file-sharing and even legal free downloads and streams that are responsible for their music biz's current slump. Still, it seems a little silly to expect people to abandon their "digital gadgets" and the online distribution methods (iTunes, Rhapsody) via which the majority of avid music fans play and receive their music nowadays. But, IF Prince is right, then what is going to replace the Internet? Will Prince will release his next album on 8-track, wax cylinder, or in the "smoke signal" format long favored by traditionalists? No, in all seriousness, the distribution model Prince is now favoring is...giving his music away free with newspapers.










Yes, Prince's latest CD, 20Ten, will be included with July 10 copies of the Daily Mirror in the U.K. and Daily Record in Ireland, as well as other print publications in Belgium and Germany. For someone making the argument that music is undervalued, Prince has a funny way of proving its integrity when he gives CDs away like shampoo samples. (Maybe, somewhere along the way, he confused his Parade album with the Parade magazine included in many Sunday papers.) There's no plan yet to distribute 20Ten in America, but Prince is reportedly in talks with his old label, Warner Bros. (yep, the aforementioned "slave"-drivers who allegedly held him so captive that he was forced to carve S.O.S. messages into his sideburns) for a future U.S. release. Apparently Prince is so convinced that the Internet is over, he's not the least bit concerned about hundreds of thousands of Europeans, who will receive free copies of 20Ten this weekend, leaking the album online for all interested Americans to hear.

A taste of love!

Looking on our days gone by, I remember the day we met, fell in love, and all the things we did together. We've had our good times and now experiencing some rough and disappointing moments between our love along this way, but through it all, we must remember to remain strong and weather this storm with our love.





You are the man I love and cherish. You are the man who is my friend, my companion and the love of my life. I see this love in my life as a great challenge as we learn to learn and appreciate each other completely.

Faithful is what you are to me. Standing tall and being the man in every sense of the word. Sweet and kind is what you are when it comes to doing things for the both of us, and our relationship. You've been a man with a big heart when it comes to me, and would live standing upside down when it comes to making me happy.

I know that we've known each other for a short moment, but i find myself thinking of you every minute of each day, hoping that you're thinking of me, too. Inside my heart I feel you there and never wanting you to leave. This is no dream and I never felt this way of someone before, this passionate, this strong.


Some people do not believe in love at first sight, but I believe, and it happened the day I met you, spending that first evening talking into the early morning of twilight. It happened all so fast, taking my breath away. The miracle was more than a surprise, it was a dream come true, and a blessing from God who made you only for me.





When I look out at the stars at night, they remind me of how sweet and beautiful you are to me. When I see you, I see heaven and that's what you are to me, my heaven right here on earth. When I awake in the morning to the sun peeking through my window, you race through my mind with thoughts captured of you. Though I can't reach out and touch you, I still feel the presence of you all around me.
No matter where I go, what I do, you are always present by my side whispering "I love you!"

Before you came into my life, I had never been one to talk much about love, but now, I want to scream to the world about you and this feeling down in my soul.
I have seen the beauty of love other couple share and how sweet it is for them, and now I want to express it with you.

I realize love is not easy and can sometime have a mind of it's own, yet it knows how we think. Love has no eyes, yet it knows where we are and how to find us. Love has no lights, yet, it knows where to track it's way into our hearts. As I said earlier, before you came into my life, you were only a dream in my heart that wouldn't let me be.





Yesterday a tear of loneliness fell from my eye. It speaks of the emptiness I feel inside my heart, the sad face I can not hide.
Is the man I love gone away?
Has he moved to another?
He's not here and I have no one to talk to!

Time now rattles the seconds as my mind drags on thinking about you.
I feel alone now, nothing to smile about as I try and figure out what went wrong.
Will the sunshine tomorrow inside my thoughts again?
My feelings are lost inside. Was it suppose to be this way?

No one knows the pain I feel. Not even the man I love, because he's not here with me.

The king of kings!

The King lives!
















On June 25, 2010, will be the one year anniversary since the world lost the most famous Icon/legend to have ever dawned a stage, screen, magazine cover, award show, and once again, The king of pop, Michael Jackson has broke another record.

