GOAT Talk: Dissecting The Bey-Coming, The Boy Whould Be King & The King of Pop by Sheldon Taylor

 

Michael Jackson has long dominated GOAT talk. Current opinions suggest otherwise, citing Beyoncé and Chris Brown's career durability as justification to supplant the King of Pop's long-standing reign. 

It's a conversational coup that deserves to be toppled. 

In a rare moment of self-celebration, Jackson encapsulated his career in a 2001Vibe Magazine piece: "Its a rarity. I had number one records in 1969 and '70. I entered the charts at number one in 2001. I don't think any other artist has had that kind of range."

Seven years later, Jackson was dead at 50: eighteen days shy of an ambitious 50-date farewell UK tour before walking off into the sunset (with his lucrative publishing catalog), having secured the bag, solidifying his triumphant destiny. 

Jackson's legacy is unprecedented. His gravitational reach far. 

Tap dance icons Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly---members of the Lost Generation and the Greatest Generation demographic born before the advent of TV, were reinvigorated by Jackson's exploits on the small screen.   

Astaire, born a century prior in 1899 and Kelly just over a decade later----lavished praise for Jackson's electrifying Motown 25 performance ("You're a hell of a mover. Man, you really put them on their asses last night") and iconic "Billie Jean" video.  

The Baby Boomer generation was equally touched. Adult entertainers like Gladys Knight marveled at Jackson's pubescent genius when they shared stages on the 1960s Chitlin' Circuit, alerting Motown to her discovery. In the early 70s, a young Lenny Kravitz and Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds were in the crowd at Jackson's early arena shows. Both came away inspired, embarking on their own musical journeys. 

 Gen-Xers and Millennials to children a few years removed from the womb copied Jackson's moves on social media timeline feeds: all would be captivated by Jackson's unprecedented legacy: past, present, and future.

It's one thing to captivate a single generation. It's another to captivate multiple ones. 

In 2025, Jackson is more Muhammad Ali than Floyd Money Mayweather: great but no longer GOAT. R&B entertainers and podcasters proclaim he's been eclipsed by Bey's high wattage pageantry and Brown's explosiveness.

                              

Alliances with conglomerate Columbia/Epic/CBS/Sony granted Jackson and Beyoncé access to their label's vast resources ensuring major product rollouts.  

Savvy and protective parental hands guided their careers. Both spun off from hit groups before solo success; They shared same relentless drive and focused ambition.

Shaking off whispers of default success in the wake of Aaliyah’s passing and claims of “hijacking” of Amerie’s go-go-infused sound, Beyonce' solo ascent was rapid. She vaulted past eponymous R&B female singers (Brandy, Monica) and neo-soul sisters (Erykah Badu, Jill Scott). 

Holding her own against current stars and contemporaries (J-Lo, Rihanna) and standing apart from veterans (Mariah Carey,  Mary J. Blige), pop upstarts (Miley Cyrus), and newcomers (Keyshia Cole), Beyoncé's withstood Taylor Swift's pop dominance and the arrival of a new crop of female R&B acts (H.E.R., Coco Jones, Muni Long, and Ella Mai).  

While her peers' fortunes rose and fell with producer alliances, Beyoncé's musical identity was rarely eclipsed by her studio collaborators.  

  Accelerating into another gear by the end of her thirties, Beyoncé's career exploded to new heights. A 2022 NPR piece takes a deep dive, but here are the highlights: six albums in eight years; the most decorated female Grammy winner (35 wins); a highly viewed Netflix concert film ("Homecoming") reintroducing a beloved R&B classic ("Before I Let Go") to a new generation plus an Emmy for a Super Bowl halftime show ("Beyonce Bowl").

2022's "Renaissance" delved into Southern dance-oriented rap, disco, and house, catapulting NOLA bounce queen Big Freedia and club diva Robin S (both sampled in "Break My Soul") back into the public eye. 

The album also sparked conversations of Black (and queer) evolutionary presence in dance music spaces. 2024's "Cowboy Carter" followed suit accomplishing what filmmaker Ken Burns' brilliant "Country Music" documentary couldn't do:  reach a younger generation inspiring exploration of country's Black superstars and unheralded contributors.  

"Cowboy Carter" helped spark a public resurgence in all things western-inspired. Line dancing---long associated with the geriatric/middle-aged crowd found its way to younger audiences who (momentarily) put down their phones; basking  in the glow of communal joy of a movement that came with its own theme song ("Boots On The Ground"). 

