I just looked it up and weird Al recorded the album in late 83. It was released in 84, but the release date is after MJ’s pyrotechnics accident. It might still be released as a tribute to him, but possibly without the video.
WI: Michael Jackson dies in 1984?
- Thread starter Hadley
- Start date
Honestly you are underesteameting both of them. Prince also never tried to be as big as MJ. but in a world with no MJ. Prince who was at the start of his climb in 84 would end of being marketed even more in this time line. Only other thought is someone like L L Cool J becomes a bigger cross over Rap and Pop star or Bobby Brown for R&B and Pop
As you say, Prince never tried to be MJ -- he also never wanted to be. A world where Warner tries to make him the new MJ is a world where Prince and the label have a major falling out many years earlier. The breakdown might begin very quickly -- 1985's "Around the World in a Day" was pretty out-there and very much not the sort of thing that Warner wanted to follow-up "Purple Rain."
This would probably be a huge boost to Madonna, though. She was already going platinum and scoring top 10s with her first album, on the verge of releasing her massive second album. In OTL, she was the only artist in the world who could compete with MJ in sales and celebrity, and now basically all of MTV has been ceded to her.
I fear Janet's career may, counterintuitively, be much weaker in ATL. She's yet to have her breakout hit with "Control" and I imagine A&M may want to throw money at Quincy Jones to try and make her the next Michael. This may get her a hit album or two in 1985-7, but I doubt it has much appeal in the long run. Without Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in 1986, her whole career is turned upside down.
I agree. I can't see Prince easily stepping into Jackson's shoes. Prince was a different sort of musician, far more explicitly sexual for starters (listen to "Darling Nikki" versus any of MJ's lyrics).
It sounds weird now, given everything we now know about Jackson, but back in the mid 80s, he was marketed heavily as a "family friendly" devout Christian. And unlike Prince, Michael Jackson was, much like Bill Cosby at the time (HA!), seen as a good role model, and sexually non-threatening. Tailor made for the Reagan Era of "just say no to drugs", Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority" and Tipper Gore's crusade against lewd lyrics in music. Prince was in fact, a big target of both Tipper Gore and Falwell because of lewd, often explicitly sexual lyrics. Jackson, not at all.
Very different images in the conservative 80s America.
