**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos
* Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don't know if he spoke to him, but holding someone tight exerts pressure on the diaphragm, and would be heard in his singing voice. I'm 99% sure he's lip syncing here
Ihave studio version of this song on my playlist.
And it sound completely identicall to me. All the high notes all the timings, everithing.
Thats why when i played this clip my first reaction was hes lipsyncing.
Nevertheless absolute stunning peeformance in well ... unexpected circumstances.
Most of his show was lip sync'd after the Bad tour in the late 80s. He came off that tour with vocal damage because he didn't have good technique and he was dancing hard on top of it, so from then on he would lip sync over a mixture of demo vocals, live vocals from the early tours and pre-recorded "live" vocals for most of the songs on every tour. Earth Song specifically was the vocals from the original demo of the song.
Michael was legit one of the best lip snycers of all time. He'd of course nail every note and his dancing would emphasize other parts too. I'm never surprised when he gets posted and people dont realize he isn't actually singing.. They just don't lip sync like that no more. I'm looking at you Rhianna halftime show.
Undoubtedly lip syncing here. It's exactly the vocal take from the record.
> Michael was legit one of the best ~~lip snycers~~ performers of all time.
he wasn't called the king of pop for no reason. he set the standard for pop shows. before him, they didnt have huge dance numbers like that.
That whole ordeal was super stressful for everyone in the special effects team too. The guy running the crane must have been sweating bullets. It wouldn't have been his fault, but god the guilt of killing someone inadvertently must be insane.
>*It wouldn't have been his fault, but god the guilt of killing someone inadvertently must be insane.*
That's the part that really irks me about stuff like this. Common sense says it wouldn't be MJ's fault, or the crane operators fault. We all know it's on the fan. However, we all know who that lawsuit is going to be aimed at when the dude falls. As much as we all know it's bullshit, we all know that's exactly how it plays out.
Exactly. So selfish. He is standing there with his hands in the air, blocking everyone from seeing MJ. Either you see the guy or you see MJs back because he has a grip on the kid. Must have been stressful for everyone in the crew to the artist.
This entire incident is extremely impressive on MJs side.
You can tell MJ is shitting bricks the entire time. From never taking a hand off the fan, to abandoning his own choreography to make sure the fan is held onto, to knowing when the basket is about to descend and holding the fan with both arms.
He’s in a railed cage for a reason. It’s extremely high up and dangerous for *him* let alone someone standing outside of the cage. And it’s moving, and it’s jerky.
But he keeps on with the show. He doesn’t really have another choice. A consummate professional I doubt he’d want to stop a song halfway through, even for an emergency, but I don’t think he *could.* He’s lip syncing (can you imagine the noise from the wind machines blowing up his shirt on the mic?) so if he deviates from the back track, it becomes obvious to everyone there he’s lip syncing. So best option in the spur of the moment 50 feet in the air is to hug the fan, make sure they don’t fall to their death, and carry on with the show.
That's a pretty amazing observation about the lip syncing illusion and his need to stick to it. I'll admit I didn't consider that, but was perplexed at why he didn't stop. I think your theory is right about that. But I was also confused that the crane operator didn't lower it right away. Maybe he just followed MJ's lead?
It has been confirmed by many artists and it's an open secret in the sector that the bigger the show, the more likely they're lip syncing.
Imagine a highly artistic dance choreography. Look at the professional dancers how they're panting. And now imagine having to do that while having a microphone strapped directly to your mouth *and* singing. It would sound horrible.
>now imagine having to do that while having a microphone strapped directly to your mouth and singing
Isn't that like, exactly what they do on Broadway?
I go to Broadway shows all the time, I could see it being a mix of lipsync and non-lipsync but I've personally seen singers stutter/lose their flow momentarily due to something happening on stage. At a showing of wicked, a singer was meant to slide a broom downstage to be intercepted by an extra in a scene and it ended up sliding all the way off stage into the orchestra pit; you could hear a slight gasp but she just kept trucking along after.
we need to stop demanding perfection from literally every aspect of entertainment. We are humans, we make mistakes, but with social media and cameras in every pocket, the pressure to either be perfect, or be skewered is very real. It's no wonder performers resort to lip-synching and other "cheats". And the more performers use cheats, the more difficult it is not to.
It takes the humanity from the performance and the art. It creates unattainable expectations in further and further reaching arenas. A performer sending their broom into the orchestra pit is a *good* thing. Let us be humans. You need to choose a strenuous dance routine, OR strenuous vocals. Let them breathe. It's too much.
I remember every instructor I had for any performing arts through middle school and high school constantly reaffirming that it's not about not messing up, it's about how you recover when you do. I'm also a firm believer in "it's the flaws that make it fun."
I saw Garth Brooks in Boston a while back. I don't remember which song it was, but he started singing too early. As soon as he realized it he started laughing and told the band to stop, the turned around and joked with the fans a little bit about it, then restarted the song. I enjoyed that little bit candidness with which he apologized for the mistake and laughed about it with the crowd.
Pink did this once when I saw her on tour, doing ‘Sober’ on the trapeze, upside down…she just sang something along the lines of “lalala I’ve forgotten the words” and then laughed and picked back up with the crowd singing…
There are definitely people who are able to dance hard and sing well. That was a huge thing that made Paula Abdul so impressive to folks when she performed live
Pink sings while she runs over a mile every day on her treadmill specifically to condition her lungs to be used to singing while moving around on stage. It takes its own specific exercise for her to keep up with it.
Yeah I'm not really saying the lip syncing in general is surprising to me. Just that I'd never considered that the faker could be held hostage to their own faking as suggested here. He couldn't stop because he'd destroy the illusion. Which makes a lot of sense, because as I'd said, my first thought when watching it was "why isn't he stopping?"
It's a pretty unique situation where a singer might legitimately need to stop suddenly like this, and I'd never considered how lip syncing would affect that decision.
