Thriller made the King of Pop the album era's peak seller
Michael Jackson (29 August 1958 – 25 June 2009), eighth of ten Jackson children, led the Jackson 5 from age six and remade solo pop with Off the Wall (1979) and Thriller (1982), history's best-selling album. Estimates credit him with more than 500 million solo records; only he, McCartney, and Collins topped 100 million both solo and in a group.
Music videos for Thriller and related singles turned MTV into a visual stage and helped break racial programming barriers. Mid-1980s onward, media scrutiny of appearance and private life intensified; he faced abuse allegations in 1993 (civil settlement 1994) and was acquitted at a 2005 trial. He died while preparing This Is It comeback shows.
Philanthropy and dance innovation—moonwalk spectacle included—kept the public image split between unmatched entertainer and tabloid subject.
Commercially and culturally, few twentieth-century performers rewired global youth style as thoroughly as the child star who outgrew Motown.
He arrived on 29 August 1958 in Gary, Indiana, eighth of ten siblings in a working-class household squeezed into a two-bedroom house on Jackson Street. In 1964 he and Marlon joined the Jackson Brothers, a band their father had built around Jackie, Tito and Jermaine, starting out on congas and tambourine. By late 1965 Michael shared lead vocals and the group had become the Jackson 5; after a Steeltown Records single, Big Boy, in 1968, Bobby Taylor brought them to Motown. I Want You Back topped the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1970 for four weeks, and ABC, The Love You Save and I'll Be There each followed it to the summit. After playing the Scarecrow in The Wiz, whose score Quincy Jones arranged, he released Off the Wall in 1979, and in 1980 he secured the industry's highest royalty rate, 37 percent of wholesale album profit. Thriller, issued on 29 November 1982, has sold an estimated 70 million copies.
Source: Michael Jackson
