When I heard about Michael Jackson's death this afternoon, I must admit I was neither particularly surprised nor especially sad. Honestly, I haven't cared much about Jackson in 25 years, and acquitted in court or not, he was a weird guy at the very least, and at the worst, he was a reprehensible pedophile.

Others can and will speculate about how Jackson devolved from the "King of Pop" into a ghostly recluse. Montages will show a cute and chubby prodigy morph into a plastic pale skeleton wearing a surgical mask. The way he was treated as a child will be the focus of his decline, and it's truly a sad story.

And, until just a short time ago, that was the odd vision I had in my mind's eye, too.

Then I took just a moment to remember when I thought Michael Jackson was the greatest singer in the world. "Thriller," after all, was the very first album I bought -- at Sears in Bayshore, as I recall. I was 9 years old, and it was in 1983.

I must've played "Thriller" until I wore out that album. Until I bought records from Duran Duran, Madness and tapes by 'Weird' Al and Devo, "Thriller" was all I had. I listened to and memorized every song, and when it was time to do a book report in fourth grade, I selected a Michael Jackson biography.

I still remember standing up in front of Mrs. Chase's class at Donges Bay Elementary School in Mequon, wearing an afro wig, my grandma's red jacket and the sequined glove she sewed for me, as I did the entire report channeling the essence of Jacko, himself.

I also remember being pretty upset that my parents wouldn't buy me the official Jackson red leather jacket that was sold at Merry Go Round in Northridge. (By the way, Mom, I forgive you now; that must've been hideous.)

I remember that American Music Awards in 1984 and trying so hard to learn how to moonwalk. And then I remember gradually losing interest in Jackson as I got older and began to realize how weird he was. By the time all of the child molestation charges had surfaced, I'd long since stopped caring about him - but mostly because the music he created since he was in the Jackson 5 -- all the way to "Thriller" -- ceased to be so magical.

I'm sure there are a ton of reasons to explain what happened to Michael Jackson, but on the day of his death, I'm thinking again about "Thriller." Some of those nine tracks were pretty cheesy, but others were amazing. "Billie Jean," "P.Y.T." and "Wanna Be Startin' Something" still hold up today. "Beat It" and "Thriller" sound pretty '80s, but you're lying if you don't admit that the first five chords of the latter still don't give you goosebumps.

Of course, go back an album to "Off The Wall" and it's even more of the same brilliant dance music. Jackson was indisputably great back then before the overproduced, megalomaniacal junk like "Bad" started spewing forth.

It's a shame, on so many levels, that Jackson became a victim of his own success, that he allegedly perpetrated some awful deeds, and that he ultimately died today.

Whatever you think of the man behind the myth, the world of music lost a true icon today. Let's not whitewash the rest of this stuff, but let's remember that along with all the weirdness, Jackson gave the world some really great music.