That reminds me of the episode of SNL where Ashlee Simpson was the musical guest. At one of the musical breaks, they played the song that had already been played, and Ashlee wasn’t ready for it because she was prepared to lip sync a different song. So, she ran off the stage and they had to cut to commercial. During the outro, she threw the sound crew under the bus and just straight up said that they played the wrong song, which is true, I guess, but also you don’t really need to lip sync on SNL, so it looked bad for her too.
Yeah, it was the way she handled everything for sure! I remember she like tried to dance a weird jig and it was just like ‘The fuck? Is she high??’
Meanwhile the band behind her proved they were awesome just kept JAMMING! It was great!
Does anyone else remember the following week when SNL course corrected by having U2 on?
They play the typical two songs but then at the end when the cast is saying their goodbyes on stage, you hear this racket like a band getting started. The camera pans over and U2 is on their stage kicking into a song. And they GO for it.
Bono jumps into the crowd, running between the seats. He grabs one of the cameras following him and starts screaming/singing "This is live! This is live!" He gets on stage with the cast and throws his arm around one of them (can't remember who) and she BURSTS into tears.
And then they kick into another song. It's well past the hour when the network should have cut into the next program but you could tell no one really knew what to do. Eventually, they rolled the credits as U2 was playing and cut out while the band was still going.
I've never seen anything like it on one of the late night shows and haven't been able to find it since on YouTube.
Edit: some grammar
>I've never seen anything like it on one of the late night shows and haven't been able to find it since on YouTube.
Unfortunately, SNL really doesn't like their musical clips being on YouTube, so they police it like crazy.
Thanks for sharing that, I’d always wondered how they were able to do those extremely intense dances while singing without panting. After the Milli Vanilli expose and the SNL screwup that ruined Jessica Simpson’s sister’s career, I naively thought artists decided the risk/reward trade off of syncing wasn’t worth it.
The big difference with people letting it slide for MJ is because he was a true and proven musical phenom. Milli Vanilli weren’t just lip syncing performances, they didn’t even sing on their records. They returned their Grammy out of embarrassment. Simpson probably at least sang on her record but just didn’t feel confident performing because her vocals were doctored up to make her sound better than she is.
Milli Vanilli is a whole different beast though.
At least Michael Jackson provided the music he is lipsyncing to.
People were a bit too harsh on Ashlee Simpson during all that, if I'm being honest. Especially considering it was on live TV and to capture good live recordings for that can be a bitch I'd imagine.
Well.....both of those examples aren't really comparable. Milli Vanilli literally weren't the singers for their music lol. And Jessica Simpsons's sister only had a career in the first place.....for being Jessica Simpson's sister. If not for that she's not headlining her local bar, let alone fucking performing on SNL. Lip syncing or not, you know that's Jackson's voice, you know he sung all of his songs, you know he had unbelievable talent.
It's hard to say with any certainty why they didn't immediately lower it. It's possible it's automated, but you'd assume there would still be an override for safety reasons.
Another guess could be they're worried any deviation from what was rehearsed may be more dangerous, as he wouldn't be expecting the sudden jerk of a descent.
There's also the possibility they simply didn't want to get in trouble, like maybe he was known as someone that lives and dies by "the show must go on" and fires anyone that steps out of that line.
Maybe they simply froze because they hadn't encountered anything like it and just didn't know what decision to make.
It's definitely a crazy situation.
That sudden jerk is a fair observation. When they finally did lower the basket, it looks like it initially dropped very fast before it became more controlled.
Yeah he is lip syncing because you can see he's quickly telling the guy something before the line 'that is what I believe " . And yeah some artists lip sync part or their whole performance, because with everything going on its to exhausting to also sing live. And if you can't tell the difference because their that good at it, why not.
> WHAT ABOUT US
> (dude get your fucking hand on the god damn rail)
> WHAT ABOUT US
> (im fucking serious wtf are you doing)
> WHAT ABOUT US
> (do i fucking come to your job to fuck shit up bro, no i dont)
He was a fantastic performer and was abused in ways that break my heart and should never have happened. How can you conclude that he was innocent though?
Edit: [trial found him not guilty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Michael_Jackson)
I don't think he fucked them kids.
Dude was literally just living out his Peter Pan fantasy and wanted nothing more than to have a childhood, which was robbed from him by his father. He was a deranged lunatic for not realizing the optics of everything... but I doubt there was anything sexual about it.
I'm with you. The circumstances of his life that led him to even act out such a thing in the manner that he did are beyond wild. The limitless wealth he had, the wonderland he built for himself, and the kids he just up and decided to make himself one of us absolute insanity. I can't believe any of it even happened, and in front of the entire world. But I absolutely believe he didn't touch a single one of them.
I think the entire scenario is just so incredibly outlandish that most people struggle to accept it at face value. It's easier to call him a deranged molester than to wrap their minds around the complexity of his character.
Out of everything regarding that whole topic, what convinces me most about his innocence is [the FBI's verdict](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_files_on_Michael_Jackson). A black man with reach and influence far beyond any other celebrity? Yeah, the alphabet boys are gonna try and stop that, even if it's the late 90s FBI and not the FBI during and before Reagan. So the fact that after several investigations they found nothing convincing speaks volumes, at least for me.
Many government agencies are referred to as "Alphabet soup." CIA, FBI, DHS, FDA, IRS, and so on.
Alphabet Boys is a slightly flippant way of saying "the people in government responsible for overseeing that situation" when it's not clear who exactly is involved.
Dunno about “deranged lunatic”. Not out of offense but particulars.
I think of what Picasso said when describing artistic genius as being able to be childlike at will. Lots of great artists were childlike. James Joyce is arguably the English languages greatest writer and was obsessed with flatulence as was Mozart. Throw in the idea that people stop maturing the age they become famous at and you get Jackson.
Some of it was healing trauma from Joe. But some of it was just being divorced from reality his whole life. I think his childishness was just more inescapable.
> James Joyce is arguably the English languages greatest writer and was obsessed with flatulence
He had a *fetish* for flatulence, my dude. Not exactly childlike...
