Michael Jackson’s legacy is vast and complicated. I love that I had my little two-second psychedelic trip to “Rock With You.” It’s not my favorite Michael Jackson song, but at least in some way, it’s the purest of them, the one that cuts right through to what made millions of people love the man. In an increasingly atomized media atmosphere, the death of the world’s biggest pop star was a unifying force, a monocultural last gasp. That day, everyone was listening to Michael Jackson it was all anyone wanted to hear. Something like this probably happened to a whole lot of people on that day in June of 2009. The music on my headphones was almost exactly in sync with the music in the outside world. For just an instant, I was totally unmoored, not sure if what I was hearing was real. It was almost at the same point of the song. “Rock With You” was playing over the speakers in Sultan’s, too. As I walked into Sultan’s, I’d only gotten as far as “Rock With You.” When I walked in the door and pulled my earbuds out, I had one of those weird experiences where, for a few seconds, I wondered if I was hallucinating. I was working at Pitchfork at the time, and the office was only a few blocks away. That day, I walked to Sultan’s Market, the Middle Eastern takeout spot in Wicker Park, while listening to Off The Wall on my iPod. Walking around Chicago that day, I heard Jackson’s music coming from everywhere - cars, open windows, boutique speakers. The day after Michael Jackson died, it was beautiful out. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
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