Each song he sang took my breath away and the goose pimples kept increasing and by the time “Thriller,†“Beat It,†“They don’t really care about us†and “Smooth Criminal†came in, I couldn’t hold still and thought my heart would stop beating.
[Global: On Michael Jackson]
I had first refused to believe it, when I was told late on the evening of June 25th 2009 that “Michael was dead!”
All night we stayed up watching television and waiting for any new developments, hoping that it was a mistake and that soon Michael would walk out of the hospital, with a smile as always and say everything was alright—why?
Because people like Michael just didn´t die abruptly! Weeks passed by and the shock and pain still remained buried deep within our hearts. New forums were opened online for fans that needed to talk and share the pain with others, which indeed helped a lot of people in dealing with this huge loss.
“This Is It” his documentary film was due to be released on October 28th and I didn’t know what to expect. Some predicted that the film wouldn’t do well, thinking by the time it started, months would have gone by and many would have by then gotten back on with their lives. But they were proved wrong because it has turned out to be such a huge success, not only here in Germany, but worldwide.
On Wednesday October 28th here in Germany alone, a minimum of 20,000 people were counted to have visited the cinemas. Word on the streets was about how amazing the film was and people were praising MJ and his whole team.
It was reported in the news that on Thursday-the following day, a live hand grenade was found on a seat in one of the cinemas in my town showing the movie but it still didn’t stop people from rushing in to buy tickets. I couldn´t even sleep the night before because I kept waking up anxiously counting the hours and thinking about how I would have preferred it to be a live concert with him performing instead!
Never had I seen the cinema so jam packed, like it was that very day. People of different origins, families came in groups from grandparents to their toddler grandchildren, all seated waiting to see Michael rehearsing for a concert he would never live to perform and we to attend!
For almost two hours I sat there holding on tight to my seat and just as we always expected, he was leaving everyone in awe of his passion, energy, focus and talent. One could see a lot of heads nodding and in other cinemas people were on their feet singing, dancing and clapping like never before.
This film does seal all those lips that kept saying Michael wasn’t in good shape to stage all the 50 concerts and that in some scenes his doubles were placed—well it was nothing of that sort in the movie we watched.
MJ was in better shape than some of the 50 year old men living in my town. He kept up with the dancing across the stage, the choreography, and even lecturing the band on playing the right notes because he wanted them to play exactly the way his fans knew his music.
Every now and then at his request a scene would be rehearsed again and again showing that he knew exactly what he wanted to achieve for his stage performance and that was perfection.
Each song he sang took my breath away and the goose pimples kept increasing and by the time “Thriller,” “Beat It,” “They don’t really care about us” and “Smooth Criminal” came in, I couldn’t hold still and thought my heart would stop beating.
All I thought was how I could have been stupid to ask myself what I was to expect of this movie! This is someone who´s broken records that people have said were impossible to break, such as being the first Black artist to have a video on MTV, selling more records than any other artist known in the world today, being in the Guinness book of world records for the most successful concerts in the world, for having the most number one hits than any other artist, most Grammy awards won by an artist; just name it all, Michael broke all those records and I had no doubt while watching the movie that he was definitely on his way to breaking yet another record.
It is actually the best documentary movie I have and will ever see.
No doubt the majority of people in Germany feel the same too, as a lot of them have gone to see the film more than once. Michael, who has often been imitated, will never be duplicated because there can only be one and for the world there will never ever be anyone good enough to follow in his footsteps!
For us his fans we can only comfort ourselves with the great music he left behind and through it, he´ll continue to live on forever.
Nyinomugisha is an artiste based in Germany. Please see www.myspace.com/gisha
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