The year was 1991. Macaulay Culkin showed us the year before in Home Alone that it wasn’t just the Three Stooges that could make us laugh by terribly hurting people. We had a war that was over faster than some baseball games. And speaking of baseball, one of the best World Series to ever be played came in 1991. Look it up if’n you don’t believe me.
And Michael Jackson came back. He looked a little more white than he did on the Bad album but he was still pretty black. He looked like he was in good shape. And while if you had asked the question: “Will Michael Jackson look like a weird mummy in 25 years and die from taking too much horse tranquilizer?” probably six out of ten people would have believed you, if you ASKED what he would be doing in 25 years people would have guessed: “He would look like a weird mummy and be in in jail after being convicted of trying to hump Macaulay Culkin”. So close.
But the song? The song made him the first person (only person?) to have a #1 song in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. And he had little Macaulay Culkin in the video. AND Slash from Guns ‘N” Roses plays the guitar in the beginning. AND the video has Norm from Cheers in it. AND Tyra Banks. AND nobody on the planet understood at the time how they did the morphing thing at the end. I just know that I spent the whole next summer trying to make fat Asian men with crew cuts turn into Tyra Banks and it only worked twice. And by “worked” I mean it was dark and I was super drunk.
Don’t judge me. It was 18 year old Tyra Banks.
What’s Norm gonna do with a recliner in the desert??
Other than recline, I would say his options are limited.
I’m really confused on how macauley’s hijinks plays into racial ambiguity
Now that I think back on it, why did so many Michael Jackson videos premier on regular tv? I can only think of one other band that had one.