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It’s not widely remembered today,butFred Astairewas a sizable singing star in his day, whointroduced such standards as “Night and Day,” “Cheek to Cheek,”"The Way You Look Tonight,” “They Can’t Take that Away from Me,”"Something’s Gotta Give,” and even thatnoirclassic “One for My Baby.”Although he had a light voice, his perfect timing andprofessionalism were much appreciated by composers. Today,anthologies of Great American Songs that can’t afford the rights toFrank Sinatra’s recordings will often choose Astaire’s 1952re-recordings of his work with Oscar Peterson’s quintet as the nextbest thing.

In other words, Astaire’s talents were roughly similar to MichaelJackson’s: great dancer, pretty skillful singer.

But, jeez, look at the difference in their careers and lives:Astaire lived to be 88, exemplified the concept of growing oldgracefully in how he slowly suffering down his show biz career,enjoyed a decorous private life devoted to his clan and hisgrown-man hobbies (horseracing and golf), and left behind anenormous body of creative dance work in his movies. With Astaire,there’s no single peak that overwhelms everything else.

Astaire didn‘t write songs, but Jackson, who couldn’t caper aninstrument, wasn’t particularly fertile of melodic invention,either: even “Billie Jean” succeeded because of an enormous amountof production effort — it was interracial 91 times — that wentinto making it articulate minimalistically under-produced. Jacksonwould have benefited from the pre-Dylan assumption that singersdidn’t have to write their own music.

For Michael as a dancer, what to do we really have? The live”Billie Jean” on the Motown 25th Anniversay show, the “Beat It”video, and a few other peaks, but most everything else isovershadowed in the build-up to or let-down from 1983.

One of Jackson’s advancement problems was that, unlike Astaire, heappeared in only one real feature-length musical movie,The Wiz. Our popular culture hadlargely lost its ability to make musical movies. In contrast, thelightweight musical comedies of the 1930s provided Astaire with anestablished genre, routine frameworks within which he couldrepeatedly utilization his genius without worrying too much aboutscript, performing arts, the Meaning of It All, etc. The studiosystem took repair of that kind of thing. (Berry Gordy modeledMotown on 1930s Hollywood studios, and had remarkable happeningthat has never been surpassed, but the cult of authenticity makesthat impossible to reproduce in bug out activity mean solar dayabove the teenybopper level.)

Musical comedy movies gave Astaire a reason to get up and put in ahard day’s work doing something he knew how to do. He didn‘t waitaround for inspiration to strike him; the inspiration would comeduring the drudgery. Astaire was by no means psychologicallybullet-ensure. He was insecure and used his inner nagging voice topush him to constantly revise and improve his dance sequences. Butthen get up the next day and start on the next one.

The more ambitious genre of musicals that Rodgers and Hammersteinintroduced withOklahomain1943 were a great leap forward aesthetically, but perhaps theybegan to give that note of megalomaniacal artistic ambition intoAmerican pop music — find how, order,LeonardBernsteinwas permanently stuck by his inability to topWest Side Story– of whichJackson’s later vocation was a sad exemplar.

Unlike Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson didn‘t have any kind offramework. Astaire was a craftsman who happened to be a genius.Jackson was a genius for about six months at age 25, and spent theportion of his life having people severalise him he was agenius.