It sounds strange to say this, but Michael Jackson is coming off one of the biggest years of his career. Jackson has sold more than 9 million albums and nearly 13 million digital tracks in the U.S. in the year since his death. He was hotter than he'd been at any time since his glory days in the ‘80s. He even achieved a career goal that had eluded him in his lifetime--a hit movie. .







I think what happened in the past year is that people focused on Jackson's music for the first time in many years, and remembered how much they liked it. Sadly, it took Jackson's death for people to look past all the controversies--large and small, troubling and trivial--that turned a lot of people off..







In the year since he died, Jackson has sold 9,023,000 albums in the U.S. This has enabled him to vault from #47 on Nielsen/SoundScan's running list of the top 200 album sellers in its history (which dates to 1991) to #18 this week. That's a tremendous one-year gain..

Jackson's posthumous sales are among the most impressive in the history of the music business. Nielsen/SoundScan didn't exist when Elvis Presley died in 1977 or when John Lennon was killed in 1980, so precise comparisons aren't possible, but the Billboard charts shed some light on the matter..








With his smash compilation Number Ones, Jackson became only the 13th artist to have the best-selling album in the U.S. posthumously. And with the subsequent soundtrack to Michael Jackson's This Is It, he became one of only five artists to have the best-selling album in the U.S. with two albums after his death. Bandleader Glenn Miller and rappers 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. each had three posthumous #1 albums. Nirvana, featuring the late Kurt Cobain, had two..

Eight other artists had one posthumous #1 album: Presley and Lennon are joined on this list by Janis Joplin, Jim Croce, Selena, Aaliyah, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles..

Jackson long wanted to be a movie star, a sort of modern-day Fred Astaire. In death, he got at least part of his wish: a #1 box-office hit. Michael Jackson's This Is It topped the box-office in its opening weekend at the end of October with a domestic gross of more than $23 million..

The soundtrack album entered The Billboard 200 at #1 that same week, with first-week sales of 373,000. (It was eligible for that chart because it was a new compilation.)








That made Jackson only the sixth music star since the early ‘80s to star in a movie that came in #1 at the box-office and also spawned a #1 soundtrack (on which the star was featured). He followed Prince (1984's Purple Rain); Whitney Houston (1995's Waiting To Exhale); Will Smith (1997's Men In Black); Eminem (2002's 8 Mile); and Miley Cyrus (2009's Hannah Montana: The Movie)..

Michael Jackson's This Is It grossed more than $72 million in the U.S., which made it the top-grossing music concert film in history. (The old record was held by Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus' 2008 movie Best Of Both Worlds Concert Tour, which grossed more than $65 million.) The movie grossed an additional $180 million in foreign markets for a combined worldwide gross of $252 million. It was also a hit on DVD, with U.S. DVD sales estimated at $43 million..

Beyond the box-office success, the movie helped Jackson's image because it showed him in action and in charge. And we haven't seen that side of him since his heyday. Since Bad came out in 1987, he was usually on the defensive, facing slipping sales, image problems, criminal charges, and all the rest. His life spun out of control. Here, he was seen as being in control again..

In the weeks following his death on June 25, Jackson toppled records that had stood for decades. In the week after he died, he had the three best-selling albums in the U.S.: Number Ones, The Essential Michael Jackson, and Thriller. Since 1963, when Billboard combined its separate stereo and mono charts into one comprehensive listing, no other act had accomplished that feat. (The Beatles came closest, nailing down three of the top four spots in May 1964.).

For two weeks in July, Jackson had six of the 10 best-selling albums in the U.S. This broke a record that had stood since April 1966, when Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass had four of the top 10.








As I noted last summer, this has a strong sense of déjà vu for me. I wrote a column for Billboard in 1983 and 1984, when Jackson was setting new records virtually every week. I never imagined that it would all happen again, and certainly not under these sad circumstances..

In the week after he died, Jackson became the first artist to sell more than 1 million digital tracks in one week. (He sold 2.6 million, obliterating the old record.) Combining solo hits with songs he recorded with his brothers, he had a staggering 49 of the top 200 titles on the Hot Digital Songs chart that week. He held down six of the top 10 spots..

