Michael Jackson Storms American Music Awards, Nobody Knows Why
Honestly, Michael Jackson should have popped his clogs a few years ago – it’s done wonders for his career.
Take The AMAs. The 2009 American Music Award nominations have just been announced and Michael Jackson is up for five awards, including Best Artist (even though he’s dead and hasn’t released any new albums for eight years) and Best Album (for a Greatest Hits collection that came out six full years ago).
Why has Michael Jackson been nominated so many times? Simple – it’s because he’s dead and dead people can’t make acceptance speeches. Basically it’s all a big ploy to ruin Kanye West’s fun.
This is just a hunch, but we’re expecting the big winner at the 2010 Brit Awards to be Stephen Gately’s nine-year-old cover version of Bright Eyes from Watership Down. Because if the just-announced American Music Award nominations are anything to go by, handing out awards to dead singers regardless of when they last actually recorded anything seems to be the hot new thing.
Michael Jackson, the dead popstar whose last underwhelming album was released in 2001, has been nominated for five awards – Best Artist, Best Male Artist, Best Album, Best R&B Male Artist and Best R&B Album. The album in question, by the way, is Number Ones. From 2003. Even when you factor grief into the decision to nominate him so many times, it still doesn’t make a great deal of sense.
Especially because Michael Jackson has released new music this year, which would have been legitimately eligible for nomination. It’s just a shame that the American Music Awards organisers failed to initiate new categories entitled Best Halfhearted And Truncated Rip-Off Of A Song From Grand Theft Auto and Best Cover Version Of An 18-Year-Old Puerto Rican Song That Nobody Had Ever Heard Of Until Yesterday, because Michael Jackson would have bloody well walked those.
Somewhat inevitably, news of all these Michael Jackson nominations have been met with bemusement from all corners, not least the LA Times:
Regardless of retail impact, a 2009 award show should be restricted to albums actually recorded within its recent history. At last check, Jackson has already won plenty of American Music Award trophies for the songs on “Number Ones,” including an artist of the century accolade in 2002. A segment or two honoring Jackson would have been a better way to recognise the King of Pop’s contributions to music.
Actually, you know what? Screw it. Based on unit sales and radio play, Michael Jackson probably does deserve all of these nominations. And let’s not forget the most important thing here – if Michael Jackson doesn’t get nominated then he can’t win, and if he doesn’t win then Jermaine Jackson can’t make an acceptance speech by proxy where he insinuates that he had a greater hand in the making of his brother’s hit records than he actually did. Won’t anyone think of Jermaine here? Jesus.
And anyway, surely the American Music Award voters are smart enough to realise that the basis for Michael Jackson’s nominations are flawed, and that maybe acts who have made legitimately eligible albums of new material would be more deserving of the awards. What’s that? The American Music Awards are voted for by the public?
Oh bugger.
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Ok everyone, Michael Jackson needs to be noticed all the time every year. He IS THE KING OF POP and there will never be anyone like him. I believe that if he were still alive his concerts would have been the highlight of the nation. All the charges that were layed on him for things I just don’t see to be in Michaels nature brought the star to a level of grief. All the hard work and wonderful performaces and noone seems to think of what the alligations were doing to him. He could have had all the children in the world but it seems he put his career of making his fans happy first. He deserves all the rewards he can get not for the music he has not done but but for the heart that he had and the love he had for all his fans. NOONE will ever be the shinning star that he is and will always be. RIP Michael and you will live on forever!!
Poor choice of words at the end there.
I`m totally agree with you.Michael deserves all awards in the world.I love all the fans Michael Jackson and I love Michael Jackson.
Why has Michael Jackson been nominated so many times? Simple – BECAUSE HE SOLD MORE THAN ANYONE. You tabloids, who have done your best to trash him – fail to realize the impact to of your negative press. And if you ask “the people” to vote, you will find MJ’s fans from all corners of the globe who are tired of this crap. Give the artist his due. If you take away his numbers from the final tally for industry sales for 2009, you will be left with what can only be described as miserable! “The voters” did not make the rules…the AMA did. To increase sagging viewership. LOL…why do you think MJ is included? For the same reasons that you wrote this article.
Michael Jackson, I’m really happy for you and Im’a let you finish, but Kanye West has had some of the most undeserving award nominations of ALL TIME!
To all you mercury eating, flouride drinking MJ fans.
I don’t think he can hear you from the screaming hordes of damned souls he’s in company with.
Hey look Friends is on!
yeah i understand that Michael Jackson is the King of Pop. I have liked Michael Jackson all my life, but it’s getting a little irritating that now everyone remembers him because he’s dead. If you look at the other nominees there all of this generation, and Michael Jackson isn’t. I do think he deserves this though, but it’s a little late. If they are nominating Michael Jackson, they should nominate Madonna, or maybe even Prince!
sheez.
