1995 Michael Jackson: Earth Song

It's my own fault I suppose. Because my teenage years fell squarely within the eighties, I grew up with a version of Michael Jackson that's become definitive. Not for me the precocious early seventies child star of the Jackson 5 - no, my Michael Jackson was the single gloved, red leather jacketed face of the pneumatic pop sheen of 'Billie Jean' and its ilk. Golden years. Unfortunately, it also means that the music produced by the latter day Jackson wasn't really for me either, and if I looked sideways at 'You Are Not Alone' then along comes 'Earth Song' to knock me into a complete loop.

A curious entry into the Jackson canon, the only thing comparable is his 'We Are The World' co-write from 1985, though that was written to an order dictated by the mood of the times and the need for the US to be seen to be 'doing something' for famine relief comparable to the UK's Band Aid project. 'Earth Song' has no such pre-set agenda to follow save Jackson's own, but whereas the former song promised a "brighter day", the latter has a less rosy outlook to offer.

Apparently styled as an open letter to God ("What about all the peace, that you pledge your only son"), over its six minutes playing time Jackson bemoans what mankind has done to the world in a hideous mash up of ever increasing histrionics, clumsy imagery and bad metaphor of "bleeding earth", "weeping shores", blood, water, fire and brimstone that crank up the intensity in cycles leaving Jackson howling into the Armageddon until he squeaks "What about elephants!!!" And what indeed? But what about a little restraint Michael? A little subtlety or a little heart? 'Earth Song' has none of these things.

In fact, the cumulative effect is like being repeatedly slapped in the face by cold, dead fish that increases in size as the song progresses from a small mackerel that perished in an oil spill at the opening to a full head and body bludgeon from one of the "crying whales" freshly overculled by a Japanese commercial fleet at the bombastic boom of the ending. Subtle it is not; 'Earth Song' reminds me of the over earnest end product of a secondary school environmental project performed at an end of term concert while Miss Davies of the IT department projects stock images of pollution and famine on the wall behind them. I don't doubt Jackson's sincerity, but 'Earth Song' is a folly crude in its obviousness, clumsy in its execution and with no charm at all in its awkward naivety.