The moment also unearthed a massive western fashion craze MIA since the late 70s/early 80s. Fans showed up in every style configurations to the album's supporting tour, that earned over $400 million dollars making it the largest grossing ever.

Oblivious to Elvis ("That's Alright Mama", "Hound Dog") and Pat Boone's ("Tutti Frutti", "Good Golly Miss Molly") historical genre-hop; purists proclaiming "Cowboy Carter" an intrusion of the music's hallowed ground----overlooking the fact 1920s singer Jimmie Rodgers, hailed as "the Father of Country Music"---learned banjo/guitar at the knee of Southern Black railroad brakemen: Rodgers also incorporated their yodel-based work chants (descended from plantation Negro spirituals)---a signature that became a country vocal staple. 

Earning Best Country Album Grammy on the heels of the Grammy-winning "Renaissance," Beyoncé's album continued her trend; words of cultural critic Greg Tate:

"to bring together collaborators and other people's intellectual property into a unique artistic vision that is a sum often greater than its parts."

Framing the singer's creativity as less "original" genius than  "curatorial," Tate would hail her artistic approach as "magic." 

Closing out a nine-year run at age 43, Beyoncé remarkably surpassed Jackson's own output as he entered his forties.  A decade removed from the 30-million-selling "Dangerous," label woes plagued the release of a highly anticipated album ("Invincible"). Legal problems strained his finances. Damaging public accusations were never far, not unlike the artist deemed by many to be his would-be successor.

            

Brown's energetic performances and slick, acrobatic moves may have recalled Bobby Brown and Usher in their heyday, but it was Jackson to whom the gifted teen hitched his gifted star. What Michael-mania was for the MTV crowd, Brown was the 106 and Park generation’s equivalent.

Inching toward forty, Chris Brown’s career is akin to a human highlight film played on continuous loop. Arriving during the last half-decade of the CD era, Brown delivered a string of massive hit singles ("Run It," "Kiss, Kiss") and albums. 

When the music industry downsized and download/streaming formats stalled the careers of R&B artists built on label budgets and physical product, Brown survived and thrived over the next two decades, becoming the first male singer to release over 40 consecutive platinum-certified singles.

Excluded from performing on television award shows following public domestic abuse charges, Brown embarked on six massive world tours (his current one boasts a 50-song set culled from twelve hit albums).

Brown’s success inspired older R&B veterans twice his age to elevate him as R&B’s ultimate GOAT. Hip hop acts also joined in the coronation, sharing collaborations and singing their praises.  A 2006 lyric by 90s rap icon AZ revealed that the Brown was on his radar: “boppin to Chris Brown/ hoppin' to brick pound/showin’ the forty fully/Bape hoodie zipped down.”

                                                      

Beyoncé and Chris Brown's legacy-in-progress will go down in history, but Jackson's impact across multiple generations ensures he'll forever remain in a state of perpetual discovery. 

Not many can claim fame to being a pro entertainer at nine; a concert headliner at 11 who hires an (Lionel Richie) to be his opening act on tour----sharing 80s Black pop superstar status and co-writing credits on a mega-selling humanitarian anthem ("We Are The World"). 

Not many had their history woven into a Harlem crime novel: author Colson Whitehead's 2021 "Crook Manifesto" transports readers into a world of Tiger Beat magazine pinups, posters, Sugar Crisp, and Alpha Bits Jackson memorabilia:

"Busy boys, the Jackson 5. He didn't know if they were sexually active, but they were certainly promiscuous with sponsorships with no less than three breakfast cereals...."

"Manifesto" details the exploits of Ray Carney---an uptown furniture man eased back into the heist game to score Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter:

"It was the Jackson 5 after all who put Ray Carney back in the game after four years on the straight and narrow....."

 Caught up in the pocket-draining tsunami ("Like everything in life, the Jackson 5 promo was rigged") Carney treks to a local bodega and purchases fourteen boxes of cereal in search of memorabilia.

The mission? Restore his baby-girl's fleeting adolescent joy ("he didn't realize how much he missed it until the Jackson 5 came along"), Carney allows himself to be swept up in the J-5 tsunami ("like everything, the Jackson 5's promo is rigged")----trekking to a bodega purchasing fourteen boxes of cereal for collectibles:

"Honeycomb's secret weapon: balloons in the shape of the Jackson 5's heads and imprinted with their likeness. Macabre tokens in all, but May would not be complete until she got the Michael...."

Enjoying massive success across racial lines---Jackson and his brothers filled a cultural void, injecting a prideful Black Star Power for young brown boys and girls underrepresented in the media spaces. Comic king Eddie Murphy was one of them. Now sixty-four, Murphy reflected on the era back in 2024:

"It was a whole different show business back then. The only young people you would see were the Jackson Five....."

