@rycooler
Yabu - he was brilliant - but you'd have to know about music to really appreciate him.
Okay, couple of things here.
First, I do know about music, but I'm not convinced of his genius. I mean, he was a really good commercial artist - but the whole King of Pop thing is just absurd.
Second, if your job is to sell as many records as possible (and Gordy certainly convinced MJ young that that was the idea) then you've pretty much failed if people 'have to know about music to really appreciate' it. The whole point is that it should be massively accessible - and his sales would suggest that it is.
If you mean that you have to know about music to understand why and how what he did was so clever, you might have a point - but that's not going to make the OP like his music any better, and it comes across, @rycooler, as 'some people just aren't musically-educated enough to recognise brilliance'. I mean, that might be true of the work of, say, Harrison Birtwhistle, but Jackson? I think not.
And lastly, there's this whole 'performer' thing that confuses the issue. The fact that he could dance with a hat on makes absolutely no difference at all to his records, or to the experience of hearing them. They would be what they are even if he waltzed like Jabba the Hut.
Some might say that the stage performance is intrinsic to the work and the whole thing has to be taken as a package. In which case, I'll say that for me it detracts from the package, because I find that schtick utterly hollow and irrelevant.
So, OP, though I'm not quite as anti as you, I don't think you're being unreasonable. Though if you were to say the same sort of thing about The Beatles, or Aretha, or Costello, I'd be organising an angry mob with torches and pitchforks.