In each of the first seven weeks after he died, Jackson had three of the five best-selling albums in the U.S.: His biggest seller throughout this period was Number Ones. The hit-studded collection sold more copies in the first 16 weeks after Jackson's death than it had in the five and half years between its release in November 2003 and his death. At its peak in July, Number Ones sold 349,000 copies in one week. That constituted the biggest one-week sales tally for a non-holiday catalog album in Nielsen/SoundScan history..

Number Ones logged six weeks as the best-selling album in the U.S. That was the longest that an artist who had died had the nation's top-seller since 1980-1981, when Double Fantasy, by John Lennon and his widow, Yoko Ono, topped The Billboard 200 for eight weeks. It was the longest that a greatest hits set was the best-selling album in the U.S. since 2000-2001, when the Beatles' 1 held the top spot for eight weeks. It was the longest that Jackson had the top-seller since 1987, when Bad held the top spot for six weeks..

Jackson's phenomenal posthumous success forced Billboard to change its long-time policy of excluding catalog albums from The Billboard 200. Beginning with the chart for the issue dated Dec. 5, 2009, catalog albums were able to compete alongside current product on the magazine's flagship chart. The move came too late for Jackson's albums to take their rightful places in the top 10, but it was welcome development nonetheless..

When Nielsen/SoundScan released its final sales tallies for 2009, Jackson had four of the year's top 20 albums: Number Ones at #3, Michael Jackson's This Is It at #12, Thriller at #14 and The Essential Michael Jackson at #20. This constituted a record for the SoundScan era. The old record was held by Garth Brooks, who had three of the top 20 albums of 1992. (In Brooks's case, however, all three made the year-end top 10.).

By coming in at #3 for the year, Number Ones ranked higher on Nielsen/SoundScan's year-end chart than any album ever had following the artist's death. 2Pac's All Eyez On Me was the #6 album of 1996. The Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death was the #6 album of 1997..

Number Ones sold 2,355,000 copies in the U.S. in 2009. It sold all but 117,000 of those copies after Jackson's death..

Jackson had seven of Nielsen/SoundScan's top 100 albums of 2009. In addition to his four albums that made the year-end top 20, Off The Wall was #66, Bad was #68 and Dangerous was #98..

Jackson had nine of the top 200 digital songs of 2009. His biggest hit was "Thriller," which sold 1,096,000 copies during the calendar year. His other top-selling songs for the year were, in descending order: "Billie Jean" (938,000), "Man In The Mirror" (890,000), "Beat It" (830,000), "The Way You Make Me Feel" (671,000), "Don't Stop ‘Til You Get Enough" (611,000), "Smooth Criminal" (605,000), "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" (557,000), and "Black Or White" (511,000).







Since the digital era began, the song "Thriller" has sold 2,362,000 digital copies. Only one song from the ‘80s has outsold it. That's Journey's ubiquitous 1981 smash "Don't Stop Believin'," which has sold 3,819,000 copies. But Jackson tops the arena rock band in one respect: He has a second song on Nielsen/SoundScan's running list of the 200 best-selling digital songs in its history. "Billie Jean" has sold 1,898,000 copies in the digital era..

Thriller is closing in on Dangerous as Jackson's best-selling album of the Nielsen/SoundScan era. Thriller has sold 5,816,000 copies since 1991. Dangerous has sold 6,363,000 (combining two editions of the album). This is remarkable because Thriller was released more than eight years before the start of the Nielsen/SoundScan era. By contrast, all Dangerous sales are contained in the SoundScan era..

Jackson topped charts all over the world after his death. Number Ones and The Essential Michael Jackson both reached #1 in the U.K. The latter album topped the U.K. chart for seven weeks, which was the longest run for an American artist since Justin Timberlake's Justified stayed on top for seven weeks in 2003..

Jackson also had a pair of #1 albums in Japan: King Of Pop (Japan Edition) and Michael Jackson's This Is It!








PDT by Paul Grein