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Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson was unquestionably the biggest pop star of the '80s, and certainly one of the most popular recording artists of all time. In his prime, Jackson was an unstoppable juggernaut, possessed of all the tools to dominate the charts seemingly at will: an instantly identifiable voice, eye-popping dance moves, stunning musical versatility, and loads of sheer star power.
With a voice to match his sweet face, Michael Jackson spent his childhood in the limelight as the youngest member of the Jackson 5, a Motown group, with four of his brothers. Before he could vote, he was a millionaire and solo recording artist. By the time he was old enough to drink alcohol, he was a hit-making machine, recording the brightest and best pop-dance songs, and when he was just 25, he was the biggest recording star in the world. But, in the '90s, the self-proclaimed "King Of Pop" persona was taking over, and vicious rumors shrouded his once fairy-tale life.
Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958) is one of the most successful popular music singers of all time. He has been called the "King of Pop" or the "King of music video". Jackson's successful career has gained him legions of devoted fans, yet he has been dogged by media fascination with his changing physical appearance, which has led some in the media to dub him "Wacko Jacko", and, more recently, repeated accusations of pedophilia. He is currently under indictment for child molestation and other offences, which he denies. He is due to be tried in January 2005.
Jackson was born the seventh of nine children in Gary, Indiana to Joseph and Katherine Jackson. The Jackson children were raised as Jehovah's Witnesses and practiced door-to-door evangelization. Jackson continued to do so after becoming famous, but then in disguise. His career and flamboyant style led to friction with congregation elders. At one point, his sister LaToya was shunned by Jehovah's Witnesses, and in 1987, he formally left the sect.
Jackson has been living at his 11 km˛ (2600 acres) ranch in Santa Ynez, California, named "Neverland" after the magical kingdom featured in the children's story Peter Pan. In December 2003 he said that after it had been searched by police (see below), it no longer felt like a home, and is now a house he just visits. He now lives in Beverly Hills in a $70,000-a-month rented home.
He says that, like Peter Pan, he does not want to grow up. Neverland contains a small zoo and amusement park. About once a week he has been inviting a bus full of (especially sick and poor) children there to have a day of fun. Jackson kept a chimpanzee, Bubbles, in Neverland, which he valued highly, treating him more like a friend than a pet. Bubbles was moved from the ranch after reaching maturity because adult chimpanzees are very strong and can be dangerous.
In 1994 Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley; the marriage lasted less than two years, ending in divorce.
In 1996 he married Debbie Rowe. They had a son, Prince Michael, and a daughter, Paris Katherine. They were divorced in 1999. Rowe said that she let Jackson have the children as a "gift".
Around February 2002 Jackson had another son, Prince Michael II, also called "Blanket", with a surrogate mother whose identity has not been disclosed. In late 2002, Jackson stirred up controversy while staying in a hotel in Berlin by briefly suspending him over the edge of the railing of a balcony.
As a security measure against kidnapping, Jackson's children's faces are masked or veiled when they are in public.
In December 2003 Jackson's parents promised they would look after the three children if they were taken away from their son. Reportedly the children have been interviewed by social workers.
In March 2004 it was confirmed there was an unspecified family matter between Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe, to be handled in mediation.
In July 2004 news was released that Jackson is to be the father of quadruplets, via artificial insemination. The mother is said to be a "struggling actress". Jackson however, strongly denied the allegations.
Rumors last year said that he had another seventeen-year-old son, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., has an almost identical appearance with him when he was younger.
Jackson, a vegetarian, claims a strong connection to both children and animals. His favorite pastimes include water balloon fights with children, climbing trees and sleepovers with children. He has written several songs sitting in his favorite tree at Neverland, which he calls Giving Tree, because he says it is so inspiring.
Jackson's celebrity friends include actress Elizabeth Taylor and former child actor Macaulay Culkin, who are godparents to Prince Michael and Paris. He is also friends with paranormalist Uri Geller. He has also been friends with rabbi Shmuley Boteach, with whom Jackson founded the now defunct "Heal the World" and "Heal the Kids" foundations.
Jackson seems to have used extensive plastic surgery to modify his appearance, although he claims to have had only three operations: Two "nose jobs" (the first of which he claims was to repair a broken nose resulting from a dancing accident in 1978, and the second to correct imperfections in the first surgery) and the surgical creation of a cleft in his chin (Jackson often omits mentioning the cleft when listing his cosmetic surgery, but he confirms the surgery in his 1988 autobiography Moonwalk).
Jackson has received numerous music awards including 18 Grammys. Estimates of his album sales worldwide range from 200 million to well over 300 million. His Thriller video is considered by some to be the best music video of all time and the largest step forward in artistic quality in the history of music videos. MTV and Rolling Stone magazine recently named four of his songs ("Billie Jean" #5, "I Want You Back" #9, "Beat It" #23 and "Rock with You" #82) among the 100 greatest pop songs of all time.
