In some form, Michael Jackson influenced every single musician to come after him. The music, the moves, the moonwalk.
Before he became The King of Pop and the jester of tabloids, the Indiana boy rose to fame as the youngest member of The Jackson 5, who owned the 1970s with hits like “I Want You Back.” He released four solo albums on Motown before Off the Wall, his breakthrough. Songs like “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” and “Rock With You” were grown up, happy and novel in the pop and disco worlds.
Thriller dominated when it was released in 1982, becoming the best-selling album…ever. Subsequent albums like Bad and Dangerous naturally became mega-hits and by this time, everyone the world over was intimately familiar with the man known as MJ.
Jackson would eventually release 10 studio albums, receive 13 Grammy awards, have 13 number one singles and embark on repeated world tours, the most recent of which was reportedly set to launch in London, to be followed by Europe, Asia and North America over the next few years. Concert promoter AEG Live is expected to refund the sold-out tickets in light of Jackson’s death yesterday.
Though he was certainly a troubled man with a tangled trail of personal, legal and financial woes, here we simply honor his legendary and incomparable contributions to music.
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