Music

Michael Jackson used to make fun of Prince videos

by Jeremy Mersereau

No one is immune to the guilty pleasure of soothing your doubts about yourself by revelling in the failures of others… least of all the deceased Michael Jackson. That observation arrived in a new memoir from super-producer, record exec, and Death Grips enemy L.A. Reid.

In his new book Sing To Me, Reid claims that he was visiting Neverland Ranch in the early 1990s when Jackson showed him footage of a 1983 James Brown concert. The King of Pop was invited onstage alongside the Godfather of Soul, and killed it. Immediately after, his rival Prince was also invited up to perform, but things didn’t go as well for him:

Prince [couldn’t] make his guitar work, frantically stripping off his shirt and trying tricks with the microphone stand and making all these poses. After Michael’s dazzling star turn, Prince fell as flat as he could, and Michael enjoyed laughing at the video.

Keep in mind this would be pre-YouTube, so MJ would have really had to work to mainline his dose of purestrain Schadenfreude. “Schadenfreude™: The ‘Freud”s In There For A Reason!” – some YouTuber trying to trademark the term, à la Fine Brothers.

Thankfully, in our technologically enlightened era, I can pull up that footage with the greatest of ease, so we can all experience the joy of laughing at a virtuoso on multiple instruments who was once less than perfect:

Reid goes on to say Michael wasn’t done with the humiliation-fest, immediately following up with a scene from Prince’s poorly-received 1986 black-and-white drama Under the Cherry Moon, which is way more embarrassing than a hundred technical glitches.

MJ: occasionally as petty and insecure as the rest of us, apparently.