Jackson estate success is a thriller

Full disclosure: I love Michael Jackson. Deeply, completely and unironically.

In fact, one of my first major musical memories was requesting Beat It at our 6th grade roller skating party. It was a great party -- Brian Something-or-other asked me to skate and, although I cannot now remember his last name, I do remember the amazing feeling of skating with a guy I was crazy about, to a song I was crazy about, in a black velvet sweatshirt I was crazy about and thinking to my 12-year-old self that life does not often get much better than that.

So, I will always love Michael Jackson's music. At least the old stuff. Not so sure about the ten albums that are going to be released between now and 2017. Seriously, ten albums? The first of these, Xscape, will go on pre-sale tomorrow on iTunes. It supposedly has eight songs we've never heard before... meaning there are 80 Michael Jackson songs sitting around that we've never heard before?! 80 songs? Even post-mortem, Michael Jackson is making me feel lazy.

He's also wiping the floor with me (and most everyone else) financially. The man is earning $1 billion a year. Billboard did a great breakdown of all of the places MJ's money is coming from. Namely: Music sales, music publishing deals, DVD sales from This Is It, a hit show in Vegas and a bunch of huge record and ad deals with Sony.

In researching this piece, I watched a lot of old Michael Jackson videos on YouTube. The video for Remember The Time = Mind. Blowing. Eddie Murphy as the jealous Pharoah? Where was this man's Oscar? Iman as the gorgeous Pharoahette ... torn between her deep love for Michael Jackson and ... well, actually, she doesn't seem torn at all. Poor Eddie Murphy. I mean, MJ is an amazing dancer, but he's in this weird see-through skirt and black slacks and a shiny gold breast-plate looking ... you know, not exactly like a man's man and he's just out-and-out walking off with Eddie Murphy's woman.

To me, this demonstrates a couple of things.

Number one: Women love a man who can dance (or skate... that was, as I remember, a large part of Brian Something-or-other's appeal).

And number two: never underestimate Michael Jackson. The man is no longer alive and he is still out-earning, out-producing and out-dancing us all.