Jackson, Michael

August 29, 1958

The pop singer, dancer, and cultural icon Michael Jackson had a dominant influence on American popular music from the 1970s through the 1990s. For more than a decade, starting in the late 1970s, Michael Jackson created dance music with an electrifying synthesis of street rhythms and lush arrangements. His music was supported by exquisitely crafted music videos featuring Jackson's eye-popping choreography that virtually defined the emerging form of the music video genre. But Jackson's own demons eventually spurred him to engage in bizarre, and allegedly, criminal behavior that chipped away at his enormous popularity and began to overshadow his signal achievements as a performer.

Jackson began singing with his four brothers in 1963, and he quickly became the lead singer and dancer for the Jackson 5, the last of the great Motown acts (and perhaps its greatest crossover success). Jackson begin to release solo albums in 1971, but his solo career did not take off until he began to work with producer and arranger Quincy Jones, whom he had met and collaborated with on The Wiz (1977), an all-black musical version of The Wizard of Oz. Coproducing with Jones, Jackson wrote three of the ten songs on his breakthrough 1979 album, Off the Wall. With Jackson resplendent in tuxedo and glowing white socks on the cover, Off the Wall proclaimed his emergence as an adult entertainer. Quincy Jones drew on Los Angeles's top pop-funk session players, and he and Jackson assembled an exquisitely crafted amalgam of disco, soul, and pop, putting to rest Jackson's bubblegum image. It yielded four Top Ten singles—including scorching dance cuts like "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," as well as libidinous ballads—and sold eleven million copies. The next year Michael reunited with his brothers on Triumph, but by this time it was clear that his superstar status virtually relegated his brothers to a supporting role.

In 1982 Jackson again teamed up with Jones to make Thriller, a more rock-oriented album with funkier dance tracks but more soulful ballads. The record yielded seven Top Ten singles, including "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"; a duet with Paul McCartney, "The Girl is Mine"; "Beat It"; "Billie Jean"; and the title track, with a campy rap by the actor Vincent Price. Spending over two years on the charts and claiming a record eight Grammy awards, Thriller eventually sold more than forty million copies, making it the best-selling album of all time. The music videos for Thriller brought an end to MTV's refusal to feature African-American music, and the "Beat It" video brought special acclaim due to its choreographed gang fight, which evoked the production numbers of a Broadway musical scored for rock and roll and was dubbed "Michael's West Side Story."

As a result, Jackson, who had always been a witty and talented stage performer, began to attract attention as a dancer. In a 1983 television special celebrating Motown's twenty-fifth anniversary, Jackson electrified a huge broadcast audience with his rendition of the African-American vernacular dance step known as "the backslide." His version, renamed "the moonwalk," combined the traditional forward-stepping, back-sliding routine with James Brown's signature spins (which he had copied as a child) and the robotic "locking" motions long popular among hip-hop street performers. In 1984 Jackson joined his brothers to record and tour in support of the album Victory. In 1985 he coauthored the song "We Are the World" with Lionel Ritchie, and they recorded it with an all-star cast for the album USA for Africa, with the proceeds benefiting famine relief. The single and video of the song were a huge success.

Jackson's 1987 album, Bad, attempted, but failed, to reproduce the unprecedented success of Thriller. On the

title track, Jackson toughened the street persona he had often affected, but Bad was a slicker record with weaker songs and an increasingly split personality, veering from talking trash on "Bad," "Dirty Diana," and "Smooth Criminal" to soulful introspection on "Man in the Mirror" and "I Just Can't Stop Loving You," a lush duet with the singer Siedah Garrett. Although it yielded five number one singles, Bad sold only a fifth as many copies as Thriller.

Jackson did not produce a new album until Dangerous in 1991. Now widely known as the "King of Pop," he brought in Teddy Riley, a new producer associated with the updated New Jack Swingan amalgam of hip-hop rhythms, samplings, and vocals that emerged in the late-1980s, combining the melodies of soul with funkier street rhythms of rap. Its first single, "Black or White," went to number one, as did the album, but the video, premiering in prime time on network TV, was criticized for its violence and lasciviousness, which clashed with its message of racial harmony.

