How can Michael Jackson be Artist of the Year?

A very special achievement by the late singer, I’m sure you’ll agree – seeing as, aside from the soggily indifferent single This Is It, he hasn’t actually given us much new music this year. What with being dead for a fair chunk of it.
In the Favourite Album categories for both Pop/Rock and Soul/R&B nestles Jackson’s compilation Number Ones. Release date: six years ago.

Jackson himself is listed as a candidate for Pop/Rock Favourite Male Artist, Soul/R&B Favourite Male Artist, and outright Artist of the Year. In that last category he’s up against Kings of Leon, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Eminem, all of whom have the unfair advantage over Jackson of having released new albums and/or played concerts in 2009. As the awards are voted for by the American public, however, I’m sure we can count on Jackson to overcome that obstacle and win every gong going.

I love a lot of Michael Jackson’s music. He was one of the most talented singers and dancers pop has seen. But I’m not sure what the American Music Awards are doing here, other than congratulating him for dying. It’s pure sentimentality.

At the American Music Awards ceremony in 1996, incidentally, the title of Favourite Artist of the Year went to the godawful country-slush singer Garth Brooks. Brooks turned the award down. Why? Because, he said, he didn’t agree with the decision. His latest album hadn’t sold as well as his previous ones and he hadn’t played a gig all year. As Brooks put it later, “I just kept saying to myself: ‘Man, I don’t deserve this’.”

(Mind you, Brooks did accept the awards for Favourite Male Country Artist and Favourite Country Album, which somewhat diminishes the humbleness of his stance.)

If Michael Jackson wins any American Music Awards this year, he sadly won’t be available to turn them down in person. Perhaps someone could do the decent thing and turn them down for him.