Well said, Jam… MJ deserves the nominations based on the AMA’s own rules. I’m so sick of jealous american idol wannabees who see MJ’s nomination as an infringment on their beloved own stars…baby
LETS PUT IT THIS WAY, IF OBAMA CAN GET THE PULTIZER AWARD FOR DOING NOTHING ,THEN MICHAEL CAN GET AWARDS FOR ALL HE DID IN THE INDUSTRY
Holy crap, Obama’s won a Pulitzer now? I thought the Nobel was weird but a prize in literature is just taking the piss.
Of course Michael should be nominated. He was and will remain one of the greatest entertainers that ever walked the earth. He also – and I say this for the benefit of some of the detractors above, has an album and a single out. And yes, I am aware that these nominations are as much about acknowledging the growing worldwide calls for Michael’s name to be decisively vindicated as they are about recognizing the peerlessness of his musical legacy. Still not convinced? Okay, all joking aside, though, there are serious reasons why the nominations for Michael are happening:
If anyone is interested in wanting to know the truth, like I was several weeks ago when – in shock at my reaction to Michael Jackson’s death, I first started looking behind the haze of hyperbole I have been force-fed for years via newspapers, TV networks and tabloid feeders like Smoking Gun about Michael – I received a rude and shattering awakening. There is a reason why a depth charge of grief and anger has ignited in the hearts of millions, if not billions of people around the world – some of whom were not die-hard fans as well as those, of course, who were. I invite – no, urge anyone who wants to at least talk about possibilties, to read Mary A. Fischer’s award-winning article ‘Was Michael Jackson Framed,’ to listen to the public and written statements of Thomas Mesereau, to read the extremely well written book by Aphrodite Jones – ’The Michael Jackson Conspiracy,’ Geraldine Hughes ‘Redemption,’ and to visit thesilencedtruth website. On this website please take the time to look over the comments in the ‘Remember’ section – in particular Cory Rooney’s. For seemingly unfathomable reasons, a well-researched and successful extortion attempt by one man, Evan Chandler – a man who is now forcibly and legally estranged from his son, and who from copious statements from witnesses involved in the circumstances of that time has been described as a self-serving, opportunistic predator who cared little for his own son – and even less for the truth. When one looks behind the hysteria induced by countless others who put ratings and copy before a human life; you end up with more of a collection of compelling questions than answers, and a more than seriously uneasy feeling of something being not quite ‘right’ about the sheer level of engineered cruelty involved. In years to come, perhaps reasons will emerge from the rubble as to why a supernovic talent with a history of unparalleled giving and a persona of complex innocence was consistently and wilfully humiliated, tortured and stripped of his human rights for a period of over 15 years, on the basis of astonishingly non-credible accusations – and more importantly why this was actively encouraged. May I say at this point that I am not a conspiracist, I find that approach to life, depressing and ultimately limiting. But it cannot be denied that the potent, heady mix of newly syndicated, pneumatic televison networks and online tabloids all fighting for their share of white hot media glare; the lure of fantastical amounts of money and good old fashioned human greed; came together to produce one mother of a takedown. In the final analysis, it seems this was never really a story about drugs and the Beatles catalogue – but about our willingness to believe a lie.
Thank you Deborah French for putting into eloquent words exactly what I’ve been seeing and learning since Michael Jackson’s death. I had little faith in the media before his death; I have virtually none, now. I don’t know if I can ever understand WHY the media relationship with Michael Jackson was just so poisoned, unless it is as he once said, that rich white powerful america couldn’t stand to see a geniously talented, generous and sensitive, black man win the hearts of the world. That’s my description of the man, not his, he was far too humble too. My mind reels at the implications regardless.
haha hope he wins all 5 awards. cause none of the other people he has been put up with deserve to win. come on eminem. his new album was so stupid and so crapy. lady gaga come on people. when i read the list of nominees i thought this is a disgrace for michaels name to be even put with their names. no matter who wins mj is and willl always be the greatest act in history. where can i vote for mj.
although im not getting into why i think this is rediculosly unfair that hes nominated, whats wrong with Lady Gaga? Now that Mjs Gone shes the only one with real talent left if you have ears.
Michael Jackson deserves all the awards!
MJ is the best ever, that’s the truth.
Hi Deborah Ffrench, I love your comments which I already bumped into twice on the net.
Pls visit a new forum http://MJsArmy.proboards.com where all dedicated MJ fans get united. We need fans like you to bring Justice for Michael Jackson.