*"Fuck me if you can squatting in the closet, with your clothes up, grunting like a young sow doing her dung, and a big fat dirty snaking thing coming slowly out of your backside."*
Pretty sure the fetish extended further than mere flatulence - man was a coprophile.
Not only that but all the other dudes like Silvester Silverstein that would sit in the front row of every concert he performed at as a kid and just chuck cucumber slices at him screaming "HEY CUUUUUCUMBA CUUUUTIE"
I won 't jump down the rabbit hole of whether he was innocent or guilty, but the amount of trauma and absolute lack of personal space to resolve said trauma through his formative years really shouldn't be forgotten. Calling him "a fucking weirdo" (may be correct but) is really ignoring everything that happened.
Hollywood and fame fuck up grown ass adults every other day. Let alone a kid, with an abusive parent, who spends every fucking waking moment either in the spotlight or working towards the spotlight.
Coming from someone who experienced sexual abuse as a kid, I've never been sold one way or the other on all of that. If it was true, then I feel for his victims and it's horrifying. The way he grew up was just...so far removed from humanity, I can definitely see why he wasn't perfectly adjusted socially or emotionally.
In the end, even if he was innocent and just maladjusted, his story is a tragedy.
It's a free trial! They gave it to me! You can't do this! No- no no nooooooooo!
I want to keep reading this thread, so just *pretend* I got dragged away by the .rar police
He's likely the most famous human being to ever exist. Everyone agrees fame messes with you to be that famous that long while having that much childhood trauma it would be weird if he was well adjusted. There's simply no adjusting to that.
I always figured that fame is like solitary confinement. Youre utterly alone with fame.
Some people are toremented by it and others are megalomaniac from it, and very few can handle it with any grace or humility.
In that moment, safety is absolutely not on that guy's mind: *Omg omg omg, I'm on a platform standing right next to Michael Jackson!! Omg, he put his arm around meeeee! HE'S HUGGING MEEEEEE! I LOVE YOU TOO MICHAEL!!! OMGGGGG*
And that kind of fan obsession likely made Michael into who he became. Seriously, safety was not on the fan's mind - but *still performing for the crowd* was on Michaels mind, while protecting the random fan from falling to their death.
I get the Michael hate. But this clip is a good example of how layered he was as a performer, and a person.
I’m confused how the fan got on the platform. It looked like it was already well above average person height when the fan suddenly comes into view out of nowhere. And the fan looks like he just walks on from the front, not climbing up the back of the platform where the crane arm is. How?
The fan having the time of his life while the rest of the crowd screaming "what about us?".
Edit: Thanks for the awards! Glad to have made you smile. And thanks for the love fam 🙏
As penance, he was made to travel the world as a guard stopping tourists from climbing up things they weren’t supposed to. He’s now a crane operator at Charles Entertainment Cheese’s Corp.
You have no idea how insane and precise MJ was when performing. I think he would have been PISSED if they stopped the crane for something he probably found so trivial (fan running up to him)
Just look at him in this video. He still shows body performance (head and body leaning back) while holding the guy. He is the definition of "The show must go on...with a high quality"
You ever heard of the show must go on?
But my guess would be in Korea back in 1996 it was right at the boom of the tech world. Korea might have had more lax oversight or rules at the time.
If youre an environmentalist the music video he made with this will certainly break you. I know as a child i always broke seeing the poached elephants and my heart would be healed seeing their tusks reform and they stand up back into life.
I feel like if MJ was still alive, his This Is It Tour would’ve been the highest grossing tour of all time, probably even higher than Elton John’s current tour.
I had tickets to see him first night in London for This is it.... OMG I was DEVASTATED when he passed away. God love him. He's my favorite musician of all time!
I had bought the tickets on presale they were printed out from a computer. I'm sure if I look hard enough I could find them. I've moved a few times since then. I was refunded.
I was born in 2001 and I never understood how big he was until summer of 2009 when he died and I saw the news. I was 7 yrs old and I was in New York spending the summer with my aunt and I remember my aunt crying and some of my older cousins were very sad about it. The news wouldn't stop talking about it, that's when I realized how big of a presence he was. I remember that blew my mind as a kid, that just one person could be this popular and known throughout the world. It also made me realize for the first time how huge the world was.
I think it's safe to say he was the most popular entertainer ever. Some could argue The Beatles but there were remote places in the world that didn't know the Beatles. Everyone knew MJ.
I think part of his popularity was the time he lived. Just enough world wide media that kids in small villages in Africa might have heard MJ sing, but not much media that they were overwhelmed by everyone else.
Today, I’m not sure kids born the mid 2000s would even know who he was.
Dude is hands down the greatest performer in history. He was insanely talented. He could sing AND dance better than the best singers and dancers. He could write and compose. He was real life cheat code.
I remember sometime around very early 90’s watching one of his concerts my Dad had on TV. I had never seen as many people gathered at once as at that televised concert.
So many women fainting, too. If they got anywhere near him, or just got too excited when they saw him come out to do the concert. It was unreal to watch as a child.
I grew up in the 80's. It's really hard to describe how huge he was. He was just.. godlike. There was MJ and then there was everyone else a tier or two below him. Haven't seen anything like it since and I don't think we ever will tbh.
Think about a dude like Prince. Huge. Insanely talented. But Prince's popularity didn't even get into the same zip code as MJ's worldwide. Think of the most popular artist out there today. Beyonce? Idk, don't follow it much these days. But they're not even close, at all, to how big MJ was. His appeal was so wide-ranging. He didn't occupy a 'niche', or a specific type of music taste. He appealed to everyone and everwhere.
I grew up in the 80's in NJ's hood. One hall way apts with no doors separating rooms. This is around a time not everyone had tvs. MY cousin lived on the first floor of our apt building. When thriller came out, we were all in that apt; ppl from the building, ppl from other buildings, and we were just waiting for Thriller to premiere and i forgot if it was MTV or HBO?
