Manboy Womanthing Blackwhite Moonwalk

It's a steamy 75 in New York City today, and the Escalade stereos are writing obituaries. Ipods are dialing; mp3s are spooling; the city is an audio dictation, re-writing the first draft of a biography. It's a thriller night this afternoon, but easy as A-B-C. This is what we'll say about a creature called Michael Jackson.

Surely there is now a university course to be held on mutable gender and identity in pop circa 1970-1990, with David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Madonna as primary texts. I was 10 years old when "Thriller" busted out; maybe MJ was the first to make me realize the dance floor as an area of ludic expression. You could skulk and surprise like a werewolf; moonwalk off into deniability as Billie Jean's not-lover; strut cocksure into an arch flirtation with "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

But, y'know, the song I'm most hearing as I'm walking down Third Avenue isn't any of these – it's "Don't Stop ('Til You Get Enough)," the debut single from 1979's "Off the Wall." Its very sound makes a spectacular argument for itself as the musical bridge from '70s disco to '80s pop. Just listen to this brilliant confabulation of sound-ideas (embedding disabled). You've got the swirl of strings opening it: the ideal musical notation of spinning around in a roller-disco. Then the horns – opening wide like the curtains on a proscenium stage, presenting: quite possibly the most danceable rhythm arrangement the world had yet seen. Slap guitar and bass from '70s funk, a bit of cowbell or woodblock like an errant elbow – honestly, I've been listening to this song for the past twenty minutes, and I can't parse the insane layering of sounds and time signatures in the rhythm: it's like your elbow joints, neck vertebrae, wrists, abdominal muscles, pelvis, knees and ankles are all having a conversation with each other as you're walking down the street.

But the coolest thing in this song, I think, is the way it blends the easy lushness of the white '70s with the do-right funk of black '70s and then adds something that's truly off the wall: a way for a white man to enter into a black-man sexual persona. Listen to "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" really closely: there's a high-note spike of the strings that's then echoed and given organic oomph by Jacko's high-pitched squeal, which still – 30 years later – has no word to describe it accurately.

Picture it this way: you're walking down the street (joints talking to themselves as mentioned above), or skating at the roller disco, or doing your white-man overbite thing on the dance floor, feeling louche and loose, and then suddenly EEOOH! My crotch is saying something. It wants to be heard. It says FUCK! yeah no goback got to keep it cool, got to keep it real, got to keep it together, EEOOH! DAYum, I want some –

Don't stop 'til you get enough.

It's pretty hard to keep that matrix of ease and tension together in one persona. It's a high-wire act. Thanks for the thriller night that we call a weird and singular life.