By 2009 Michael had worn just about every look there was. The straightened hair, the sharp military jackets, the fedora pulled low over one eye. But in the footage from his very last rehearsals, something softer shows up. The loose, boyish curls fans fell for back in the Bad and Dangerous years were suddenly back.
He was deep into rehearsals for the This Is It shows, running Billie Jean and Thriller and Smooth Criminal late into the night at the Staples Center. And there they are in the footage, bouncing as he moves. The exact curls everybody remembered from the posters taped up on their bedroom walls.
For a lot of fans, that was the Michael they loved most. Not the icon frozen on an album cover, but the loose, grinning, curly-haired dancer who looked like he was having the time of his life. Seeing him reach back for that look at the very end feels like him reaching back for them.
Fans even have a name for it. As the story goes, someone handed him a shirt that read Curls for My Girls, a little nod to the ones who’d missed that version of him. People still argue over whether he actually wore it, but the curls are right there on camera either way.
Michael rehearsing days before he passed, curls and all (June 2009)
His very last rehearsal ran the night of June 24 at the Staples Center. He worked through his songs, thanked his dancers and his crew, then went home. The next day he was gone. Which is part of why this footage hits the way it does. It’s him at the very end, looking exactly like the beginning.
It’s only hair, when you get down to it. Still, watching a man in his fifties go back to the look of the kid who first made the world fall for him does something to you.
Maybe it was for the fans. Maybe it was just for himself. Far as anyone can really say, in his last weeks he reached back for the version of Michael people held closest, and handed it to them one more time without ever saying a word about it.