It's been two since Michael Jackson's death and the online tributes still pour in. It's made me think a lot about the redemptive power of music: that one song or album that "did it for you." Later that Friday night, the day after his death and not in time to include it in that week's post, I found Lynnster's tribute waiting for me in my newsreader.

Like me, not necessarily a fan, but hit hard by his passing:

Sure, people much younger than me knew who Michael Jackson was and experienced him being out there as the “King of Pop” for many years muscially, as well as his ongoing legal and financial troubles the last almost-couple of decades. But most of them weren’t even born when Michael Jackson wasn’t really MICHAEL JACKSON yet. He was always there, almost as long as I’ve been alive, but first he was just Michael Jackson of The Jackson 5, and pretty much almost ever since I’ve been alive, either The Jackson 5, The Jacksons, or Michael solo have all been on the radio, somewhere, sometime, all the time. I have very clear memories of several Jacksons-related episodes, probably the earliest being when I couldn’t have been more than three or four, accompanying my grandparents on the trip to Memphis either to pick my eldest aunt up at nursing school or bring her back home, being in the car with “ABC” playing on the radio.

Like I said before, I don't really have a personal "Michael Jackson moment," other than the ubiquity of his music providing a sort of aural wallpaper for my childhood. I was a little too young for The Jackson Five, about eight or nine when Thriller came out, and already past my pop music stage for all the other albums. (I had to wrack my brain to remember some of the songs from Dangerous.) Sadly, for most of my life, Michael Jackson was a punchline. And after watching Tuesday's moving memorial service, I feel a bit guilty about that.As much as I pretend to be a music fan, I never really had that one album that saved my life. And every forum I've been a part of eventually asks that question: What album changed your life? I can't credit any album for changing my life. It's just too complicated for that. I can easily come up with three that changed my taste in music, for sure. (That would be Tim by the Replacements, Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights, and Rain Dogs by Tom Waits. One, an influential, 80s modern rock record, the second, possible the saddest break-up record ever recorded, and the third, well, a Cookie Monster-voiced singer-songwriter who thought way outside the box.) Recently, Jezebel asked its readers to name theirs. Editor Hortense said of Britney Spears:

I wouldn't say that her music has ever "saved my life" or even provided a comfort in darker times. But there are albums, and artists, who have, and while some might mock Britney fans for clinging to her pop songs as a salvation of sorts, anyone who has fallen in love with a band, or a singer, I think, can understand the level of devotion these people have toward Spears and what she has, most likely unintentionally, provided in their lives.

Did an album or song ever save your life?