There’s a good reason this Michael Jackson biopic stops at Bad. Before it got worse |
There’s a good reason this Michael Jackson biopic stops at Bad. Before it got worse
April 26, 2026 — 3:00am
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
Save this article for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.
When I was in my early 20s and could lay some modest claims to coolness, I had a DJ friend who agonised about whether he should still play Michael Jackson remixes in his sets.
This was back when the child sexual abuse rumours about the pop star had morphed into allegations, which later became out-of-court settlements with his accusers, and eventually led to criminal charges, which culminated in a 2005 trial and Jackson’s acquittal by a jury. Jackson always maintained his innocence, as do the administrators of his lucrative estate.
But despite the best efforts of the Jackson public relations team, and what looked very much like an attempt at attention-diversion marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the allegations cast a lasting pall.
The Jackson image was not helped by his disfiguring plastic surgery and the terrible own-goal interviews he did with Martin Bashir in the early noughties, in which he said blithely that he had slept in a bed with “many children” because “what’s wrong with sharing a love”?
During a legal battle over taxation on his estate, the judge noted that at the time of his death aged 50 in 2019, Jackson had not made any money from endorsements since about 1993. His poor reputation had engulfed his music.
After much earnest discussion, my DJ friend decided it would be OK if he played Jackson’s pre-alleged-child-sex abuse era hits, at least until things shook out, and we knew where we stood on all that. Stick to the delightful poppy genius of........