In 1987, Michael Jackson released Bad, and it did something no album had ever done. It produced five number one singles, a record that had never been reached before. He was, by any measure, the biggest star on the planet.
So you would expect 1988 to have been a victory lap. Instead, something strange happened.
That year, around 23,000 readers of Rolling Stone voted in the magazine’s annual poll, and they did not just overlook Michael. They named him worst male singer, worst male rock artist, worst album for Bad, worst single, worst video, worst album cover, worst dressed and worst hype of the year. Eight different ways of calling the most successful artist alive a failure.
Then came the Grammys. At the 30th Annual Grammy Awards in March 1988, Michael was nominated for several major awards, including Album of the Year. He performed that night and stopped the room cold. When the envelopes were opened, he walked away with nothing. The album that broke a record no one had ever broken had not earned him a single Grammy.
Here is the performance from that same night, the one they handed no trophies to:
Michael Jackson – Man In The Mirror | Live at the 30th Annual Grammy Awards, 1988
Watch it and ask yourself how that man lost everything he was up for.
To a lot of fans and writers, the pile-on never added up as honest criticism. By 1988, Michael had broken records set by Elvis and the Beatles. He had bought the Beatles’ song catalog out from under the industry. He had become arguably the most powerful figure in music, and he refused to shrink himself to make anyone comfortable. Many look at that poll and that Grammy shutout and see something harder to say out loud, a backlash against a Black artist who had gathered more success, wealth and independence than the industry was built to let one man have.
You do not have to accept every version of that argument to feel how strange the timing was. The same culture that had crowned him only a few years earlier decided, almost in unison, that he was suddenly the worst at everything, right as he reached the peak of his power.
Whatever you believe was behind it, one thing is beyond argument. The music won in the end. Bad is now called a classic, those five number one singles still stand in the record books, and that Grammy night performance is remembered long after anyone can name who beat him.
Press play and watch the artist they called the “worst” remind everyone exactly who he was.