When Michael Jackson’s death was confirmed on Thursday afternoon, MTV gave over its scheduled programming to a marathon retrospective of the music videos which had made him so famous. It was a fitting tribute for a life that ought to have ended less ignominiously. In his final years Jackson had become a tragically disoriented figure, able to command only a fraction of the sales he had come to expect. After nearly two decades of prurient tabloid coverage, the insecurities and embarrassments of his private life – skin lightening, cosmetic surgery, bizarre intimacies with children – were almost as well known as his music.
This was a far cry from the five-year-old prodigy who first caught the public’s attention as a member of The Jackson Five – a band of brothers whose precocious musicality seemed to promise long careers. From the outset, it was clear that Michael had something extra, but nobody could have predicted what lay ahead. As a soloist, Jackson remade popular music, constantly opening out new territory with his strange and infectious blend of rock music, rhythm and blues and funk; yipping, squealing, cooing, moonwalking and crotch-grabbing his way towards a brand new style. He danced with marvellous, intuitive grace, always poised, it seemed, for some unpredictable new move. After a series of number 1 hits – he would eventually accumulate 13 – his album Thriller sold an unprecedented 50 million copies worldwide and set the gold standard for music video. By the mid-’80s he was the undisputed ‘King of Pop’ and a major influence on a whole new generation of musicians, black and white.
But there was another Jackson, too. Weirdly introspective and other-worldly. A child without a childhood, desperately chasing something that had been displaced by his musical career, while knowing it could never be retrieved. At times he seemed to relish the public’s fascination with his eccentricity – the sequined glove and aviator shades, the epicene hairstyle and ever-lightening skin, the chimp, oxygen tank and germ mask. But when the publicity took on a life of its own, focusing more and more on his jittery asexuality, his obsessive interest in amusement parks and children, his inexplicable makeovers – he started to buckle under the pressure. Long before current paparazzi obsessions with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, Jackson was standard tabloid fodder across the globe.
Celebrity took a heavy toll over the years. Marriage to Elvis Presley’s daughter redoubled the public’s fascination with him but seemed to bring him neither stability nor peace. In time his music became an occasional distraction from the endless rumours about his private life. A massive out-of-court settlement for alleged child molestation, lavish expenditure and poor money management left him heavily in debt. When he died, Jackson was in the middle of trying to clear these debts by organizing a 50-date tour in London. It would probably have been his professional swansong. Like the actress and model Farah Fawcett, who died from cancer on the same day, Jackson had been through too much not to know that while he might briefly rekindle happier memories, he could never return to the glorious early days of his career. Like Elvis, his one-time father-in-law, he died too young, hollowed out by the pressures of always living in the public eye. But whatever his failings, it should be remembered that he sold three quarters of a billion albums during a forty-five year career, and delighted large audiences across the world. He will be widely missed.