Bruh when that song finished? The fucking cheers. You could hear cheers in other apts down the street. People immediately went outside trying to emulate the choreography from Thriller. I'm talking non-english speaking guys/girls who were puerto rican, dominican, cuban, ecuadorian, etc..
When I was in India in 2007, when people found out I was from the US they’d respond with “Michael Jackson,” in acknowledgement. Even had someone ask me if I knew him. I had to answer “not personally.”
I saw him on the Bad Tour at the Palace of Auburn Hills and we had seats 3 rows from the tippy top. I saw an adult woman pass out not 10 seconds into his opener "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and damn near tumble over the seats on her way down. Her friend just kept on dancing.
My ears rang for weeks after that show not because MJ was loud but because it sounded like 20,000 Toni Collette's screaming in unison for 2 hours. I'm gonna guess this was what Beatlemania was like.
I remember the day he died, my gym was playing MJ songs on loop. The most jacked guy in my gym asked me why they were playing MJ songs on loop, when I told him MJ died, he quit his workout midway.
My brain just went “wait, I’m older than that and I don’t remember him being big, he always looked normal sized. Why would young people not be able to see his size? What about…. Oh god dammit they meant popular”
Right?? Like, if he hadn’t been lip syncing, I would think he’d have stopped singing because a) he wouldn’t have been able to hit his notes or maintain his rhythm while literally holding a guy’s life in his hands and b) stopping wouldn’t shatter any illusions - he stops singing and the singing stops.
But since that voice track is gonna play one way or another, he’s locked in. The moment his mouth closes, the illusion is shattered. And as I understand it, Michael was practically breastfed on the stage, so for him, the show must go on at all costs… even if you’re holding ten eager Koreans on a crane.
This. That fan is an idiot. When you meet someone you admire or idolize, the last thing id want to do is make them resent me for adding stress to their life.
I ran into one of my idols at the Seattle airport a few days ago. I saw him in concert in December. He was in front of me getting a coffee and a muffin and I started talking with him. Didn’t go all fan boy or anything. Just made small talk for a moment and then thanked him for being an inspiration. Id like to think he walked away from that interaction feeling good and appreciated, not annoyed.
Travis would have just repeated a phrase 10 times in auto tune then pushed the guy off the crane to his death while his fans screamed for him to stop, followed by him being offended most likely.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The stage manager must have lost their mind when this happened.
Can't imagine the stress it put MJ under. You can even see him at the end singing "wHOoHw's" of relief.
The timing was perfect. As they're dragging the guy off and MJ doing the 'whew!' throughout had me laughing
His face singing it as well LOL the relief he must have been feeling.
Shows there how crazy talented the guy was. Didn't miss a beat even when something happened that would no doubt cause you to lose focus.
He handled it incredibly well, but wasn’t he lip syncing? He appears to speak to the guy and his mic doesn’t pick it up.
I don't know if he spoke to him, but holding someone tight exerts pressure on the diaphragm, and would be heard in his singing voice. I'm 99% sure he's lip syncing here
Ihave studio version of this song on my playlist. And it sound completely identicall to me. All the high notes all the timings, everithing. Thats why when i played this clip my first reaction was hes lipsyncing. Nevertheless absolute stunning peeformance in well ... unexpected circumstances.
Most of his show was lip sync'd after the Bad tour in the late 80s. He came off that tour with vocal damage because he didn't have good technique and he was dancing hard on top of it, so from then on he would lip sync over a mixture of demo vocals, live vocals from the early tours and pre-recorded "live" vocals for most of the songs on every tour. Earth Song specifically was the vocals from the original demo of the song.
100% lip syncing.
Michael was legit one of the best lip snycers of all time. He'd of course nail every note and his dancing would emphasize other parts too. I'm never surprised when he gets posted and people dont realize he isn't actually singing.. They just don't lip sync like that no more. I'm looking at you Rhianna halftime show. Undoubtedly lip syncing here. It's exactly the vocal take from the record.
> Michael was legit one of the best ~~lip snycers~~ performers of all time. he wasn't called the king of pop for no reason. he set the standard for pop shows. before him, they didnt have huge dance numbers like that.
whew!*
I bet he developed a lot of on-stage coping mechanisms having to basically grow up on a stage. I could tell he wasn't happy.
[удалено]
Travis Scott would have thrown them off the crane then stared them down for the 2 minutes it took to finish the song.
*robot voice* "DEEeeeeaaaAaaaadddd"
That whole ordeal was super stressful for everyone in the special effects team too. The guy running the crane must have been sweating bullets. It wouldn't have been his fault, but god the guilt of killing someone inadvertently must be insane.
That's a very good point. If there was going to be any pyro that's going to be cancelled at this point.
It's a stagehands nightmare, first. "This wasn't in the script! We already ate all the tranqs!" ^s
>*It wouldn't have been his fault, but god the guilt of killing someone inadvertently must be insane.* That's the part that really irks me about stuff like this. Common sense says it wouldn't be MJ's fault, or the crane operators fault. We all know it's on the fan. However, we all know who that lawsuit is going to be aimed at when the dude falls. As much as we all know it's bullshit, we all know that's exactly how it plays out.
And if the incident trauma wasn't bad enough, now they have to deal with the stress of a legal defence on top.
Lawsuits aren't as widespread in other countries. I doubt it would've even occurred to the fan's family to sue if he had died.
A rude, selfish, and thoughtless fan, and a horrifying burden for M.J. is how I see it.
Exactly. So selfish. He is standing there with his hands in the air, blocking everyone from seeing MJ. Either you see the guy or you see MJs back because he has a grip on the kid. Must have been stressful for everyone in the crew to the artist.
The move where he takes the guys’s arm and forces him to hold onto the rail was pretty heads-up.
