My Grown Up Lessons From MJ
June 26, 2009
Lots of folks are mourning Michael Jackson for his role as the musical light of so many a childhood. I think I’ve learned more from MJ since I’ve grown up, musically and actually. I’ve taken some profound adult lessons in my twentysomething songwriter’s love for the King’s catalogue. Here are just a few:
- Shower the hate with love, and you deprive that hate of its target. It becomes homeless and aimless.
- Never feel that you’re too old for a good cry.
- Do what you love in your own way and in your own time. Retirement is the other guy’s bag. So is irrelevance.
- It’s ok to have only two chords in a song.
- Stories about stalkers can, in fact, have commercial potential.
- Growing up occurs in about 85 different ways, and only three or four of them are worth allowing to occur. Take some serious time to find and seize those three or four ways, and remain a child in spite of all the others.
- Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton will always be the aces in the hole, but the best songs will spring from your own unique experience and outlook – yours alone.
- Just take it slow, cuz we’ve got so far to go. When you feel that heat (and we’re gonna ride the boogie), share that beat of love. And when that groove is dead and gone, you know that love survives, so we can rock forever.
Love you, MJ.
