American singer Michael Jackson is widely regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.Sources comparing Michael Jackson to Jesus Christ Often considered the greatest entertainer of all time, Jackson broke racial barriers in the United States and profoundly influenced the evolution of pop music, earning him the title of "King of Pop". He is one of the best-selling music artists in history, having sold over 500 million records worldwide.
Jackson's unparalleled success spans multiple decades; his albums Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIStory (1995) rank amongst the best-selling of all time; Thriller remains the best-selling album in history. Guinness World Records named him the most successful entertainer of all time. His achievements in the 1980s helped desegregate popular music in the United States and introduced an era of multiculturalism globally. Through his dance, fashion, and music videos, Jackson proliferated visual performance for musical artists. He has influenced hundreds of musicians, with songs that are among the most covered and sampled in music history.Roberts, "Kingdom", p. 36. His influence extended to inspiring a vast array of trends and raising awareness for social causes around the world; as a result, Jackson is widely seen as one of the most famous figures in history.Sources calling Michael Jackson the most famous person of all time or one of the most famous people in history: Before he died, Jackson was received by over 30 world leaders.President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, Nelson Mandela, Dali Lama, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Kim Dae Jung, Carlos Salinas, Omar Bongo, Jacques Chirac, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, Jerry Rawlings, Pierre Mauroy, Ion Illiescu, Ariel Shanon, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Jim Bolger, Hassan Diria, tribal chief Amon N'Djafolk, King Nana Amon Ndufu IV, Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, Theo-Ben Gurirab, Nangolo Mbumba, President Laurent Kabila, prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Carlos Menem, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan Haitham Bin Tariq, Prince Abdullah, Yuri Luzhkov, Robert et Grace Mugabe, HRH Prince Albert of Monaco Jackson's global brand resulted in celebrity products and commemorations such as video games, documentaries, and monuments.
The popularity of Michael Jackson began as a child star in the 1960s, when he was introduced as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, a band formed with his older brothers.Warwick, p. 249. The group was recognized by U.S. Congress for their contribution to American youth culture, and the American public embraced Jackson to a degree not afforded a child star since the height of Shirley Temple in the 1930s. In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular culture and the first African-American entertainer to have a strong crossover fanbase on music television. As he became a rising solo star, his music videos, including those for "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller" from his album Thriller (1982), are credited with breaking several racial barriers both in the United States and worldwide, transforming the medium into an art form and promotional tool. The popularity of these videos helped bring the television channel MTV to fame.Brackett, David. "Jackson, Michael (Joseph)" . Grove Music Online. Accessed October 1, 2019. Before Thriller, timely layoffs were occurring for radio and music record companies, which both suffered during a four-year unemployment high between 1978 and 1982 due to the early 1980s recession. Jackson's world record sales and achievements are credited with revolutionizing the music industry by initiating marketing plans on blockbuster albums with an emphasis on video presentation focus going forward.
Further development through his videos and live performances, Jackson popularized street dance moves, particularly his signature move the moonwalk, patented the anti-gravity lean and attracted a cult of impersonators throughout the world. He is credited with helping to spread dance to a global audience and having an authority comparable to dance icons such as to Fred Astaire and Sammy Davis Jr. With an aesthetic borrowed from the musical film tradition, the Thriller videos created a sub-industry of choreographers as other pop artists deliberately sought to produce sophisticated dance-oriented promotional films and concerts for music on an unprecedented scale. In the latter half of the 1980s, Jackson's personal idiosyncrasies and changing appearance became the source of fascination for the tabloid media, a phenomenon furthered by the child abuse accusations leveled against him in 1993. These eccentricities and controversies sparked major debate from both comedic and critical perspectives. As his last two albums focused more on social commentary, he matchingly pioneered charitable causes as a philanthropist, putting his wealth into several hospitals and nonprofits in various countries. His philanthropy has been described as having set a standard for celebrity charity.
Jackson influenced a wide range of subjects, from celebrity studies, music and dance production, to visual culture, to gender and sexuality studies, and many more, including ones not directly related to his profession.Roberts, "Popular Culture", p. 1. Various life events inspired further discussion while many cultural films, televisions, books reference or depict Jackson on a global scale to present day. According to a study published in The Journal of Pan African Studies in 2010, his influence extended to academia, with references to the singer in literature concerning mass communications, psychology, medicine, engineering, and chemistry.Hidalgo & Weiner 2010, pp. 14–28.Hidalgo & Weiner 2010, p. 25. He inspired a wealth of products exploring his public image, some of which have been displayed, examined, or auctioned; an example being reinterpretation by leading artists in the 2018 exhibition Michael Jackson: On the Wall at London's National Portrait Gallery. The British Council named Jackson on its list of "80 Moments that Shaped the World" regarding international cultural relations. Since Jackson's death, there have been many tribute shows performed by fans in concert, Cirque du Soleil or Broadway theatre which garnered millions of tickets worldwide.