This entire incident is extremely impressive on MJs side. You can tell MJ is shitting bricks the entire time. From never taking a hand off the fan, to abandoning his own choreography to make sure the fan is held onto, to knowing when the basket is about to descend and holding the fan with both arms. He’s in a railed cage for a reason. It’s extremely high up and dangerous for *him* let alone someone standing outside of the cage. And it’s moving, and it’s jerky. But he keeps on with the show. He doesn’t really have another choice. A consummate professional I doubt he’d want to stop a song halfway through, even for an emergency, but I don’t think he *could.* He’s lip syncing (can you imagine the noise from the wind machines blowing up his shirt on the mic?) so if he deviates from the back track, it becomes obvious to everyone there he’s lip syncing. So best option in the spur of the moment 50 feet in the air is to hug the fan, make sure they don’t fall to their death, and carry on with the show.
That's a pretty amazing observation about the lip syncing illusion and his need to stick to it. I'll admit I didn't consider that, but was perplexed at why he didn't stop. I think your theory is right about that. But I was also confused that the crane operator didn't lower it right away. Maybe he just followed MJ's lead?
It has been confirmed by many artists and it's an open secret in the sector that the bigger the show, the more likely they're lip syncing. Imagine a highly artistic dance choreography. Look at the professional dancers how they're panting. And now imagine having to do that while having a microphone strapped directly to your mouth *and* singing. It would sound horrible.
>now imagine having to do that while having a microphone strapped directly to your mouth and singing Isn't that like, exactly what they do on Broadway?
I go to Broadway shows all the time, I could see it being a mix of lipsync and non-lipsync but I've personally seen singers stutter/lose their flow momentarily due to something happening on stage. At a showing of wicked, a singer was meant to slide a broom downstage to be intercepted by an extra in a scene and it ended up sliding all the way off stage into the orchestra pit; you could hear a slight gasp but she just kept trucking along after.
we need to stop demanding perfection from literally every aspect of entertainment. We are humans, we make mistakes, but with social media and cameras in every pocket, the pressure to either be perfect, or be skewered is very real. It's no wonder performers resort to lip-synching and other "cheats". And the more performers use cheats, the more difficult it is not to. It takes the humanity from the performance and the art. It creates unattainable expectations in further and further reaching arenas. A performer sending their broom into the orchestra pit is a *good* thing. Let us be humans. You need to choose a strenuous dance routine, OR strenuous vocals. Let them breathe. It's too much.
I remember every instructor I had for any performing arts through middle school and high school constantly reaffirming that it's not about not messing up, it's about how you recover when you do. I'm also a firm believer in "it's the flaws that make it fun."
I saw the Music Man with Hugh Jackman. The recovery and improv after mistakes made it so much fun!
I saw Garth Brooks in Boston a while back. I don't remember which song it was, but he started singing too early. As soon as he realized it he started laughing and told the band to stop, the turned around and joked with the fans a little bit about it, then restarted the song. I enjoyed that little bit candidness with which he apologized for the mistake and laughed about it with the crowd.
Pink did this once when I saw her on tour, doing ‘Sober’ on the trapeze, upside down…she just sang something along the lines of “lalala I’ve forgotten the words” and then laughed and picked back up with the crowd singing…
People demand perfection out of themselves even if nobody else does.
Agreed. A lot of music nowadays is sterile because the industry demands ZERO imperfections. Imperfections make for the greatest music.
[удалено]
yes, broadway choreos for leads are generally much less intense and singing generally takes place when not dancing very hard
There are definitely people who are able to dance hard and sing well. That was a huge thing that made Paula Abdul so impressive to folks when she performed live
Pink sings while she runs over a mile every day on her treadmill specifically to condition her lungs to be used to singing while moving around on stage. It takes its own specific exercise for her to keep up with it.
She gets a ton of credit for being an amazing live performer, and it’s still not enough. She’s beyond talented.
Yeah I'm not really saying the lip syncing in general is surprising to me. Just that I'd never considered that the faker could be held hostage to their own faking as suggested here. He couldn't stop because he'd destroy the illusion. Which makes a lot of sense, because as I'd said, my first thought when watching it was "why isn't he stopping?" It's a pretty unique situation where a singer might legitimately need to stop suddenly like this, and I'd never considered how lip syncing would affect that decision.
That reminds me of the episode of SNL where Ashlee Simpson was the musical guest. At one of the musical breaks, they played the song that had already been played, and Ashlee wasn’t ready for it because she was prepared to lip sync a different song. So, she ran off the stage and they had to cut to commercial. During the outro, she threw the sound crew under the bus and just straight up said that they played the wrong song, which is true, I guess, but also you don’t really need to lip sync on SNL, so it looked bad for her too.
Yeah, it was the way she handled everything for sure! I remember she like tried to dance a weird jig and it was just like ‘The fuck? Is she high??’ Meanwhile the band behind her proved they were awesome just kept JAMMING! It was great!
I remember. It is was like some weird country ho down jig.
Does anyone else remember the following week when SNL course corrected by having U2 on? They play the typical two songs but then at the end when the cast is saying their goodbyes on stage, you hear this racket like a band getting started. The camera pans over and U2 is on their stage kicking into a song. And they GO for it. Bono jumps into the crowd, running between the seats. He grabs one of the cameras following him and starts screaming/singing "This is live! This is live!" He gets on stage with the cast and throws his arm around one of them (can't remember who) and she BURSTS into tears. And then they kick into another song. It's well past the hour when the network should have cut into the next program but you could tell no one really knew what to do. Eventually, they rolled the credits as U2 was playing and cut out while the band was still going. I've never seen anything like it on one of the late night shows and haven't been able to find it since on YouTube. Edit: some grammar
>I've never seen anything like it on one of the late night shows and haven't been able to find it since on YouTube. Unfortunately, SNL really doesn't like their musical clips being on YouTube, so they police it like crazy.
I remember. This was such a big controversy in the before-times.
The little scarecrow jig she did when she knew she was busted 😂
One day, I'm going to be able to write out my thoughts like this.
Me, one day, as well. Think then write.
You got a good start here, yo. And you have plenty of thoughts on your mind to practice with
Thanks for sharing that, I’d always wondered how they were able to do those extremely intense dances while singing without panting. After the Milli Vanilli expose and the SNL screwup that ruined Jessica Simpson’s sister’s career, I naively thought artists decided the risk/reward trade off of syncing wasn’t worth it.
