NY Tabs make asses of themselves over MJ

Yesterdays hysterical overstimation of Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” by both Jim Farber of the New York Daily News and Dan Aquilante of the New York Post is a clear and present proof of how hype endangers overestimation. When you’re reviewing the new Michael Jackson single for the New York tabloids, you are playing in the big leagues and even pros like these two cats get caught up in the hype. It’s like they haven’t learnt the first rule of rock criticism (or any sort of life), beat em on the big guys. If they’re good then fine but if they’re crap say they’re crap loud and often.


Neither tabloid can injure the Stones or Springsteen or U2 while they can injure some local band with a showcase at the Mercury Lounge. If you have nothing positive to say about a band of a certain size then shut the fuck up about them and if you can’t hear how average “This Is It” is, you shouldn’t be reviewing music.


This is what Dan Aquilante had to say yesterday “…this song is such a whopper it could be the biggest selling single of all time”. That is not music criticism. It is also not true, the song is exactly what I said it was yesterday and if it was so major why did Sa-Phire’s superior version in 1986 not make a ripple? “An optimistic, R&B ballad with an upbeat, percolating rhythm that has all the bombast and power of his New Jack Swing period of the early ’90s”. New Jack Swing? Invented by Ted Riley in the late 80s, New jack is a mix of hip hop production and R&B and neither “This Is It” nor “I Never Heard” is defined by the terms -Aquilante isonly used it because he thought the song was written at the height of New Jack in 91 when Riley produced Dangerous.


Farber isn’t Aquilante and you can forgive him hyperbole like “has the spring and warmth of classic Jackson ballads like 1979’s “She’s Out Of My Life,” or “Human Nature” from “Thriller.”, again, “This Is It” is an okay song that needed more work. But it’s the Rolling Stone 5 star U2 review: the bigger the band, the harder you review em, that’s how it goes, that’s what you should do and that’s precisely what isn’t being done.