In the years since the triumph of Thriller and Jackson's ascension to the role of "King of Pop," Jackson's many personal quirks have drawn increasing critical attention. Shy and soft-spoken, he has seemed frail in public appearances. Numerous plastic surgeries and his lightening skin tone led some in the African-American community (and others) to question his racial solidarity; Jackson's claim to suffer from the pigmentation disorder vitiligo did not explain his many trips to plastic surgeons in search of a smaller, more sculpted nose. Labeled "wacko Jacko" by the aggressive British tabloids, Jackson sought refuge from his detractors in the company of celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and, increasingly, children. In particular, he began to have many children, especially boys, as overnight guests at his fabulous Neverland Valley Ranch, a 2,600-acre pleasure dome northwest of Santa Barbara, California. Named for the magical kingdom in the children's book Peter Pan, the estate sports amusement park rides, a petting zoo, its own narrow-gauge railroad, and statues of children.

Rumors and then charges swirled around Jackson's conduct with his young friends.

On September 3, 2004, the television news magazine Dateline NBC reported that in 1990 he secretly paid a two million dollar settlement to the son of an employee to avoid an accusation of child molestation. In a press release issued the next day, Jackson acknowledged the payment but denied any wrongdoing. In September, 1993, a thirteen-year-old boy and his father filed a civil suit against Jackson alleging sexual battery, seduction, willful misconduct, emotional distress, fraud, and negligence. In a sworn declaration made in December, 1993, the boy accused Jackson of multiple counts of sexual contact, including open-mouth kissing, fondling, and oral sex. The suit was withdrawn when Jackson paid a total of twenty-five million dollars to the boy and his family. Two marriages, widely rumored to be marriages of convenience, followed the humiliating settlement. In May 1994, Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley; the marriage ended in divorce in January, 1996. In November 1996, Jackson married Debbie Rowe, an employee of his dermatologist, who was expecting his child at the time. She bore him two children before they were divorced in October 1999.

In 1995 Jackson released a double album, HIStory ; however, only the second disk, HIStory Continues, consisted of new material. Although it contained the scorching dance hit "Scream," recorded with his sister Janet, anti-Semitic slurs in "They Don't Care About Us" led MTV and VH1 to ban the video. The record did not match the success of Jackson's earlier efforts, though it had sold eighteen million copies by 2004. In 2001, Jackson released Invincible, an album of all-new material, his first since Dangerous. Rumored to be the most expensive album ever made, it sold only two million copies in the United States and spawned only one hit single, "You Rock My World," which cracked the top ten for only one week and received little video airplay. A compilation of hits, Number Ones, released in 2003, also included a new single, "One More Chance." Written by R. Kelly, one of the best-selling R&B singer/songwriter/producers of the 1990s, the song reached number one on billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart and stayed there for three weeks.

But Jackson's many troubles were coming to a head. In early 2002 Jackson had another son by a surrogate mother. Staying in a hotel in Berlin, Jackson dangled the child over a fourth-floor balcony to show him off to fans, earning widespread condemnation for endangering the child. In 2002 and 2003, Jackson was sued by concert promoters and his own financial advisers. On November 18, 2003, law enforcement agents searched Jackson's Neverland Ranch, and the following day he was charged with multiple counts of felony child molestation involving a thirteen-year-old cancer survivor. Jackson allegedly gave the boy and his brother wine, showed them pornography, and had "substantial sexual contact" with the child. Jackson was arrested, forced to surrender his passport, and released on three million dollars bail. A new ten-count grand jury indictment, unsealed on April 30, 2004, expanded the charges to include allegations of child abduction, false imprisonment, and extortion. Jackson was acquitted of all charges by a California jury in June, 2005.

See also Jackson Family; Jackson, Janet; Jones, Quincy; Music in the United States

Bibliography

Brown, Geoff. The Complete Guide to the Music of Michael Jackson and the Jackson Family. New York: Omnibus Press, 1996.

George, Nelson. The Michael Jackson Story. New York: Dell, 1984.

Jackson, Michael. Moonwalk. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Mercer, Kobena. "Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller.'" In Sound and Vision: the Music Video Reader, edited by Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin, and Lawrence Grossberg. London: Routledge, 1993.

Orth, Maureen. "Neverland's Lost Boys." Vanity Fair 523 (March 2004): 384–389, 415–421.

Swenson, J. "Michael Jackson." In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 3d ed., edited by A. DeCurtis and James Henke with Holly George-Warren. New York: Random House, 1976.

harris friedberg (2005)