With all the public speculation about everything from his plastic surgery and skin lightening to his sexuality and eccentric behavior, Michael Jackson was very much aware of the “Wacko Jacko” perception hurting his career in the early ’90s.
In fact, the new MJ podcast “Think Twice: Michael Jackson” — which debuted on Amazon Music and Audible on Thursday — details how the King of Pop pored over market research in which people would make harsh comments about his looks and idiosyncrasies.
“He wanted to know … I would take stacks of surveys, and some things that you or I would not be able to take as a human being — he took it all in,” said Dan Beck, who, as an executive at Epic Records, began working with Jackson right before the release of his 1991 album “Dangerous.”
“At that time, some of the non-musical issues were surfacing, some of the tabloid stuff — you know, plastic surgery, all that stuff. And we were very, very concerned about these things getting in the way of Michael’s music.”
“There was a concern that pop radio would turn on Michael because he was just too weird to be a pop star,” added Jay Smooth, who co-hosts “Think Twice” with Leon Neyakh.
As sales of “Dangerous” were plummeting — by his lofty standards — at the beginning of 1993, Jackson set out to change “the weirdo narrative,” as Smooth describes it.
“Michael and his team wanted to wash all that away and replace it with the idea that he was not just a generational talent but a historic artist in a lineage with the greats,” said Smooth.
As part of that concerted “myth-making campaign,” as Smooth describes it, Jackson gave high-profile performances at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration gala and at the American Music Awards, where he was given the International Artist Award of Excellence — an honor that he personally negotiated for with the producers.
And, at just 34, the “Thriller” singer would receive the Grammy Legend Award at the 1993 Grammys.
But the biggest game-changer for Jackson’s career came when he was the halftime headliner at the 1993 Super Bowl in a groundbreaking move that turned it into the biggest gig for pop superstars.
After he shot up from below and hit the stage at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, Jackson struck an iconic pose — and remained frozen in it.
“To anyone watching from home, the applause sounded thunderous and seemed to continue for a minute and 33 seconds as Michael stood there silently, almost like a statue of himself,” said Neyakh.
“It was like he was saying, ‘I don’t even need to do anything. I can just stand here.’ ”
But it turns out that, despite appearances, Jackson wasn’t exactly soaking in adulation during those 93 seconds.
“If you look at the shots on television, there’s some shots of the crowd, and people are just kind of walking around like, ‘OK, when’s this happening? What’s going on here?’ ” said Jim Steeg, who was on the field as an NFL executive.
In fact, said Neyakh, “The roaring applause you heard if you were watching the live broadcast was actually piped-in sound, fake cheering that was added in to conceal the fact that many of the actual attendees thought there had been some kind of technical malfunction.”
For Smooth, it was the ultimate fakeout. “It really makes you wonder how much of what we think we know is based on this type of artifice — and what other historical truths get lost in the star-making process,” he said.
It all goes to show just how much Jackson — who passed away at 50 in 2009 — was “a master class in the art of self-mythologizing,” said Neyakh in the first episode of “Think Twice,” which takes its name from a lyric in MJ’s 1983 smash “Billie Jean.”
Indeed, after Jackson was hit with child-molestation allegations later in 1993, he shored up black support by appearing at the NAACP Image Awards in January 1994.
“Thank you for your warm and generous support. I love you very much,” Jackson said to wild applause. “For decades, the NAACP has stood at the forefront of the struggle for equal justice under the law … None of these goals is more meaningful for me at this time in my life than the notion that everyone is presumed to be innocent.”
But comedian Doug E. Doug — who was a presenter at the awards — saw his appearance as a shrewd, calculated move.
“It may be one of the first times in his career that he ever made this kind of overt pitch, but it was in service of his own skin,” he said.