Michael Jackson

• 1. Introduction

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  Michael Joseph Jackson was born on the 29th of August 1958 in Gary, Indiana, the eighth of ten children in an African-American working-class household crammed into a two-bedroom home on Jackson Street. His father Joe operated a crane at US Steel and once played guitar for a local rhythm and blues group. His mother Katherine played clarinet, cello, and piano, worked part-time at Sears, and raised her children as a Jehovah's Witness. From that house came a performer later dubbed the King of Pop, and a man whose death in 2009 would slow down and crash websites across the internet. How does a six-year-old who makes his public debut as a lead singer end up selling over 500 million records as a solo artist? Why did the same figure called the greatest entertainer of all time spend decades under suspicion, in courtrooms, and on the verge of bankruptcy? This is the story of a voice, a fortune, a face that changed, and a legacy still being argued over in studios and courts.

• 2. From Gary To Motown

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  Michael and his brother Marlon joined the Jackson Brothers in 1964, a band their father formed that already included Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine. They began as backup musicians, playing congas and tambourine, before Michael started sharing lead vocals with Jermaine and the group became the Jackson 5. Joe Jackson kept a belt in hand during rehearsals, ready to punish mistakes, and Michael later said his father physically and emotionally abused him; Joe acknowledged that he regularly whipped him. His brothers disputed the word abusive, saying the discipline kept the group sharp. Michael described his youth as lonely. In 1965 the boys won a talent show in which Michael danced to Robert Parker's "Barefootin'" and sang the Temptations' "My Girl". From 1966 to 1968 they toured the Midwest on the Chitlin' Circuit, opening for acts like Sam and Dave, the O'Jays, Gladys Knight, and Etta James, and playing clubs that featured striptease shows. In August 1967 they won a weekly amateur night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. After releasing their first single "Big Boy" on the Gary-based Steeltown Records in 1968, the group was brought to Motown by Bobby Taylor, and the family relocated to Los Angeles. Motown executives chose Diana Ross to introduce the group in 1969, framing it as the label's final product of its production line. In January 1970, "I Want You Back" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there four weeks. Three more singles followed it to the top: "ABC", "The Love You Save", and "I'll Be There".

• 3. The Solo Ascent

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  Off the Wall, released in 1979, was Jackson's fifth solo album and his first as an adult, marking his break from the bubblegum pop of his childhood. It produced four US top-10 entries, including the chart-toppers "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "Rock with You", reached number three on the Billboard 200, and sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Jackson felt it should have made a greater impact and was determined to exceed expectations next time. In 1980 he secured the highest royalty rate in the music industry, 37 percent of wholesale album profit. Thriller arrived on the 29th of November 1982 and became the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 70 million copies sold. It topped the Billboard 200 for 37 weeks and was the first album to generate seven top-ten singles on the Hot 100, among them "Billie Jean" and "Beat It". On the 25th of March 1983, Jackson reunited with his brothers to tape the NBC special Motown 25, which aired to an estimated 47 million viewers. Wearing a rhinestone-studded glove, he debuted the moonwalk, a move taught to him three years earlier by Jeffrey Daniel. At the 26th Annual Grammy Awards he received 12 nominations and won eight awards, breaking the record for the most wins in a single night, with Thriller taking Album of the Year. The New York Times wrote that in the world of pop music there was Michael Jackson and there was everybody else.

• 4. The Businessman

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  Paul McCartney told Jackson in the early 1980s that he earned 40 million dollars a year from owning the rights to other artists' songs. By 1983, Jackson had begun buying publishing rights, including the Sly Stone collection with "Everyday People" and Dion DiMucci's "The Wanderer" and "Runaround Sue". When Robert Holmes a Court put the ATV Music Publishing catalog up for sale in 1984, it carried the rights to nearly 4,000 songs, including most of the Beatles's material. Jackson submitted a bid of 46 million dollars in November 1984, and after McCartney declined to pursue it alone, Jackson raised his offer to 47.5 million dollars and closed the purchase on the 10th of August 1985. A decade later, in November 1995, he merged that catalog with Sony's publishing division to create Sony/ATV Music Publishing, keeping half the company and earning 95 million dollars up front. Money also flowed through the Pepsi partnership the Jacksons signed in November 1983, a 5 million dollar deal that set a new record for a celebrity endorsement. The promotional relationship turned painful on the 27th of January 1984, when pyrotechnics set Jackson's hair on fire during a filmed commercial at the Shrine Auditorium, causing second-degree burns to his scalp. He donated the 1.5 million dollar settlement to the Brotman Medical Center, where a burn center was named in his honor.