Five of the Jackson brothers, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael, formed the Jackson 5 pop group in the mid 1960s. Michael was the lead singer. The group played at local clubs and bars. It is alleged that they were beaten and abused by their father if they performed poorly.
The Jackson 5 were discovered and signed to Motown Records in 1969. The Jackson family moved to California where the Jackson 5 soon became national stars. Their first four singles "ABC", "I Want You Back", "The Love You Save", and "I'll Be There" all became #1 hits. Later hits include the trend-setting "Dance Machine". With Motown Records the Jackson 5 made 14 albums, and Michael recorded four albums as a solo artist.
In 1976 they left Motown (and renamed themselves the Jacksons) and they sing with an another brother: Randy. Between 1976 and 1984 the Jacksons produced 6 records and toured internationally. Jermaine and Michael moved on to successful solo careers, as did all of his sisters, Rebbie, LaToya and Janet.
Jackson starred in the film The Wiz (alongside Diana Ross) in 1978. It was here that he met Quincy Jones (the producer of The Wiz), who would later produce Michael's three most acclaimed solo albums (Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad). Off the Wall (released in 1979) produced a record four #1 hits and sold six million copies in the United States.
Off The Wall to Thriller
Michael Jackson's 1979 album Off the Wall spawned the hit singles and music videos "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough".
In the 1980s Jackson released a progression of solo albums of slickly-produced synthesizer-heavy pop.
His Thriller album was released in 1982, produced 7 hit singles, broke records and quickly became the world's best selling album (as of 2003 it has sold over 50 million copies). The "Billie Jean" music video, released to promote Thriller, became the first video by a black artist to be aired on MTV, and the Thriller short film, included with Making Michael Jackson's Thriller, became the world's best selling home video at the time.
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Artist Biography - Michael Jackson
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 "Billie Jean" and "Thriller", as well as "Beat It", were the three music videos released from the album, and have since become three of MTV's most significant videos in history, placing highly on several MTV and VH1 countdowns, and receiving substantial airplay on MTV2 to this day. The album's other singles were "Human Nature" and "PYT (Pretty Young Thing)", both of which were also hits, despite neither having music videos.
While performing for the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever on television in 1983, Jackson publicly performed the moonwalk (later his signature dance move) for the first time, stunning TV audiences. At the 1984 Grammy Awards Jackson was nominated for 12 awards and won a record-breaking 8 awards (now equaled by Carlos Santana) – 7 for Thriller and 1 for his narrative on The E.T. Storybook.
Inspired by Band Aid he was instrumental in organizing the single "We Are the World" (co-written with Lionel Richie) in 1985. "We Are the World" was sung by 44 different singers including Cyndi Lauper, Diana Ross, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder and sold 7 million copies in the United States, becoming the best selling single of the year, to raise money for USA for Africa – a charity working to raise awareness about and help starving people in Africa.
Jackson starred in the George Lucas/Francis Ford Coppola 3-D film Captain Eo in 1986, which was shown in Disney theme parks until 1998. Minute for minute it is the most expensive film ever produced, costing an estimated US $30 million to make. Jackson created two new songs for the film.
In 1987 Jackson released Bad and began his first solo world tour. He performed to sold out audiences at each concert. The following year Jackson released a silly, playful movie entitled "Moonwalker" and a serious, personal autobiography titled Moon Walk.
Bad was another smash success for Jackson. Its singles and music videos "Bad", "Dirty Diana", "The Man in The Mirror", "Smooth Criminal", "Leave Me Alone", and "The Way You Make Me Feel" provided Jackson with another string of hits. The album's only relatively unsuccessful single, "Liberian Girl", remains to this day as one of Jackson's least seen music videos and least heard singles.
Jackson was awarded a record breaking $890 million contract by Sony and released an album Dangerous in 1991. During the Dangerous world tour Jackson announced the creation of his Heal the World Foundation. Dangerous contained the singles and music videos "Who Is It", "Give In To Me", "Gone Too Soon", and "Will You Be There", which would later become the theme song to the movie Free Willy. But the album's most successful and memorable singles and videos were "Jam", "Remember The Time", "Black Or White", "In The Closet", and "Heal The World". As was becoming the standard for Jackson, the album's music videos were among the most costly, creative, and innovative of their time. "Give In To Me" featured Slash from Guns n' Roses in its video. The video for "Heal The World", to correspond to Jackson's charity of the same name, featured children and people from throughout the world. "Will You Be There" showed Jackson singing in front of scenes from Free Willy. Several of the other videos had complex storylines and dance sequences, and featured cameo appearances by celebrities. The video for "Jam" showed Jackson and Michael Jordan playing basketball and dancing together, while "Remember The Time" was set in a Middle Eastern palace and starred Eddie Murphy as the king of the palace who was trying to entertain his wife, played by Iman. Magic Johnson played the king's chief guard. Jackson's singing and dancing is the thing that finally makes Iman's character happy, in the seven-minute long video. Jackson and Naomi Campbell played lovers in "In The Closet".