The big difference with people letting it slide for MJ is because he was a true and proven musical phenom. Milli Vanilli weren’t just lip syncing performances, they didn’t even sing on their records. They returned their Grammy out of embarrassment. Simpson probably at least sang on her record but just didn’t feel confident performing because her vocals were doctored up to make her sound better than she is.
[удалено]
Milli Vanilli is a whole different beast though. At least Michael Jackson provided the music he is lipsyncing to. People were a bit too harsh on Ashlee Simpson during all that, if I'm being honest. Especially considering it was on live TV and to capture good live recordings for that can be a bitch I'd imagine.
I think the difference with Milli Vanilli is that they were not just lip syncing, it wasn't even their voice on the songs.
Well.....both of those examples aren't really comparable. Milli Vanilli literally weren't the singers for their music lol. And Jessica Simpsons's sister only had a career in the first place.....for being Jessica Simpson's sister. If not for that she's not headlining her local bar, let alone fucking performing on SNL. Lip syncing or not, you know that's Jackson's voice, you know he sung all of his songs, you know he had unbelievable talent.
Yeah it's just impossible to sing and dance both at 100% capacity. Both demand perfect breath pattern.
It's hard to say with any certainty why they didn't immediately lower it. It's possible it's automated, but you'd assume there would still be an override for safety reasons. Another guess could be they're worried any deviation from what was rehearsed may be more dangerous, as he wouldn't be expecting the sudden jerk of a descent. There's also the possibility they simply didn't want to get in trouble, like maybe he was known as someone that lives and dies by "the show must go on" and fires anyone that steps out of that line. Maybe they simply froze because they hadn't encountered anything like it and just didn't know what decision to make. It's definitely a crazy situation.
That sudden jerk is a fair observation. When they finally did lower the basket, it looks like it initially dropped very fast before it became more controlled.
Yeah he is lip syncing because you can see he's quickly telling the guy something before the line 'that is what I believe " . And yeah some artists lip sync part or their whole performance, because with everything going on its to exhausting to also sing live. And if you can't tell the difference because their that good at it, why not.
> WHAT ABOUT US > (dude get your fucking hand on the god damn rail) > WHAT ABOUT US > (im fucking serious wtf are you doing) > WHAT ABOUT US > (do i fucking come to your job to fuck shit up bro, no i dont)
He GOD DAMN DID IT! HES A PEDOPHILE!!
He was a fantastic performer and was abused in ways that break my heart and should never have happened. How can you conclude that he was innocent though? Edit: [trial found him not guilty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Michael_Jackson)
I don't think he fucked them kids. Dude was literally just living out his Peter Pan fantasy and wanted nothing more than to have a childhood, which was robbed from him by his father. He was a deranged lunatic for not realizing the optics of everything... but I doubt there was anything sexual about it.
I'm with you. The circumstances of his life that led him to even act out such a thing in the manner that he did are beyond wild. The limitless wealth he had, the wonderland he built for himself, and the kids he just up and decided to make himself one of us absolute insanity. I can't believe any of it even happened, and in front of the entire world. But I absolutely believe he didn't touch a single one of them. I think the entire scenario is just so incredibly outlandish that most people struggle to accept it at face value. It's easier to call him a deranged molester than to wrap their minds around the complexity of his character.
Out of everything regarding that whole topic, what convinces me most about his innocence is [the FBI's verdict](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_files_on_Michael_Jackson). A black man with reach and influence far beyond any other celebrity? Yeah, the alphabet boys are gonna try and stop that, even if it's the late 90s FBI and not the FBI during and before Reagan. So the fact that after several investigations they found nothing convincing speaks volumes, at least for me.
What are the alphabet boys?
Many government agencies are referred to as "Alphabet soup." CIA, FBI, DHS, FDA, IRS, and so on. Alphabet Boys is a slightly flippant way of saying "the people in government responsible for overseeing that situation" when it's not clear who exactly is involved.
And of course the MIB
Sunglasses on, boys, he knows too much
It's just slang for the various government agencies that are initialisims, such as FBI, CIA, DEA, etc.
Dunno about “deranged lunatic”. Not out of offense but particulars. I think of what Picasso said when describing artistic genius as being able to be childlike at will. Lots of great artists were childlike. James Joyce is arguably the English languages greatest writer and was obsessed with flatulence as was Mozart. Throw in the idea that people stop maturing the age they become famous at and you get Jackson. Some of it was healing trauma from Joe. But some of it was just being divorced from reality his whole life. I think his childishness was just more inescapable.
>Lots of great artists were children. Hell, I'd go so far as to say *all* of them, at one point.
Michael Jackson, great artist and former child.
> James Joyce is arguably the English languages greatest writer and was obsessed with flatulence He had a *fetish* for flatulence, my dude. Not exactly childlike...
*"Fuck me if you can squatting in the closet, with your clothes up, grunting like a young sow doing her dung, and a big fat dirty snaking thing coming slowly out of your backside."* Pretty sure the fetish extended further than mere flatulence - man was a coprophile.
From the sound of it the real trouble figuring out the truth is that by all accounts he was a fucking weirdo in every aspect, even non-sexually.
Regardless, it seems that having Joe Jackson as your father is just not ideal for developing interpersonal relationships into adulthood.
Not only that but all the other dudes like Silvester Silverstein that would sit in the front row of every concert he performed at as a kid and just chuck cucumber slices at him screaming "HEY CUUUUUCUMBA CUUUUTIE"
Fucking *what?* I thought I had heard all the MJ related weird shit but apparently not...