In 1970, Vince Aletti's Billboard piece ("The Jackson 5 Are The Biggest Thing Since The Rolling Stones") echoed a similar sentiment; after the group moved a record-breaking 18,000 tickets for a sellout show at New York's Madison Square Garden:

"The show sold out to an almost exclusively black audience. The average age of the Jackson Five is almost 15; the average age of the (Madison Square Garden) crowd seemed about the same, giving rise to an identification so total that half the audience seemed dazed----as if finding their own astonishing beauty in the mirror for the first time."

Songs like "ABC" that introduced Jackson to the world during his Jackson Five heyday: a punchy, youthful brand of R&B with circular storytelling spawning adult copycats (see: the Osmond's "One Bad Apple" and Honey Cones' "Want Ads" and "Stick Up") powering his first four records to number one. 

Future young stars grew into their gifts: Jackson's arrival was immediate. A master song interpreter beyond his youthful years, Jackson vocally dipped into the Motown song book, Broadway ("Corner of the Sky") show tunes, current soul ("Ready Or Not"), pop ("Stand"), and rock renditions ("Doctor My Eyes").

Flexing a Spanish dialect ("Don't Want To See You Tomorrow") one moment and country and western twang ("Honey Chile") the next---the young prodigy dived into mature fodder like "A Man's Temptation's" fidelity ("this woman won't leave me alone/she's going to ruin my happy home/with a man's temptation/ I got another back home") and "Touch's" soft seduction ("just relax/you melt me like candle wax/one touch and my whole body melts").

On the dreamy psychedelic "Can I See You In The Morning," Jackson convincingly plays up a May-December romance:

"Can I see you in the morning, like I see you late tonight, come and make me feel alright....come and take me, come and take me, do with me what you like...they say you're too old for me, too old for me; but I know you said that you'd wait for me..." 

To their benefit, Beyoncé and Chris Brown stepped into a fully formed youth-driven music industry, a guaranteed career pathway after more mature acts were relegated to Adult Contemporary pasture. 

In comparison, Jackson was dropped into a cauldron of adult heavyweights across music categories, battling them for chart supremacy during the eclectic 1970s. 

He'd emerge victorious: "ABC" sold two million copies in a week, toppling the Beatles' swan song "Let It Be" from the number one spot on Billboard's Top 100.

Third group album release ("Third Album") zoomed past James Brown, Aretha, Isaac Hayes, Roberta Flack, the Temptations, and Stevie Wonder to capture Billboard's Top Selling Soul LPs five weeks after arriving in stores. 

Post-"ABC" Jackson moved the musical needle again.

 Shaking off Motown's rust and doubter dust----intent on banishing him to a graveyard littered with cadavers of faded teen idols---solo album number five gave him a career reset. 

Void of Teddy P's virile growl, Blue Magic's ethereal whisper, Stevie's optimism sprawl, and funk's brass construction. At 21, Jackson introduced the modern R&B album. Drawing on the vocal delivery skills of pubescent past, Jackson's many moods matched "Off The Wall's" sleek grooves.  

Pushing the envelope further----"Off The Wall" shattered existing R&B templates: musicianship and soulful vocal chops would no longer exclusively define the Black music pedigree. OTW's song lineup was both calculated and compact: clipped and shorn of album filler and experimental sojourns ala Earth, Wind, and Fire ("All N'All").

Released in August '79, with platinum sales by December: huge by industry recession standards. By '81, the album had sold over five million copies. The biggest-selling album in '80, OTW was ignored on music's stage — shut out of pop award nominations, although it earned a string of wins in Soul categories for two years straight. 

Released under an anti-disco cloud, raining, dampening its pop prospects---Washington Post writer Robert Hull painted a questionable picture of Jackson's work; framing it as a superficial picture of disco's (not too) past:

"Michael Jackson has struck platinum---not because it is a  fluke in an industry's game of chance, but because his music reminds listeners of the glory of mindlessness. Each recording seems like a carbon copy of the previous one."

Broken yet unbowed, Jackson returned with his signature masterwork that would solidify his legend at 25 as he singlehandedly rescued the record business from collapse.

Forever forward leaning---Jackson would never lose sight of past influences that were the wind of his majestic wings. 