But, of all the album's groundbreaking and popular videos, "Black Or White" probably remains the most aired and most remembered today. The original video is over ten minutes long, and premiered simultaneously on MTV, VH1, BET, and ABC, becoming one of the most-watched music video premieres in history. The original video begins with Macaulay Culkin playing a young Jackson fan whose father (played by George Wendt) tells him to turn his music down. Culkin's character, instead, decides to bring his speakers into the living room and cranks the speakers to full blast, which sends the father flying through the roof. He ends up landing in the middle of some exotic location. The music to "Black Or White" then starts, and Jackson proceeds to take viewers on a trip around the world, from country to country and culture to culture. As the song ends, the video features a morphing effect, whereby several different people of different ethnicities' faces are morphed one into another, as a symbol of global unity. Although this was not the first music video to feature morphing technology — former 10cc members Kevin Godley and Lol Creme (performing as Godley & Creme) used morphing even more extensively in the 1985 video to their song "Cry" — it was the first exposure many people had to the technology, and this effect amazed those who saw the video for the first time. Thanks in part to "Black Or White", the morphing effect has since become somewhat common in music videos today, and can now be done much more cheaply than in the early 1990s. The original video for "Black Or White" then continued, even after the song itself ended, for another six minutes. The last six minutes depicted Jackson doing his infamous crotch-rubbing, smashing store windows, and destroying a car with a metal crowbar. It finally ended with a cameo appearance by Bart and Homer Simpson. However, Jackson's rampage and crotch grabbing caused a good deal of controversy with many parents of young children who watched the video's premiere. MTV and other music video stations decided to cut out the last six minutes of the video for all subsequent airings, and Jackson issued an apology statement to anyone who had been offended. To date, the final six minutes of the "Black Or White" video has only since re-aired in America on MTV2 between the hours of 1 AM and 4 AM, as part of their special uncensored airing of the "Most Controversial Music Videos" of all time. A few years ago, VH1 Europe aired them in daytime but now cuts them out.
HIStory, a double-disc album, was released in 1995. Its first disc had fifteen of his greatest hits and second disc contained fifteen new songs. The album's only new hit singles and videos in America were "Scream", a duet with his sister Janet, whose futuristic music video, with a seven million dollar price tag, is the most expensive music video to date; and "You Are Not Alone", a song which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart and whose video had a cameo from Jackson's then-wife, Lisa Marie Presley. The album's other singles and videos, "Childhood", "Earth Song", "Stranger In Moscow", and "They Don't Care About Us" failed to make any impact in America, and performed far better in Europe. "Childhood" is notable for having been the theme song to Free Willy 2. "They Don't Care About Us" caused quite a controversy when it was released due to the anti-Semitic slurs "kike" and "Jew me" in the song's lyrics. This caused American MTV and VH1 to ban the song's music video, even though it garnered heavy airplay on many of America's Boxnetworks. Other than "Scream", the videos from HIStory are rarely played, even on MTV2, and none of the album's singles are played substantially on American radio anymore, making the album a failure overall in Jackson's standards (as of 2004 it has sold over 18 million double albums).
In 1997 Jackson released Blood on the Dance Floor, a remix album of several of the tracks off of History, which also included 5 new songs and has since become the biggest selling remix album ever. The album only had one single and official music video, the title track, which failed to catch on in America, and again proved a far more popular hit in Europe. However, Jackson also produced "Ghosts", a 40-minute short film, which was shown in several movie theaters and used the song "Ghosts" as well as the album's other new songs in the film. The short film "Ghosts" is occasionally played as an hour-long special, with space made for commercials, on MTV and VH1, especially during the Halloween season.
Jackson's 2001 album Invincible – the most expensive album ever – sold only 2 million copies in the United States but sold 5-6 million worldwide (a disappointment considering Jackson's previous success and the cost of the album). As opposed to his earlier albums – which each spawned at least six singles, most of which were generally worldwide smashes – Invincible produced only the singles "You Rock My World" and "Butterflies" in America. "Cry" was also issued as a third single in Europe. "You Rock My World" managed the top ten in America, but only for a week, and its big-budget, 14-minute music video only received sparse airplay on MTV, VH1, MTV2, and BET, usually in a shortened, 5-minute version. "Butterflies" was a top 40 hit in America, but did not reach the top 20, despite a popular radio remix featuring rapper Eve; the song's relative lack of success also allowed no budget for a music video.
In what was perhaps the "Golden Age" of the video clip, some of Jackson's videos were virtually short films with considerable plots, impressive special effects, and featuring Jackson's distinctive dance style.
