Pop Trinity

I found an odd thing in Michael Jackson’s death this week. I found that I was thinking as much, or even more about Madonna and Prince. I’ve always had this loose trinity of 80s pop in my head comprising of the three of them. I’ve always found them interesting as a group, particularly since they all started to become embarrassing at about the same point. I mean really, had someone bombed the Grammy Awards in 1991 and wiped them all out, how differently we’d think of them now. No renaming debacle, no sex book, and we wouldn’t have had that ending to the Black or White video. In short, we’d have been spared seeing each of them go off the rails. Not that they didn’t do good work after, but we really watched each of them crack up in big ways during the 90s.

Madonna didn’t go off the rails as badly as the boys did, but that’s just another interesting thing about this group, the 2-1 distinctions. Madonna and Prince both had feature film careers, while Michael never managed that far. Michael and Madonna both were media accepted figures, while Prince has always been on the outside looking in. And of course Prince and Michael were given credit for their artistic merit while Madonna has greatly been dismissed for only being good at PR. There is also the fact that two of them went by on name and one went by a first and last name and a few other 2-1 distinctions but why keep hammering? Besides, you’ll always find things that two people did and the third didn’t when you’re talking about three people. I just find it interesting what things have worked out and how they have worked out.

During the 80s though, these three pretty much were pop music. Not only were they big at the time, but they and their music have endured into the present. Even when Michael was becoming frankly scary to look at and Invincible only (only he says) went to be a double platinum album, he was still packing them in because he never stopped being a great performer. No matter how many comment about Madonna’s scary arms or wacky life keep popping up, people still want to see her perform and her albums keep hitting number one. Prince is currently selling better than he did during his heyday, his last four albums all got into the top three so I guess the whole comeback thing worked for him.

Michael Jackson was always the least of the three for me though. I liked his music, but it never compelled me like the works of the other two did. Even then, Madonna is more or less just okay as far as I’m concerned. Honestly, I prefer Prince over the other two, so when one of them comes up in a big way I find myself thinking of him again. I suppose that’s why I decided to buy his new album, and snagged a copy of Purple Rain on DVD.

Well that and Holly has never seen it, which only confirms my whole prejudice against her parents who clearly kept her handcuffed to a radiator in the basement and only fed her through a slot in the door. You have never met anyone who was not only alive, but a kid during the 80s and yet seems to know nothing about that decade. If she were a brainwashed CIA plant all MK Ultra style she would have done what she was going to do by now.