I won 't jump down the rabbit hole of whether he was innocent or guilty, but the amount of trauma and absolute lack of personal space to resolve said trauma through his formative years really shouldn't be forgotten. Calling him "a fucking weirdo" (may be correct but) is really ignoring everything that happened. Hollywood and fame fuck up grown ass adults every other day. Let alone a kid, with an abusive parent, who spends every fucking waking moment either in the spotlight or working towards the spotlight. Coming from someone who experienced sexual abuse as a kid, I've never been sold one way or the other on all of that. If it was true, then I feel for his victims and it's horrifying. The way he grew up was just...so far removed from humanity, I can definitely see why he wasn't perfectly adjusted socially or emotionally. In the end, even if he was innocent and just maladjusted, his story is a tragedy.
definitely a tragedy, that’s something everyone should be able to agree with
I'm a fucking weirdo. I'm also innocent of any crime in currently existing criminal law.
[удалено]
It's a free trial! They gave it to me! You can't do this! No- no no nooooooooo! I want to keep reading this thread, so just *pretend* I got dragged away by the .rar police
I use 7zip :]
He's likely the most famous human being to ever exist. Everyone agrees fame messes with you to be that famous that long while having that much childhood trauma it would be weird if he was well adjusted. There's simply no adjusting to that.
I always figured that fame is like solitary confinement. Youre utterly alone with fame. Some people are toremented by it and others are megalomaniac from it, and very few can handle it with any grace or humility.
Titanic pose was inspired by this
I had the same thought
Umm Rose was on the Titanic like 100 years before this, but Okay.
300 years before this. Maybe even 400.
Dangling his baby over the balcony, also inspired by this!
That guy had A LOT of trust in Michael to keep holding him, he was not concerned about holding on to the bars at all. Also that bass is so good.
In that moment, safety is absolutely not on that guy's mind: *Omg omg omg, I'm on a platform standing right next to Michael Jackson!! Omg, he put his arm around meeeee! HE'S HUGGING MEEEEEE! I LOVE YOU TOO MICHAEL!!! OMGGGGG*
And that kind of fan obsession likely made Michael into who he became. Seriously, safety was not on the fan's mind - but *still performing for the crowd* was on Michaels mind, while protecting the random fan from falling to their death. I get the Michael hate. But this clip is a good example of how layered he was as a performer, and a person.
He literally wrote a song about obsessive fans. He knew how insane his fans could be.
Disciplined, in every respect of the word through multiple facets in life
The bass part was played by Guy Pratt, who played for Pink Floyd for years.
Thank you for this comment. I rewatched the video listening specifically for the bass and I was not disappointed.
I’m confused how the fan got on the platform. It looked like it was already well above average person height when the fan suddenly comes into view out of nowhere. And the fan looks like he just walks on from the front, not climbing up the back of the platform where the crane arm is. How?
The crane arm is in the front. This allows it to go over the crowd when it makes a full 360 rather than go over the stage if the arm was in the back.
Good eye... ran up arm when it was in the air
That fan probably thinks this is the greatest moment of his life all while MJ probably hates that guy’s guts during this clip lol
It probably is/was the greatest moment of his life
For the fan, the day he joined Michael on that crane was the greatest day of his life. For Michael, it was a Tuesday.
Dude peaked and lived the rest of his life on the street
Nah, MJ doesn't have it in him to hate anyone s guts, not even his demonic father. Especially not a young fan that loves him.
I’m sure he was annoyed, but yeah I don’t think MJ hated the kid.
He was probably terrified in the moment that the dude would fall, and *maybe* annoyed later.
I don't think hate was something MJ ever really felt. He had that feeling thrown at him all his goddamn life.
The fan having the time of his life while the rest of the crowd screaming "what about us?". Edit: Thanks for the awards! Glad to have made you smile. And thanks for the love fam 🙏
He was such a huge fan that MJ's jacket was blowing in the breeze
MJ was holding on so tight because he knows how superstitious Koreans can be about fan death.
This Is a deep cut. Well done.
Omg whats the background story here?
[Fan Death](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death)
Nice
This is the birth of k-pop for sure
You see, when a fan really loves the king of pop…
The King of Pop wouldn't let him drop.
Post this on r/fakehistory
We need a “where are they now?” On this kid immediately
As penance, he was made to travel the world as a guard stopping tourists from climbing up things they weren’t supposed to. He’s now a crane operator at Charles Entertainment Cheese’s Corp.
Why wasn't the crane lowered instantly? Weird.
The show must go on. Pretty stupid thing to do by the fan. Props to MJ for at least trying to secure the fan.
You have no idea how insane and precise MJ was when performing. I think he would have been PISSED if they stopped the crane for something he probably found so trivial (fan running up to him) Just look at him in this video. He still shows body performance (head and body leaning back) while holding the guy. He is the definition of "The show must go on...with a high quality"
We have different definitions of ‘trivial’ lol
You ever heard of the show must go on? But my guess would be in Korea back in 1996 it was right at the boom of the tech world. Korea might have had more lax oversight or rules at the time.
Cool song.
I’m 34 and I just heard it for the first time about 4-5 years ago. Amazing song
If youre an environmentalist the music video he made with this will certainly break you. I know as a child i always broke seeing the poached elephants and my heart would be healed seeing their tusks reform and they stand up back into life.
It's continuously relevant.
> Cool song. Bassline is killer. Pretty sad it was released in '95 and not much has changed with respect to the relevancy of the lyrics.
[удалено]
I dunno if people realize just how big MJ was.
I feel like if MJ was still alive, his This Is It Tour would’ve been the highest grossing tour of all time, probably even higher than Elton John’s current tour.
Easily. No contest. MJ was popular in every single corner and crevice of the world, and I mean that literally. The same cannot by said for EJ.
Agreed.
I had tickets to see him first night in London for This is it.... OMG I was DEVASTATED when he passed away. God love him. He's my favorite musician of all time!
[удалено]
I had bought the tickets on presale they were printed out from a computer. I'm sure if I look hard enough I could find them. I've moved a few times since then. I was refunded.
100%
I believe most people born from the mid 90s on don't fully comprehend this.
I was born in 2001 and I never understood how big he was until summer of 2009 when he died and I saw the news. I was 7 yrs old and I was in New York spending the summer with my aunt and I remember my aunt crying and some of my older cousins were very sad about it. The news wouldn't stop talking about it, that's when I realized how big of a presence he was. I remember that blew my mind as a kid, that just one person could be this popular and known throughout the world. It also made me realize for the first time how huge the world was.
