Forcing Michael Huge Marketing Plan Will Remind Us That We Really Like Michael Jackson’s Music

You can fly blimps overhead, take ad-time during “Seinfeld,” even rent Time Square’s Jumbotron screen to sell your message. But if no one cares, pummeling the public won’t change it.

I have yet to run into a single person who seems genuinely concerned about Michael Jackson’s new album “HIStory,” due June 20. There is absolutely no palpable buzz about this “long-awaited” two-disc set - at least none that I can discern.

Around America’s water coolers the topics are “Melrose Place” and Connie Chung and DNA and the NRA and when the subject of a hot song comes up, it’s not Jackson’s unoriginal new single “Scream” - released a few weeks ago to a so-what reception. Rather, it’s that easy little tune by the the Rembrandts, “I’ll Be There for You” (also the theme from NBC’s “Friends”). Radio programmers say it’s their most-requested, talked-about break-out tune in ages.

But Jackson has for so long been obsessed with his own bizarre interpretation of superstardom; with his self-appointed King of Pop silliness; the running in the streets with security guards flanking his military self; the manufactured scenes of “fainting” fans and screaming girls, that he probably thinks the world is indeed panting for him.

If his record label really does have a desperately thick marketing playbook that (according to Billboard magazine) details an 18-month plan for “HIStory” that includes milking nine singles and two Christmas selling-seasons from it, it only proves that it, too, doesn’t have the confidence to let Jackson’s music speak for itself.

It will be difficult to escape him over the next few weeks as Epic Records shoves this unprecedented marketing assault down the throats of us all. Yet that heavy artillery often backfires, particularly when it is so overwhelming it obscures the very product it purports to sell. No matter the quality of the music, there are likely many people who already do not want to read, see or hear another word. And that was in May.

And isn’t it interesting how the new-look VH1, now fully obsessed with its newly acquired ultra-coolness, has readily (at least temporarily) given up its carefully cultivated new image to jump on the Michael train?

Who in music at this moment is less hip than Michael Jackson? Yet VH1 was all over the King last week, airing a ridiculous “special” that stank like a K-Tel infomercial. The network even got its new, serious newsman Anthony DeCurtis (a fine journalist from Rolling Stone), to narrate the “piece,” hoping his presence might neutralize the stench of VH1 selling-out. It didn’t.

For once, wouldn’t it be comforting to welcome back a superstar without all this attendant nonsense? Michael Jackson has obviously written and performed plenty of engaging pop tunes over the years, and I’d guess that beyond stunt-songs like “Scream” and the fakery of a PR onslaught masquerading as journalism (re: Diane Sawyer interview), there is probably some pretty good stuff inside “HIStory.”

Imagine if Epic Records simply put Jackson’s work on store shelves and let it rise naturally. Imagine if Americans could be permitted the pure joy that goes with discovering such music themselves (as we did with “Thriller” a generation ago). Imagine if Jackson were allowed the dignity of standing or falling as he deserves.