On last night’s mostly unbearable Rock and Roll Hall of Fame episode of American Idol, soul-singing powerhouse Jacob Lusk performed Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.” He is simply one of the best pure singers the show’s ever had, and so it came as no real surprise that, aside from some predictably annoying hammy parts, he pretty much knocked it out of the park. What did come as a surprise, though, was something he said during his behind-the-scenes package. I can’t find video of it this morning, and I stupidly deleted it from my DVR, so I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist was this: “If I go home tomorrow, it won’t be because I didn’t sing the song well, it will be because America wasn’t ready to look itself in the mirror,” which, fuck you, Jacob Lusk. If you do go home, and a small part of me now really hopes you do, I would like to think it’s because we don’t like being spoken down to, and because your extreme, baseless arrogance is wholly unattractive, and because we realize that for you to pre-emptively place blame on literally everyone but yourself maybe just illustrates that you didn’t understand the song at all, now did you?
Best chord change in the history of music.