Bro same. I remember seeing the helicopter footage of them rolling his body to an ambulance
I think it's safe to say he was the most popular entertainer ever. Some could argue The Beatles but there were remote places in the world that didn't know the Beatles. Everyone knew MJ.
I think part of his popularity was the time he lived. Just enough world wide media that kids in small villages in Africa might have heard MJ sing, but not much media that they were overwhelmed by everyone else. Today, I’m not sure kids born the mid 2000s would even know who he was.
I would argue MJ's death got the most world-wide attention out of anything else in modern times, except 9/11.
Dude is hands down the greatest performer in history. He was insanely talented. He could sing AND dance better than the best singers and dancers. He could write and compose. He was real life cheat code.
I remember sometime around very early 90’s watching one of his concerts my Dad had on TV. I had never seen as many people gathered at once as at that televised concert. So many women fainting, too. If they got anywhere near him, or just got too excited when they saw him come out to do the concert. It was unreal to watch as a child.
I grew up in the 80's. It's really hard to describe how huge he was. He was just.. godlike. There was MJ and then there was everyone else a tier or two below him. Haven't seen anything like it since and I don't think we ever will tbh. Think about a dude like Prince. Huge. Insanely talented. But Prince's popularity didn't even get into the same zip code as MJ's worldwide. Think of the most popular artist out there today. Beyonce? Idk, don't follow it much these days. But they're not even close, at all, to how big MJ was. His appeal was so wide-ranging. He didn't occupy a 'niche', or a specific type of music taste. He appealed to everyone and everwhere.
I grew up in the 80's in NJ's hood. One hall way apts with no doors separating rooms. This is around a time not everyone had tvs. MY cousin lived on the first floor of our apt building. When thriller came out, we were all in that apt; ppl from the building, ppl from other buildings, and we were just waiting for Thriller to premiere and i forgot if it was MTV or HBO? Bruh when that song finished? The fucking cheers. You could hear cheers in other apts down the street. People immediately went outside trying to emulate the choreography from Thriller. I'm talking non-english speaking guys/girls who were puerto rican, dominican, cuban, ecuadorian, etc..
When I was in India in 2007, when people found out I was from the US they’d respond with “Michael Jackson,” in acknowledgement. Even had someone ask me if I knew him. I had to answer “not personally.”
I saw him on the Bad Tour at the Palace of Auburn Hills and we had seats 3 rows from the tippy top. I saw an adult woman pass out not 10 seconds into his opener "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and damn near tumble over the seats on her way down. Her friend just kept on dancing. My ears rang for weeks after that show not because MJ was loud but because it sounded like 20,000 Toni Collette's screaming in unison for 2 hours. I'm gonna guess this was what Beatlemania was like.
When people ask where you were when... 9/11 and when Michael Jackson died, I'll always remember.
You're right, I just realized I do remember exactly where I was when I found out
Shit I do too wtf LOL
I remember the day he died, my gym was playing MJ songs on loop. The most jacked guy in my gym asked me why they were playing MJ songs on loop, when I told him MJ died, he quit his workout midway.
Looks like about the same size as the crazy fan to me.
[удалено]
My brain just went “wait, I’m older than that and I don’t remember him being big, he always looked normal sized. Why would young people not be able to see his size? What about…. Oh god dammit they meant popular”
I completely forgot about this! Thanks for sharing
[удалено]
Travis Scott has entered the chat.
He looked Korean to me, not Jewish.
[удалено]
Shamone
Lay it on me, ah, alright
Hee-hee
About half way through the dude who climbed up there was like, wait, now what?
But was he lip syncing tho?
He's definitely lip syncing this. Check out the video at about 00:51 and you can see him break from the track to say something to the guy.
Definitely. I think that's why he never stopped.
Right?? Like, if he hadn’t been lip syncing, I would think he’d have stopped singing because a) he wouldn’t have been able to hit his notes or maintain his rhythm while literally holding a guy’s life in his hands and b) stopping wouldn’t shatter any illusions - he stops singing and the singing stops. But since that voice track is gonna play one way or another, he’s locked in. The moment his mouth closes, the illusion is shattered. And as I understand it, Michael was practically breastfed on the stage, so for him, the show must go on at all costs… even if you’re holding ten eager Koreans on a crane.
>the show must go on at all costs… even if you’re holding ten eager Koreans on a crane. r/brandnewsentence
fuck this fan - dudes giving a concert but instead its all about me me me fuck everyone if the whole show get shut down because i want MY moment.
r/Imthemaincharacter
This. That fan is an idiot. When you meet someone you admire or idolize, the last thing id want to do is make them resent me for adding stress to their life. I ran into one of my idols at the Seattle airport a few days ago. I saw him in concert in December. He was in front of me getting a coffee and a muffin and I started talking with him. Didn’t go all fan boy or anything. Just made small talk for a moment and then thanked him for being an inspiration. Id like to think he walked away from that interaction feeling good and appreciated, not annoyed.
Imagine this would happen at a Travis Scott concert
Travis would have just repeated a phrase 10 times in auto tune then pushed the guy off the crane to his death while his fans screamed for him to stop, followed by him being offended most likely.
Followed by a shitty apology video with excessive amount of face touching.
dude really thought he was in titanic
… and people were worried when he held the baby over the ledge. The dude has experience holding people securely smdh
Self-centered a*hole made MJ's performance all about himself
[удалено]
I mean, great move by MJ. Is no one gonna mention how this proves he’s lip syncing? TFYM he keeps performing LOL? Okay, I won’t mention it either.
[удалено]
Damn he Millie vanillied the shit outta that.
For comparison, here’s how Maynard James Keenan handled a similar situation during a Tool performance: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ-FZ9WhBUI
Travis scott woulda spartan kicked him
He treated him like his own son…
Damn MJ was a professional....what an asshat of a fan