Is Michael Still a Thriller?

WHAT! You mean I waited four years for this?

That was my initial reaction to hearing Bad, Michael Jackson's long awaited follow-up album to Thriller, which sold a record 38.5 million copies.

I expected Bad to be something much different from Thriller--something attuned to the physical and personal "developments" Michael has undergone in the last four years.

And while Michaelmania has subsided somewhat since 1982, many fans have remained true to the superstar. Some others, though, have been turned off by his weird lifestyle and interests. Michael seems to contradict himself so often, that it's hard for anyone who enjoys his music to understand what he's up to.

Since its release, I've come to like Bad. It is in many ways "Thriller II," and it's reaffirmed the popularity of the unique style that made Michael a megastar. Bad's first four singles have reached number one on the pop charts, and the album has already sold 13 million copies after only seven months.

Now I know Michael was on the Forbes 400 long before he released Bad, so he obviously doesn't need the money. But the way he's marketed the singles from Bad shows that he's getting a little greedy. When I first bought "I Just Can't Stop Loving You," the album's first single release, I was expecting to hear another song from Bad on the B side. But what did I find? "Baby Be Mine," a song from Thriller.

If 38.5 million Thriller albums were sold, he isn't exactly letting us on to something that we haven't heard. Does he plan to release all 10 tracks on Bad as singles? It may mean that he's been having trouble coming up with ideas lately, because artists usually put previously unreleased songs on the backs of singles. You have to wonder what he did in the four years between albums.

MANY other people were also surprised by the resemblance of Bad to Thriller, especially after hearing about Michael's little exploits these past four years. For one thing, he had his face resculpted hundreds of times, it seems. It's now so soft, unmasculine, luminescent and unreal, that it contrasts directly with his new street image--which gave up the Sgt. Pepper-style sequined uniforms for a black leather jumpsuit studded with spiky buckles and steelheeled boots.

He has also allegedly been taking female hormone injections to stop facial hair and to keep his voice high, undergone silicone facial implants to reshape his cheek bones, chemically bleached and surgically peeled his skin to make him whiter, and had a chin cleft added.

And of course he had his famous 350-or-so nose jobs.

For another thing, everyone knows that Michael has been sleeping in an oxygen tank. He hopes it will help him live to be at least 150 years old--although I doubt his joints could handle the moonwalk at that ripe old age.

We're talking about a man whose best friend is a chimpanzee named Bubbles. Michael takes Bubbles ever-where he goes, talks to him, taught him the moonwalk, and sleeps with him. He also owns a 300-pound python named Crusher, a Llama dubbed Louis, and an assortment of dogs, cats, birds and other animals.

Michael has tried to deny these rumors. Reportedly, in a telephone interview with Barbara Walters, the superstar claimed that being a vegetarian for 12 years has taken some of the color out of his skin. Right.

One of the more unusual things Michael has done was to bid for the skull of John Merrick, the Elephant Man. After his first offer of $500,000 was denied by the museum where Merrick's head rests, he raised his offer to $1 million, then to $1.5 million.

I wonder if Michael Jackson is a fan of the poet Lord Byron, who used to use the skull of a dead friend as his drinking container. Byron also wanted the skull of the poet Percy Shelley after Shelley drowned, but couldn't get it. Come on Michael, I'm sure there are stores in your neighborhood that sell other types of drinking containers. I'm sure they're cheaper, too.

Michael may have summed up his life at best in the song "I Just Can't Stop Loving 'You" when he says, "People don't understand me. That's because they don't know me."

Yes Michael, we don't quite understand you but, in the end, that may not be our fault.