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Written by Amy Burger Friday, 26 June 2009 07:25

Michael Jackson made it cool to like black performers. His voice was unmatchable and his dance moves were unbelievable. 

 

 

 

 

 

The King of Pop is dead.

The music industry and the world of popular culture have lost an icon. Michael Jackson was without a doubt the greatest entertainer of my generation - and one might even go so far as to say he was the greatest entertainer of all time considering his raw talent, his mountain of awards and achievements and his unique ability to cross all boundaries and borders.

Some people develop talent, while others are simply born with it. Michael Jackson was a clear example of the latter. Blessed with a unique musical gift, he began performing with his brothers at only eight years old and rocketed to stardom in The Jackson 5 by the time he was eleven. While the world fell in love with Michael, however, he often felt isolated and alone.

The bizarre "man-child" we have come to know as Michael Jackson in recent years was the clear result of a childhood filled with emotional and physical abuse by his father, Joseph, whom he lived in constant fear of, coupled with the effects of a tremendous amount of fame at an incredibly young age. Michael was emotionally stunted. He never really seemed to grow up - a real-life Peter Pan who even went so far as to build himself a personal amusement park and call it Neverland.

It's true that of late Michael Jackson was known more for his increasingly eccentric behavior, his odd masking of himself and his children in public, and his trial for alleged child molestation (in which he was found not guilty). His shocking physical appearance contributed even further to his alienation from society. It became clear that Jackson was literally never comfortable in his own skin for his numerous attempts to alter his appearance to the point of there being no recognition of his former self.

But today I want to remember the old Michael Jackson; the Michael whose bright, young face beams from the cover of Off the Wall; the Michael whose dancing in the video for "Billie Jean" made my jaw drop the first time I saw it and sent chills up my spine; the Michael whose quintessential album, Thriller, is to this day the best selling album of all time.

Whether you are a fan of pop music or not, Michael Jackson's impact on the history of recorded music is undeniable. He broke so many barriers and records and in some way influenced nearly all of the pop, R&B and hip-hop artists of today. While Elvis Presley took "black music" and made it palatable for white America, Michael Jackson made it cool to like black performers. His voice was unmatchable and his dance moves were unbelievable.  

When Thriller hit big in 1983, MTV was almost exclusively playing rock n' roll videos, mostly by overseas artists. They featured few, if any, black artists or dance R&B music. Jackson's record company convinced the MTV execs to air the video for "Billie Jean" and the rest, as they say, was history. The next day, every kid in America, black or white, was trying to do the Moonwalk. Music videos would never be the same. By the time the epic video for "Thriller" came out, the world was consumed with Michaelmania.

No matter what public trials and tribulations he faced in his later adulthood, his fans always stood by him and his music was always revered. And though he became mostly a joke and fodder for tabloid headlines, it's important to also note the good he did in the world. Jackson supported 39 different charitable organizations including AIDS Project L.A., American Cancer Society, United Negro College Fund, The Sickle Cell Research Fund and Volunteers of America.

He basically invented the concept of large-scale musical collaborations to benefit charitable causes when he co-wrote the charity single "We Are the World" with Lionel Richie in 1985 and recorded it along with nearly 40 of the day's most popular musicians. "We Are the World" became one of the best-selling singles of all time, raising millions for famine relief in Africa and eventually inspiring the Live Aid concerts.

2009 was supposed to be the year of Michael Jackson's comeback, and his fans were obviously eager. His now canceled This is It tour, which had been scheduled to kick off in London on July 13, had the fastest ticket sales in history, with 700,000 tickets sold in about four hours. Instead, fans the world over today are mourning and remembering a true legend.

Many of history's great artistic geniuses were tortured, eccentric, even crazy (after all, Van Gogh sliced his own ear off). People will choose to believe what they want to about Jackson's personal life; but in the end, none of that really matters. In the end, the music is what remains. Michael Jackson the man is gone now; the artist is gone now; but the art lives on forever. | Amy Burger

Just a few highlights of Michael Jackson's mind-blowing career:

• Nine number one singles in the 1980s, more than any other artist that decade
• 28 top ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100, trailing only The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Madonna
• First artist to have seven Top 10 singles from one album (Thriller)
• Fourth best selling artist of all time with over 750 million records sold, behind only The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby
• More collective music awards than any other artist in the history of music
• More Billboard awards (26) than any other male artist
• Jointly holds the record for most Grammy Awards won in a single year (1984), matched by Carlos Santana in 2001
• Thriller remained at number one for thirty-seven weeks, the longest-ever stay by a non-soundtrack album
• Thriller spent a record 80 consecutive weeks in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200
• Thriller is the only album in the United States to have sold more copies than any other in two separate years, topping the sales charts in 1983 and 1984
• On November 14, 1991, Michael Jackson's music video, Black or White was broadcast simultaneously in 27 countries with an estimated audience of 500 million people, the largest audience ever to view a music video