The
50-year-old king of pop was on the verge of another comeback
Global superstar: Michael Jackson responds to the crowd in this
file photo.
LOS ANGELES: For his legions of fans, he was the Peter Pan of pop
music: the little boy who refused to grow up. But on the verge of
another comeback, he is suddenly gone, this time for good.
Michael Jackson, whose quintessentially American tale of celebrity
and excess took him from musical boy wonder to global pop superstar to
sad figure haunted by lawsuits, paparazzi and failed plastic surgery,
was pronounced dead on Thursday afternoon at the UCLA Medical Center
after arriving in a coma, a city official said.
Jackson was 50, having spent 40 of those years in the public eye he loved.
The singer was rushed to the hospital, a six-minute drive from the
rented Bel-Air home in which he was living, shortly after noon by
paramedics for the Los Angeles Fire Department. A hospital spokesman
would not confirm reports of cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead at
2.26 p.m. local time.
As with Elvis Presley or the Beatles, one cannot calculate the full
effect Jackson had on the world of music. At the height of his career,
he was indisputably the biggest star in the world; he sold more than
750 million albums.
Radio stations across the country reacted to his death with marathon
sessions of his songs. MTV, which grew successful in part as a result
of Jackson’s groundbreaking videos, reprised its early days as a music
channel by showing his biggest hits.
From his days as the youngest brother in the Jackson 5 to his solo
career in the 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson was responsible for a
string of hits like ‘I Want You Back,’ ‘I’ll Be There,’ ‘Don’t Stop
’Til You Get Enough,’ ‘Billie Jean,’ ‘Thriller’ and ‘Black and White’
that exploited his high voice and infectious energy.
As a solo performer, Jackson ushered in the age of pop as a global
product. He became more character than singer: his sequined glove, his
whitened face, his moonwalk dance became embedded in the cultural
firmament.
Thriller
His entertainment career hit high-water marks with the release of
‘Thriller,’ from 1982, which has been certified 28 times platinum by
the Recording Industry Association of America, and with the ‘Victory’
world tour that reunited him with his brothers in 1984.
But soon afterward, his career started a bizarre disintegration. His
darkest moment undoubtedly came in 2003, when he was indicted on child
molesting charges. A young cancer patient claimed the singer had
befriended him and then groped him at his Neverland estate near Santa
Barbara, California, but Jackson was acquitted on all charges.
Jackson was an object of fascination for the news media since the
Jackson 5’s first hit, ‘I Want You Back,’ in 1969. His public image
wavered between that of the musical naif, who wanted only to recapture
his youth by riding on roller-coasters and having sleepovers with his
friends, to the calculated mogul who carefully constructed his persona
around his often-baffling public behaviour.
Jackson had been scheduled to perform 50 concerts at the O2 arena in
London beginning next month and continuing into 2010. The shows, which
quickly sold out, were positioned as a comeback.
Jackson’s brothers, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy, have
all had performing careers since they stopped performing together.
His sisters, Rebbie, La Toya and Janet, are also singers, and Janet
Jackson has been a major star in her own right for two decades.
They all survive him, as do his parents, Joseph and Katherine
Jackson, of Las Vegas, and three children: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr.,
Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, born to Jackson’s second wife, Deborah
Jeanne Rowe, and Prince Michael Jackson II, the son of a surrogate
mother. Jackson was also briefly married to Lisa Marie Presley, the
daughter of Elvis Presley.
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