The story of Michael Jackson

From Jackson Street to Motown

Michael Joseph Jackson was born on the twenty ninth of August 1958 in Gary, Indiana, an industrial town just outside Chicago. He was the eighth of ten children, raised in a two bedroom house on a road that happened to be called Jackson Street. His mother Katherine had caught polio at the age of two and walked with a limp. She played clarinet and piano, dreamed of singing country and western music, and worked part time at the Sears store. She was also a devout Jehovah's Witness. His father Joe was a former boxer who ran a crane at the US Steel works, and on the side he played guitar in a local rhythm and blues group called the Falcons. Music was always in the house.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Joe had already formed a band with his older sons Jackie, Tito and Jermaine. In 1964 Michael and Marlon joined them, at first just banging congas and a tambourine at the back. Rehearsals were strict. Michael later said his father sat through them holding a belt, ready to punish every mistake, and that he was beaten and frightened as a child. Joe did not deny it, and told the BBC in 2003 that he had whipped his son. The older brothers saw it differently. They said the punishments were ordinary discipline for the time, and that Michael, as one of the youngest, simply felt them more. Michael would later describe his childhood as lonely, and as a childhood he felt he never really had.[1] [2] [3]

By late 1965 the little boy was sharing lead vocals with Jermaine, and the group became the Jackson 5. They won a talent show that year with Michael dancing to Barefootin' and singing the Temptations' My Girl. For the next three years they worked the Chitlin' Circuit, the network of Black venues across the Midwest and the East, opening for Sam and Dave, the O'Jays, Gladys Knight and Etta James. Some of their bookings were in bars and clubs that also ran striptease acts, and a child of eight or nine was in the middle of it all. In August 1967 they won the famous amateur night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, the moment many people see as the real launch of their career.[1] [2] [3]

In 1968 the brothers cut a first single, Big Boy, for a small Gary label called Steeltown Records. That summer they opened for Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers at the Regal Theater in Chicago. Taylor, a Motown artist, was so struck by the tiny lead singer that he brought the group to Motown and produced some of their earliest sessions. The family moved to Los Angeles, and Motown built a story around them. The company let the world believe that Diana Ross, the biggest star on the label, had discovered them, and their first album came out in December 1969 under the title Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5.[1] [2] [3]

Then everything happened at once. In January 1970 I Want You Back reached number one in America, and ABC, The Love You Save and I'll Be There followed it to the top, four number ones in a row from their first four Motown singles. In May 1971 the family moved into a large gated estate on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino. Michael also began a solo career alongside the group. His second solo album was built around Ben, the theme from a horror film about a killer rat, and a song first meant for Donny Osmond. It went to number one in 1972 when Michael was fourteen, won a Golden Globe, and earned an Oscar nomination. On Soul Train, his performance of Dancing Machine helped make the robot dance a craze.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Growing up: The Wiz and Off the Wall

By the mid seventies the brothers were frustrated that Motown would not let them write or produce their own records. In 1975 they signed with Epic, part of CBS. Motown kept the name, so they became the Jacksons. Jermaine stayed behind at Motown and was replaced by the youngest brother, Randy. At Epic, Michael grew into the group's main songwriter, writing or co writing Shake Your Body Down to the Ground, This Place Hotel and Can You Feel It. He was still a teenager, and still under his father's management, but the balance of power in the family band was slowly shifting towards him.[1] [2]

In 1977 Michael moved to New York to play the Scarecrow in The Wiz, a film musical based on The Wizard of Oz, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Diana Ross. To learn to move like a creature made of straw he studied videotapes of gazelles, cheetahs and panthers. The film flopped, but critics singled out his performance as one of its few bright spots. It also gave him two gifts. The film's music was arranged by Quincy Jones, who agreed to produce his first adult solo album. And while he was in New York he spent nights at Studio 54, where he first heard the early hip hop that later showed up in his beatboxing.[1] [2] [3]

Off the Wall was recorded in Los Angeles between December 1978 and June 1979. Michael did not want it to sound like the Jacksons, and he did not want his brothers on it, although Randy did add percussion. Jones brought in Rod Temperton, the English keyboard player from the band Heatwave, and asked him for three songs, planning to pick one. Michael loved all three, including Rock with You, and stayed up all night to learn the words by heart rather than read them from a sheet. He wrote Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough after humming the melody around the family home. His mother, a devout Witness, worried the title sounded sexual. Michael told her it meant whatever the listener wanted.[1] [2] [3]

The album came out on the tenth of August 1979 and made him a solo star. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and Rock with You both went to number one, and with the title track and She's Out of My Life he became the first solo artist to take four top ten hits from one album. It sold more than twenty million copies over the years. Yet Michael felt robbed. It won only one Grammy and was not even nominated for Album of the Year. When Rolling Stone passed on putting him on its cover in 1980, he said magazines would one day beg him for interviews. At twenty one he hired the lawyer John Branca and told him he wanted to be the biggest star in show business.[1] [2] [3]

