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There are some who say that if your work here on earth is done, you move on. I am one of many who believed that we never saw the full magic of Michael Jackson, that the child molestation cases and the skin lightening pushed him back and kept him from reaching his true peak. I always felt there was more to come, and so did Michael I suppose. He was planning to start his comeback tour next month. But that was not to be. His work, it seems, was already done.
And what a body of work it was. Born on August 29 1958, Michael (the 7th Jackson child) first performed with his brothers at a talent show when he was six. Those were the origins of the Jackson Five. By the late sixties the group was already famous. They went on to become one of the biggest musical acts of the 1970s. Michael was the first of the brothers to go it alone, releasing his first solo album in 1972 at age 13. I was a four year old toddler when in November 1982, Michael released his seminal album- Thriller. It was a musical earthquake which was felt around the world. Even on the dusty streets of Chitungwiza where we were running around making wire cars, the after shocks made us dance. To this day people are still copying moves from the Thriller video. By 1987 the world knew that Michael Jackson was Bad so it came as no surprise when he released an album by that name in August that year. 
^ The Jackson Five at the NAACP Image Awards in 1970. L to R- Jackie, Tito, Michael, Jermaine and Marlon (Max B. Miller / Fotos International/Getty Images).
He had become the biggest star in the world.
Recently, when I was doing a compilation of music that Zimbabweans who are currently in their twenties and thirties grew up listening to I went through some YouTube videos of Michael. There’s this one clip where he does the moonwalk. I watched it over and over. He moved like the force that was pulling him along was from without. Usher, Omarion and a host of other young artists are borrowing from his dance styles to this day. Even kids who came to musical awareness long after Michael’s peak have come to appreciate the stature of this man in the world of entertainment. One young man who seems barely thirteen posted a video on YouTube expressing his shock at the Pop King’s death. “Well this sucks,” reads the caption to the video, “Michael Jackson was a legendary musician and a very talented man…” Talented he was. According to Sony BMG and Wikipedia, five of his solo albums, Off the Wall (20 million copies), Thriller (109 million), Bad (30 million), Dangerous (32 million) and HIStory (20 million), are among the top-sellers of all time. Sony acknowledges: “During his extraordinary career, he sold an estimated 750 million records worldwide, released 13 No.1 singles and became one of a handful of artists to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Guinness Book of World Records recognized Jackson as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time and Thriller as the Biggest Selling Album of All Time. Jackson won 13 Grammy Awards and received the American Music Award's Artist of the Century Award.” His fans were young and old, black, brown and white, all over the world. One woman on BBC this morning put it succinctly when she said that politics could not unite us, religion could not unite us, but the music of this one man has brought so many together in spirit. But, as we have seen so many times, with genius often comes some sort of affliction. With Michael it was first his changing skin colour. Some thought he was bleaching his skin, but in a 90 minute interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1993 he revealed to the world for the first time that he had been diagnosed with vitiligo and lupus. That did not dispel the rumours from those who thought he was just unhappy about being black. Michael also admitted to having had two operations to alter his face, but many people suspected he had had dozens more due to its constantly changing shape. 
^ King of Pop. On stage, Michael was in his element.
He had been married twice, first to Lisa Marie Presley (May 18 1994 till January 18 1996), the daughter of another music legend, Elvis Presley then to Debbie Rowe (November 15 1996 till October 8 1999), a former nurse whom he had known for 15 years before they wed. Both marriages ended in divorce due to irreconcilable differences. Debbie bore him two children Michael Joseph Jackson Jr (1997) and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson (1998). Michael also had a third child, Prince Michael Jackson II aka Blanket (2002) who had a different surrogate mother.
Then there were the child molestation charges. Michael spent millions of dollars on lawyers and was eventually acquitted- but the damage had been done- both to his reputation and to his bank account. He started selling off assets to make money. In 2005 he sold his prized Neverland Ranch, allegedly to help pay his mounting legal costs. By the time he died it is estimated that he was anything between US$24m and US$400m in the red. He was leaving beyond his means in a rented mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles. It was thought that his upcoming tour was meant to help him settle his debts. The 50 planned shows were already sold out- that’s a total of 750,000 tickets. It is thought he would have made US$50m to US$100m from the tour. A bigger world tour which was tentatively on the cards would have made him up to US$500m. And so on Thursday 25 June 2009, 12:21pm (GMT-7hrs) when Michael Joseph Jackson was pronounced dead after suffering a heart attack in his home at the age of 50, there were many more people than I who thought he still had more to give. Close to a million of them had tickets to prove it. As the news of his death broke there was shock and disbelief from fans and non-fans around the world alike. A huge crowd gathered outside the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where he had been rushed after his collapse. The update frequency on Twitter doubled as people tried to share what they knew about the death. Facebook saw a tripling of updates. News websites strained to serve up pages as users logged in for the latest on the music superstar. Google saw a spike in queries about the death too. Whatever the verdict by the powers that decide these things, his fans will always feel, like the lyrics of his song that he has Gone Too Soon. Many years from now you can be sure that we will still be dancing in the aftershocks of his awesomely musical earthquake.
The facts in this article were sourced from Wikipedia, The Los Angeles Times, Contact Music, TMZ and other sources.
- By Fungai Tichawangana
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This is such a sad day. Michael was the King of Pop for real.
R.I.P. mr music man, mr king of pop, mr thriller, bad and so so off the wall.
Well ndiyo in onzi vafavanaka but I for one I will not pretend all was
