music: pop stars

When I saw Michael Jackson's video for "Thriller", I read the little caption on the bottom of the TV as "Michelle Jackson." My brother kept on refering to the artist as "he" (ie. "He's such a good singer") which left me in utter confusion, but I thought my brother would beat me up if I asked about this, so I remained silent for about a year.

I also thought that my uncle was in the Beatles. This doesn't make sense for quite a few reasons, such as the fact that my uncle is about 36 years old. I also owned a Beatles album and knew the names of everyone in the band. I guess I thought that he was just a secret member. I think I believed this because he played the guitar and would always sing "Julia" by the Beatles whenever he saw me.

Around 9, 10 I started putting posters of pop stars (Duran Duran, for instance) on my walls. I thought that they had tiny cameras in the eyes and could watch their fans whenever they wanted. This, of course, had me changing my clothes in the bathroom a whole lot!

Someone once told me that Mariah Carey was a "white girl with a black soul" so I thought she was born in a black family but was white, thus making her feel kind of left out.

I didn't know Weird Al was doing parodies until I was in sixth grade. I still think his versions are better.

When I was little I was extremely afraid of Gene Simmons of KISS -- I thought of him as being a monster such as Freddy Krueger. Whenever I would see him on TV with KISS, I would wonder why the rest of the band members weren't afraid to stand by him. Also, my brother would come into my room and force me too look at his scary KISS album covers. However, once I became I teenager I began to love KISS and no longer feared the mighty Gene.

I was about four when Jim Croce died. I had been given a single of "Bad, Bad, LeRoy Brown" shortly before he died, and played it all the time. After his death, I didn't understand how come I could still hear his voice on the record player if he was dead.

One of the first 45s my sister and I bought was a song by The Guess Who. We thought we were really supposed to "guess who" the singers were. This is still embarrassing to admit! We were about 10 and 11 at the time.

Quando era pequeno soube que Lennon tinha sido assassinado, na hora me vei a imagem do Paul, achei que Paul tinha morrido...

When I was 8 or 9, me and my dad was watching a rock concert, and the performer (cannot remember who it was), took the mic with him and walked around stage while he was singing. My dad told me that the singer was a thief, he was about to steal the mic! I believed this until I was 11 or so, then one day i suddenly realised that he was joking..

I was watching a concert on tv. They announced the next performers would be
"Olivia New and John".

I thought it was weird for the guy to have no last name, and then it got even weirder because only one woman performed. It was years before I realised it was Olivia Newton John.

When I was 14 and a big Michael Jackson-fan, I read in a magazine that he was seeing Brooke Shields. In my diary there is a "letter" to Michael about him deceiving me with Brooke....When I read it, I can almost see the tear-prints on the diary-page...!

I used to think that Alice Cooper was a woman. How could I not with that name?

A few months ago my 13 year old sister was reading an article on the now defunct boy band named Five. One of the member's name was Sean. When I asked her who she thought was the cutest she said "Seen" not realising how to pronounce the word.

When I was about five my mother told me all about Elvis, and I remember her specifically noting that Elvis had a daughter and had died "before he even got to know her." I figured that the only reason she could be telling me this was that Elvis must be my real father! Needless to say I was disappointed to learn about Lisa-Marie some five or six years later.

I always thought that singers had to sing the same song over and over again when they were recording their records, i.e. every copy of a record had to be recorded seperately. I would imagine singers being very happy finally finishing a single, and then getting angry at a record company boss who told them to do the same procedure all over again for an LP or one of those cheap K-Tel compilations. Daft.

As I´m brazilian and speak portuguese, when I was about 8 or 9, I thought Ray Charles was the king of Britain, ´cos you pronnounce "Ray" as "rei", and "Rei" means King in portuguese. I always heard of the queen of England and the 'REI' Charles (not togheter, of course). You can imagine the mess in my head thinking "why is the king of Britain blind? Why is he playing the piano with such a wide smile ???". In fact, I began to think the Queen and the 'King Ray Charles' were divorced, because I never saw them in the same place. Weird...