Jackson held his first live concert in some years at Madison Square Garden, New York, in early September 2001.
In 2003 Jackson made a new song, "One More Chance", written by R. Kelly. It was the only new song on his new Number Ones greatest hits album.
From that point, Jackson's career took an extreme turn towards the bizarre, starting with MTV's annual Video Awards. When Britney Spears presented him with a birthday cake, an offhand remark about being the artist of the millennium inspired a rambling Jackson to accept a meaningless trophy (which everyone presenting onstage received) as an actual Artist of the Millennium award. Next came accusations from a promotional company over his promises of a tour and several appearances that he then cancelled. Jackson arrived in court late, gave a drowsy testimony, and inspired gasps when he removed a surgical mask to reveal his nose had caved in from a botched cosmetic surgery. Only days later, German fans were horrified when Jackson came to the balcony of his hotel suite and briefly dangled his 11-month old baby Prince Michael II (nicknamed "Blanket" by Jackson) over the edge with one arm. Although he apologized the next day, claiming he had gotten caught up in the moment, this only did more to cement the King of Pop's public image as an out-of-control millionaire. 2003 turned out to not be Jackson's year as in November his Neverland Ranch was extensively searched by police whereby he was subsequently arrested on charges of child molestation.
Although Jackson's appeal is still widespread worldwide, he's no longer thrilling fans with his music the way he used to; much of the interest in Jackson now comes from his freakish news-making incidents of plastic surgery, surgical masks, implications of sexually molesting children, and his latest headline, having a child, Prince Jackson, with a friend.
Hit singles
"Got to be There" (1971) #4 US; #5 UK
"Rockin' Robin" (1972) #2 US; #3 UK
"Ain't No Sunshine" (1972) #8 UK
"Ben" (1972) #1 US; #7 UK
"I Wanna be Where You Are" (1972) #16 US
"Just a Little Bit of You" (1975) #23 US
"Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" (1979) #1 US; #3 UK
"Off the Wall" (1979) #10 US; #7 UK
"Rock with You" (1980) #1 US; #7 UK
"She's out of My Life" (1980) #10 US; #3 UK
"One Day in Your Life" (1981) #1 UK
"The Girl is Mine" (with Paul McCartney) (1982) #2 US; #8 UK
"Billie Jean" (1983) #1 US; #1 UK
"Beat It" (1983) #1 US; #3 UK
"Wanna be Startin' Something" (1983) #5 US; #8 UK
"Say Say Say" (with Paul McCartney) (1983) #1 US; #2 UK
"Thriller" (1983) #4 US; #10 UK
"Human Nature" (1983) #7 US
"P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" (1984) #10 US; #11 UK
"Farewell My Summer Love" (1984) #38 US; #7 UK
"State of Shock" (with Jacksons and Mick Jagger) (1984) #3 US; #14 UK
"Girl You're So Together" (1984) #33 UK
"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" (1987) #1 US; #1 UK
"Bad" (1987) #1 US; #3 UK
"The Way You Make Me Feel" (1987) #1 US; #3 UK
"Man in the Mirror" (1988) #1 US; #21 UK
"I Want You Back" (remix) (with The Jackson 5) (1988) #8 UK
"Get It" (with Stevie Wonder) (1988) #37 UK
"Dirty Diana" (1988) #1 US; #4 UK
"Another Part of Me" (1988) #11 US; #15 UK
"Smooth Criminal" (1988) #7 US; #8 UK
"Leave Me Alone" (1989) #2 UK
"Liberian Girl" (1989) #13 UK
"Black or White" (1991) #1 US; #1 UK
"Black or White" (remix) (1992) #14 UK
"Remember the Time/Come Together" (1992) #3 US; #3 UK
"In the Closet" (1992) #6 US; #8 UK
"Who is It" (1992) #14 US; #10 UK
"Jam" (1992) #26 US; #13 UK
"Heal the World" (1992) #27 US; #2 UK
"Give in to Me" (1993) #2 UK
"Will You Be There" (1993) #7 US; #9 UK
"Gone Too Soon" (1993) #33 UK
"Scream" (with Janet Jackson) (1995) #5 US; #3 UK
"You are Not Alone" (1995) #1 US; #1 UK
"Earth Song" (1995) #1 UK
"They Don't Care About Us" (1996) #30 US; #4 UK
"Why" (3T featuring Michael Jackson) (1996) #2 UK
"Stranger in Moscow" (1996) #4 UK
"Blood on the Dancefloor" (1997) #1 UK
"History/Ghosts" (1997) #5 UK
"You Rock My World" (2001) #10 US; #2 UK
"Cry" (2001) #25 UK
"Butterflies" (2001) #14 US
"One More Chance" (2003) #5 UK
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For more information , enjoy the official homepage of Michael Jackson
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