                                                                  

  "When I was young, the people who watched were the real showmen---people like James Brown, Sammy Davis, Jr,. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly:" Michael Jackson (1988)

Michael Jackson's influential encyclopedic cherry-pick is legendary: his "Beat It" video imported scenes from the 1961 musical "West Side Story." His "Thriller" video revisits fifties teen B-movie themes, along with 1929's Phantom of the Opera and 1968's "Night of the Living Dead," all wrapped up in an innovative, ghoulish package. "Smooth Criminal" is  inspired by the Fred Astaire musical "The Band Wagon." 

Jackson's short film video format foreshadowed future Murder Inc "Grease" send up ("Mesmerize") Beyonce's New Edition salute ("Love On Top") and Bob Fosse 'Sweet Charity" crib (Single Ladies") all the way up to Tyrese's Marvin Gaye-tinged  "Wild Flower."

During his chitlin circuit days, Jackson shared stages with veteran entertainers and studied their styles. Older men like early J-5 producer Bobby Taylor and film arranger Quincy Jones steered a young Jackson towards a soulful delivery and cinematic approaches to making music.

On wax, he'd drop plus bits of Four Top Levi Stubbs ("I'll Be There) and Archie Drell ("How Funky Is Your Chicken'') or Manu Dibango ("Wanna Be Startin' Somethin') 

Whether it was Sinatra's cocked fedora or Kelly's white sock/loafer combo ("Singin' In The Rain"), or Astaire's necktie belt or the dashing supper club tuxes, Jackson would import these looks into a signature look. 

In time, he embraced concert shock-and-awe, but Jackson never abandoned the foundational simplicity and magic of the adult-driven entertainment he was weaned on.

Jackson gave as much as he took: when early rock and roll singer Jackie Wilson fell into a coma in 1975, an eighteen-year-old Jackson donated $10,000 ($60,000 in today's dollars) toward Wilson's medical expenses. After Wilson died in 1984, Jackson paid for his funeral and dedicated his Album of the Year Grammy win to the late singer's memory:

"Some people are entertainers, and some people are great entertainers. Some people are followers. And some people make the path and are pioneers. I'd like to say Jackie Wilson was a wonderful entertainer. He's not with us anymore, but Jackie, I'd like to say I love you and thank you very much."

In 1990, Jackson performed a televised tribute ("You Were There") to Sammy Davis Jr. before his death. 

Before Jackson was crowned king, Davis was the original GOAT entertainer: a multi-instrumentalist, ahead of Prince; Davis was a singer, dancer, comedian, and actor, conquering Broadway, TV, and film. 

Like Jackson, Davis started early: he was a child performer at age two; he acted in his first movie at seven (in 1932). Davis was the centerpiece of his family act;  Just as Jackson fended of questions of his sexuality, racial solidarity and facial features---Davis battled painful public criticism of his politics, interracial marriage, non-militancy and perceived lack of love for the Black community.

 Jackson secretly paid $7,000 toward ex-Temptation David Ruffin's funeral expenses. He stood in mourning at James Brown's casket for five straight hours.  

After the cash rolled in from "Thriller's" massive record sales, Jackson moved into music publishing, acquiring lucrative works, including Little Richard's catalog, valued at $ 10 million. Jackson moved to return it to Richard, but his publishing partners blocked his attempt. The King of Rock and Roll never forgot Jackson's generosity:

"Michael Jackson owns the Specialty stuff, now. He offered me a job once with his publishing company for the rest of my life, as a writer. At the time, I didn't take it. I wish I had."  

Jackson repaid a debt to his friend Barry White for coming to his aid; White had mentored Jackson in music publishing. White also worked on Jackson's future solo albums, uncredited and free of charge. 

When Jackson's family and CBS were against him going solo, he  secretly brokered Jackson's solo album dea,l convincing CBS to allow Quincy Jones to produce "Off The Wall." 

"I was the one he called when he got into trouble with his label. He came over that night and we talked for five hours. and he cried throughout because he said they'd hurt his feelings badly. All he wanted was a fair shot at a solo career"

After the family alerted Jackson of White's death, Jackson chartered a 100-foot yacht for a private funeral, honoring White's final wishes to be buried at sea.                                    

As Black music enters its second digital decade, Jackson remains impactful in death as he was in life. Ahead of his sixtieth birthday, the RIAA reported that Jackson earned new gold and platinum certifications across 21 songs and three albums. New song awards push Jackson's cumulative digital sales to forty million. 

Current and future artists may manipulate entertainment and music media to advance their careers. One day, Jackson's numbers may be eclipsed. In this moment, Beyoncé and Chris Brown's luminosity is worthy of celebration, but their road to immortality is paved by Jackson's infinite influence.