A willow deeply scarred, somebody's broken heart and a washed-out dream.

I think it was Thriller. If you didn't own a copy of Thriller--an original copy, on vinyl--whose cover you dragged around everywhere or studied endlessly or pinned to your wall. If you didn't, as a child, dance around your room or your living room to "Beat It" and feel cool. If you didn't see a man moonwalk. If you didn't or didn't know anyone who owned and wore a single glove, preferably a perfect replica--white with silver sequins. If you didn't. But in a few cases, maybe it wasn't Thriller. Maybe it was Bad or even something later. All I'm saying is, if you didn't have a certain childhood memory that you can associate with him, before he was an abstract concept, a tabloid conceit...then you probably can't relate. But for some of us, he was a "strand of our cultural DNA," as John Mayer put it.

Or as Touré said the day of, "If you remember Michael Jackson as a weirdo you didn't know him. There was a long, beautiful, groundbreaking career before all that stuff."

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