Level 1: The Unbothered Listeners

The Unbothered Listeners live in the ultimate state of blissful apathy towards all things MJ. When it comes to the “King of Pop”, some of them may be able to identify Michael Jackson under this pseudonym. Some of them will think of Harry Styles. They have busy lives, eclectic yet vague musical tastes, and couldn’t care less about forming an opinion about some singer who is dead anyway.

They are complex and mystical and, like Michael’s diction in the bridge to the rap part in Black or White, sometimes hard to understand. These dispassionate creatures won’t change the radio station or skip a song on their playlist if Beat It or Billie Jean comes up in their passively consumed rotation. To be fair, a subset of this audience is indeed tenaciously passionate, but only about music far away in the galaxy of genres, like dubstep, lowercase, or sea shanties. Whatever their motivation (or lack thereof), they never actively seek out a particular song by the King.

The Unbothered Listener’s browser history is free of Michael Jackson traces, unless their dentist happens to have the same name and they once had to find his number to cancel their professional cleaning. They are very busy. Or they prefer their teeth a few shades darker to match the pirate look of their shanties. In addition to having a digital MJ footprint of zero, they got rid of their entire physical music library around 2014 in the wake of Spotify’s mainstream reign. So, any chance of accidentally owning a Michael Jackson song as part of the “Now That’s What I Call Music, Best of 80s” CD compilation is gone.

These dainty mortals would rather not be included in this categorization of “fans”, but they are not willing to expend any energy protesting the idea. Even if they are at the base level of enthusiasm, they are part of the fandom simply by not skipping a Michael Jackson song. They maintain that level of indifference to all aspects of his legacy.