Performing arts Music
As the lead singer and youngest member of the Jackson 5 from the late 1960s, Michael Jackson was the group's focal point for the media. They became one of the most popular family acts in pop music, with many hit records, a self-titled cartoon series and, from 1976, a self-titled variety show. He and his brothers were widely viewed as role models for contemporary society; the press celebrated them as a family founded on core religious beliefs and a strong work ethic, and in 1972, the Jackson 5 received a commendation from the U.S. Congress in recognition of the brothers' contribution to American youth culture. Amid this recognition, according to the editors of Rolling Stones Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Jackson captivated the nation on a level not seen in a child star since Shirley Temple in the 1930s.
In the description of author and pop culture critic Joseph Vogel, Jackson's album Thriller (1982) changed the direction of popular music.Vogel, (Kindle location) 1438. Jay Cocks, writing for Time magazine in 1984, said the album was "a thorough restoration of confidence, a rejuvenation [and] its effect on listeners, especially younger ones, was nearer to a revelation". It reintroduced black music to mainstream American radio; until then, the so-called "restrictive special-format programming", a genre-driven radio content philosophy which segregated music by race, introduced in the mid-1970s, limited the airplay of black music. Jackson, whose success was compared to that of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, appeared on the cover of Time. The album established Jackson as the world's top entertainment star and, in Stanley's recollection, "you'd expect to see a copy in the corner of any room, in any town, in any country in the world." Its unprecedented commercial success also provided the model for record companies recovering from the economic downturn of the late 1970s, whereby they focused on promoting a blockbuster album at the expense of releases by their lesser-known acts. Amid his description of the cultural phenomenon that Jackson represented in 1984, Cocks deemed him "A one-man rescue team for the music business ... A singer who cuts across all boundaries of taste and style, and color too." In 2008, the Library of Congress added Thriller to the National Recording Registry for its "stratospheric national and international success".
Jackson's music has been extensively covered by other artists of various styles, including Mariah Carey, Miles Davis, Willie Nelson and Alien Ant Farm. Artists who often mention Jackson in their music include Kanye West, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, Rick Ross and Drake. According to Jacqueline Edmondson, writing in 2013, Jackson "redefined the term pop star" and his cultural legacy is reflected "in the very landscape of the modern, genre-crossing, multimedia pop music scene".
Dance and choreography
From the start of his performing career, Jackson incorporated dance moves into a stage presence that invited comparison with James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., Mick Jagger, and Tina Turner. He went on to popularize street dances such as popping, locking, the robot, and his signature move, the moonwalk. Professor of performance studies at NYU Tavia Nyongo said that "No dancer has done as much to popularize the art form since Fred Astaire."
Jackson first performed the moonwalk when miming to "Billie Jean" at the close of the Motown 25 television special, which aired in May 1983. An international audience of around 50 million viewed the performance which, according to Rolling Stone, "energize[d] the music scene once again and set in motion all the forces that would go on to shape the popular culture of the 1980s". Media studies academic Jaap Kooijman writes that, although the moonwalk was an additional element in his routine at Motown 25, Jackson's replication of his dancing from the already popular "Billie Jean" music video presented a new phenomenon whereby a concert performance involved re-creating a video sequence and the music, including live vocals, ceded to visual imagery such as dance.
Jackson is credited with helping to spread dance to a global audience. Nigel Lythgoe, executive producer and judge on the TV dance competition So You Think You Can Dance, said that "countless" applicants had begun dancing because of Jackson. Ronni Favors, a director at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, said Jackson was "a trailblazer for his generation", setting the expectation that future pop stars, such as Britney Spears and Beyoncé, integrate dance in their performances. In Japan, as a result of him opening his Bad World Tour there, Jackson is credited with reshaping J-pop's choreography. He also influenced India's Bollywood film scene, where dance sequences, films and soundtrack music all borrowed heavily from Jackson's work.
Following the singer's death in 2009, Andy Gill of The Independent said that through Jackson's example, "the Eighties became the decade of dance stars like Prince and Madonna, neither of whom would have been able to establish themselves as quickly as they did had Jackson not moonwalked across the room and kicked down the door for them." Gill added that with thousands of dancers imitating his moves in the moonwalk and the zombie, Jackson became "the most significant mainstream dance icon since the mid-century heyday of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Sammy Davis Jr." Jackson was posthumously inducted into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame in 2010.
Music videos