Friday, July 10, 2009

Michael Jackson Memorial Service - July 9, 2009

Michael Jackson memorial service held at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
The Michael Jackson memorial took place on Tuesday at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The service drew attention from all over the world. It was very surreal to watch and that includes just the hours before the service. People from all over the world there to pay tribute to the King Of Pop. Lots of good performances and words spoken all through the service. It was nice having the different ones there performing songs of Michael’s. One simple sad thought entered my head as I was halfway through the service. I liked the tributes but it was this feeling of wanting to hear the original and this realization that we’re never going to hear him sing those songs again. Mariah Carey and Trey Lorenz reunited to perform “I’ll Be There”. I was surprised to see Trey Lorenz thinking, wow, I can’t remember the last time that I saw him. That rendition of that song was huge back in the early 90’s. Usher’s performance of “Gone Too Soon” was incredible and he had all sorts of emotions pouring out at the end of it. The group performance of “We Are The World” was very fitting with it being so close to the end of the service. How symbolic was the ending with the instrumental set to “Man In The Mirror”? The music played while they had one spotlight on the alone microphone on the stage. Wow. Geez, Michael’s little girl, Paris ripped my heart out!!!! How sad was that when she spoke about her dad??!!! That was one of those moments in your life where you just lean over and think, this is too much to take. Wow. As far as the speeches, I liked all of them. Some just very simple and paying tribute. Others had fun stories including Marlon’s story about seeing him at the store and also Magic Johnson’s story about seeing Michael eating KFC. I thought the service was really good and a fitting tribute to Michael.

Viewership for the memorial service was huge as expected. Nielsen released their numbers and said that the channels that covered the service (which was 19 different ones) brought the average to 31 million viewers. It is the second highest watched funeral service ever behind only Princess Diana’s which was watched by 33 million. I've read that 20 million people watched it just in Germany alone. Online viewing was a big thing too as CNN is saying that they had 4.4 million live streams while MSNBC is saying they had 3.1 million. The internet was definitely slow on Tuesday as I was watching the service online at times too. The internet being slowed down was definitely being warned about in anticipation of the increase in traffic.

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