Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson is an American entertainer, pop icon and singer. He was born August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana.

It was clear that Jackson had talent and a way with his audience even from a very young age. His father had started a group with his brothers called the Jackson Brothers and Michael joined them in 1964. The band was later rebranded the Jackson 5 and they were on their way. The Jackson 5 had every single they released debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 1978, Jackson played the scarecrow in the film adaptation of Broadway’s The Wiz, an all black reworking of The Wizard of Oz. Diana Ross played Dorothy.

The following year, Jackson released his first solo album, Off the Wall, that eventually had four top ten hits, which included “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Rock With You”. It sold septuple Platinum in the US alone and cemented Jackson’s infamy. Aside from the three American Music Awards it captured, Off the Wall was named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the Top 500 Albums of all Time.

Thriller, his second album but most popular, was released in late 1982 and remained in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 for an entire year. It eventually spent eighty consecutive weeks there with a staggering 32 weeks at number one. The album has been rated 27xPlatinum and sold 3.7 million copies in the UK. In fact, even now, the album continues to sell 130,000 copies each year.

Each single from the album had a video produced, which undoubtedly pushed up the popularity of both the album and the fledgling television channel MTV in which they played. The combination of Jackson’s cinematic style and revolutionary dance moves propelled him to near superstar status. In 1984, Thriller won 8 Grammy Awards.

His next album, Bad was released in 1987 and Jackson hired film director Martin Scorsese to direct the video for the title track. When the 18 minute video premiered, it was apparent that Jackson’s appearance had radically changed and that the recent rumors of his increasingly eccentric behavior had a ring of truth to them. The album had seven hit singles and eventually sold 29 million copies.

Dangerous was released in November of 1991, featured several hits and sold 27 million copies. That same year, Jackson began to ramp up his philanthropic work and started the “Heal the World Foundation” and travelled extensively to Africa. He married Lisa Marie Presley later that year.

In June 1995, Jackson released HIStory but by this point had become more oddity than celebrity and the album sales reflected the public’s opinion of him. It still sold 15 million copies. Invincible, his next album was released in 2001 and debuted number one in thirteen countries and went on to sell 10 million copies worldwide.

Since then, Jackson has been the subject of two child molestation scandals and has continued to move around the world with his three children. He has never been convicted in either of the cases but the scandals have continued to haunt him. It has been rumored that he has had enormous financial difficulty and has had numerous cosmetic surgeries that have drastically altered his appearance. He continues to deny that he has had any plastic surgeries.

Jackson continues to surface in the media periodically but no longer records music. He will forever be an American music icon.