It’s an age-old dilemma: can you separate an artist from their art?

The AI Overview, our new Google first result, addresses the question, in part, as follows:

The ability to separate art from the artist is a complex and debated topic, with no universally accepted answer. Some argue that art should be judged solely on its merits, independent of the artist’s character or actions. Others believe that an artist’s actions and beliefs inevitably shape their work, making a separation impossible. 

AI aside, I think I can offer a simpler take: it depends on whether or not you like the artist’s art.

Maybe that’s a bit too cynical, but I still think it mostly holds true.

Woody Allen probably most comes to mind. And more currently Bruce Springsteen, whose recent outspokenness about a certain orange-hued political figure have made him, once again, the unavoidable epicenter for such a debate (almost as important, a recent disturbing photograph has made it awkwardly difficult to discern the nebbishy neurotic from the badass Boss).

That’s Bruce, not Woody, it’s true.

No, let’s go back just a little farther. To someone I think most reasonable people can agree was, well I’ll say it, a total freak: Michael Jackson. You may wince reading that, but you also know it’s true. And we don’t even have to get into any of his alleged, um, interactions with young boys. Just, y’know, everything else: his facial transformation, according to some reports, via over 100 plastic surgeries; the Neverland Ranch, the amusement park home he concocted amongst rides and a zoo; a sham marriage to Elvis’s daughter, who maintained in a later memoir that Jackson was a virgin; Bubbles the chimpanzee. I mean, we don’t really have to go through it all.

But as a pop artist Michael Jackson likely had no peers (he was, after all, the King of Pop). His album Off the Wall changed music, the follow-up Thriller is only the best-selling album of all time, and Bad, which arrived next, was the first to ever produce five Billboard #1 singles (while also forever altering the meaning of its titular word). Jackson invented dances and reformulated fashion, his groundbreaking production and choreography arguably spearheaded the entire music video era, and let’s not forget he even had a hit song (‘Ben’) about a boy’s love for his pet rat. Michael Jackson is regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. A nutjob, sure, but nevertheless often fittingly deemed the greatest entertainer of all-time.

Still, in establishing Jackson’s pop preeminence here my chosen point of reference comes before all that. Way before. All the way back to when he first catapulted to fame, as the youngest member of the original boy band, the Jackson 5, whom he joined at the age of six. Please, read that again: six! The first ever Jackson 5 single for Motown Records, ‘I Want You Back,’ was created when Michael, the unquestioned star attraction of the band, was just 11 years old. It went to Billboard #1. As well as #1 on the R&B charts. In rapid succession, so did each of their next three releases, ‘ABC,’ ‘The Love You Save,’ and ‘I’ll Be There.’ Michael Jackson was the front man of a band with four straight dual chart #1 songs – all of which have completely held up as pop paragons in the years since – all recorded before he’d even turned 12 years old. Think about that! Man, even Little Stevie Wonder, when he had his first #1 song, ‘Fingertips, Pt. 2,’ was already the ripe old age of 13.

So he wore one sequined glove, purchased the Elephant Man’s bones, and had a kid named Blanket. Okay. But just take a fresh listen to the art of incredible singing on ‘I Want You Back’ by the then-11 year old artist, and future deviant kook, Michael Jackson. I’m good with separating the two.