Can You Remember? -- A Serious Look At Child Prodigy Michael Jackson Before His Fall -- Page 5

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And then what must be called the strangest puberty in the world hit Jackson in 1973.  Based on the YouTube record, he seems to have mutated from a precocious wunderkind to a rail thin, syrupy-voiced virtuoso, man-child.  The contrast is so stark that it almost seems that if the child Michael Jackson could speak to his adult self, Jackson might still be walking the Earth today.  “Pull it together, man,” the child would say with his '70s-era funky slang.

So what happened to this kid?  Is it insane to suggest that Michael Jackson took hormone pills to try to halt his voice changing?  Or that his father coerced him into taking hormone pills?  Of course, it is!  But it's also insane that the greatest child pop singer ever -- who had a normally pitched voice at 13 -- goes through puberty and just happens to start talking like a transvestite on hormone replacement therapy.  So which is it?  

Here is a teenage Michael Jackson performing the Jackson 5’s first hit with his new, post-puberty voice.  Although still rife with talent, pint-sized James Brown now had a tinge of Diana Ross in his voice:

Here is Jackson delivering Never Can Say Goodbye during the same appearance on The Tonight Show. Although he is still a raging talent, he is starting to lose that soulful punch he had as a child:

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