• 5. The Changing Face

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  Jackson's skin had been medium-brown in his youth but grew paler from the mid-1980s, drawing speculation that he was bleaching it. His dermatologist Arnold Klein diagnosed him with lupus in 1983 and with vitiligo in 1986, a condition in which patches of skin lose their pigment. Jackson used fair-colored makeup and possibly skin-bleaching creams to even out the blotches, and said he had not purposely changed his color, adding, "When people make up stories that I don't want to be who I am, it hurts me." In his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk and a 1993 interview, he described having only two rhinoplasty surgeries and a cleft chin operation. His mother later said there were more procedures than he claimed and speculated he had become addicted to them. Tabloids of 1986 reported that Jackson slept in a hyperbaric chamber to slow aging, took estrogen to keep his voice high, and had offered to buy the bones of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. His manager Frank DiLeo denied most of the claims while admitting Jackson owned a chamber, calling him "a bit of a health fanatic". Jackson toured Japan with his pet chimpanzee Bubbles, fueling a portrait of an aspiring Disney cartoon character who befriended animals. As a Jehovah's Witness he once evangelized door-to-door in disguise, before Ebony reported in 1987 that he had disassociated from the faith.

• 6. The Reckonings

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  In the second half of 1993, Jackson faced allegations that he had sexually abused 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. On the 8th of July, Jordan's father Evan Chandler was recorded threatening to ruin Jackson's career with a carefully planned plot, and he later demanded 20 million dollars, which Jackson declined. Prosecutors raided Neverland Ranch and found no incriminating evidence, and a strip search produced a description of Jackson's body that, according to Reuters and USA Today, did not match the accuser's drawing. In January 1994 the civil lawsuit was settled for more than 18 million dollars allocated to the Chandler family, and the police never filed criminal charges. By July 1994, grand jurors reported that no damaging evidence had been presented, and the investigation closed in September after 400 witnesses had been examined. A second wave came in December 2003, when Santa Barbara authorities charged Jackson with seven counts of child molestation and two of intoxicating a minor. The People v. Jackson trial opened on the 31st of January 2005 in Santa Maria, and on the 13th of June 2005 he was acquitted on all counts. FBI files released in 2009 showed the bureau found no evidence of criminal conduct. After the trial Jackson became reclusive, moved to Bahrain as a guest of Sheikh Abdullah, and never returned to Neverland.

• 7. Debt And The Comeback

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  By 2006, Jackson was on the verge of bankruptcy and tangled in 47 ongoing lawsuits. In April that year he used part of his ATV catalog stake, then worth about 1 billion dollars, as collateral against 270 million dollars in loans, and Fortress Investments provided a new 300 million dollar loan with reduced interest. The main house at Neverland was closed to cut costs while he lived in Bahrain. He drifted between recording projects, working at Grouse Lodge in Ireland with producers will.i.am and Rodney Jerkins, and later with Kanye West joining as a producer. In March 2009 he announced This Is It, a series of comeback concerts, at a press conference at the O2 Arena, his first major shows since the HIStory World Tour ended in 1997. After more than one million tickets sold in under two hours, the London residency grew to fifty dates running from July 2009 to March 2010. By this point Jackson's debt had grown to almost 500 million dollars, and he was months behind on payments for his home in the San Fernando Valley. He rehearsed in Los Angeles under choreographer Kenny Ortega at the Forum and the Staples Center, both owned by AEG. AEG Live president Randy Phillips predicted the first ten dates would earn Jackson 50 million pounds.

• 8. After The King

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  On the 25th of June 2009, less than three weeks before his sold-out London residency was to begin, Jackson died at age 50 from cardiac arrest caused by an overdose of propofol and benzodiazepine. His personal physician Conrad Murray had administered medications to help him sleep at his home in Holmby Hills, and Murray was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years, serving one year and eleven months. News of the death spread so fast that it strained Google, Twitter, and other services, lifting overall web traffic by between 11 and 20 percent. His memorial at the Staples Center on the 7th of July 2009 drew an estimated worldwide audience of 2.5 to 3 billion, and his 11-year-old daughter Paris Katherine wept as she spoke publicly for the first time. The selling did not stop with his life. In the year after his death more than 35 million of his albums sold worldwide, and Thriller later became the first album certified for 30 million US shipments. In February 2024, Sony Music acquired half of his publishing rights and recording masters for 600 million dollars. A biographical film, Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring his nephew Jaafar Jackson, premiered in April 2026 with an opening weekend estimated at 217 million dollars worldwide, even as allegations from Wade Robson and James Safechuck, raised in the documentary Leaving Neverland, continued to be fought over in the courts.