Thriller and the moonwalk

Michael went back to Quincy Jones with one goal: an album where every song could be a hit. Work began at Westlake studios in Los Angeles on the fourteenth of April 1982 with a duet with Paul McCartney, The Girl Is Mine, and the budget was about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They worked on around thirty songs and kept nine. Members of Toto played throughout. Michael wrote four of the songs himself without ever putting them on paper. He could not read music, so he sang every part, the bass line, the chords and the drum pattern, into a tape recorder. The first mixes disappointed everyone, so they remixed every track, spending about a week on each. Thriller came out on the twenty ninth of November 1982.[1] [2] [3]

Billie Jean was the song that changed everything. Michael said it came from the girls who used to claim, backstage, that one of his brothers had fathered their child. Jones disliked the demo, wanted to cut the long introduction and even to rename it, fearing people would think of the tennis star Billie Jean King. Michael refused on both counts. Engineer Bruce Swedien had him sing some of his parts through a six foot cardboard tube, and mixed the song ninety one times before deciding the second mix was best. MTV was barely playing Black artists, and CBS boss Walter Yetnikoff threatened to pull every video the company made. The channel gave in, and Billie Jean spent seven weeks at number one.[1] [2]

For Beat It, Jones wanted a rock song, and he called Eddie Van Halen, who at first thought the call was a prank. Van Halen played his famous solo free of charge, as a favour, over a backing track by Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro of Toto. For the video, CBS refused to pay, so Michael spent about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of his own money. It was shot on Skid Row in Los Angeles, and he insisted on casting around eighty real members of the rival Crips and Bloods gangs alongside the dancers. Epic's Frank DiLeo pushed to release Beat It while Billie Jean was still climbing, and for a while both songs sat in the American top five together.[1] [2]

On the twenty fifth of March 1983 Motown taped a twenty fifth anniversary special in Pasadena. Michael had first said no. He agreed after Berry Gordy visited him, on condition that after the Jackson 5 reunion he could perform Billie Jean alone, the only non Motown song of the night. Wearing a black sequined jacket, short trousers, glittering socks and one rhinestone glove, he lip synced the record, and in the instrumental break he glided backwards across the stage. It was the first public moonwalk, a move he had practised in his kitchen. The show aired in May to around fifty million viewers. The next day Fred Astaire phoned to praise him. Michael thought he had not held his toe stand long enough.[1] [2] [3]

Epic had not wanted the title track as a single. Walter Yetnikoff reportedly asked who would want a song about monsters. Michael pushed for it anyway, with a fourteen minute film directed by John Landis, full of zombies dancing in the street. It premiered on the second of December 1983, and MTV showed it twice an hour to keep up with demand. Sales of the album doubled. In February 1984 Michael won eight Grammys in one night, a record, and Thriller spent thirty seven weeks at number one in America. Seven of its nine songs became top ten singles. With an estimated seventy million copies sold, it remains the best selling album ever made.[1] [2]

Fire, fame and the Beatles songs

In November 1983 Michael and his brothers signed a five million dollar deal with Pepsi, then the biggest celebrity endorsement ever. On the twenty seventh of January 1984 they filmed a commercial at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, in front of a live crowd. During a staged concert, a pyrotechnic charge went off too close and set Michael's hair on fire. He suffered second degree burns to his scalp. Pepsi settled out of court and Michael gave the one and a half million dollar payout to the Brotman Medical Center, which named its burn unit after him. The injuries needed years of treatment, and the painkillers he was later prescribed after scalp surgery would come back to haunt him.[1] [2]

That summer came the Victory Tour, the last time Michael toured with his brothers. It was promoted by Don King with Joe Jackson involved, and fans had to mail a money order for a block of four thirty dollar tickets into a lottery, with only about one in ten winning. The scheme caused an outcry. Michael gave his entire share of the money, an estimated three to five million dollars, to charity. At the final show at Dodger Stadium in December 1984 he announced from the stage that he was leaving the group. In 1985 he co wrote We Are the World with Lionel Richie, a charity single that raised about sixty three million dollars for the poor in Africa and America.[1] [2]

Working with Paul McCartney on Say Say Say, Michael learned how much money McCartney earned from owning other people's songs. He started buying song catalogues himself, and in 1984 the Australian tycoon Robert Holmes a Court put up ATV Music for sale, a catalogue of around four thousand songs that included most of the Beatles' work. McCartney did not want to buy it alone. On the tenth of August 1985 Michael closed the deal for forty seven and a half million dollars. McCartney was hurt, and criticised the purchase for years. Ten years later Michael merged the catalogue with Sony's publishing arm, keeping half of a company that became one of the most valuable in music.[1] [2] [3]

From the mid eighties his skin grew steadily paler. In 1986 his dermatologist Arnold Klein diagnosed vitiligo, a disease that destroys skin pigment in patches, and he had already found lupus. Michael covered the blotches with pale makeup and, reportedly, prescription creams. His autopsy later confirmed the vitiligo. He also had cosmetic surgery on his nose more than once, including after the Pepsi burns, though he said the number of operations was greatly exaggerated. The Sun newspaper nicknamed him Wacko Jacko, a name he hated, and the gap between the story told about him and the man himself kept growing.[1] [2]

Some of the strangest stories were ones his own camp seemed happy to feed. In 1986 a photo of Michael lying in an oxygen chamber reached the National Enquirer, with the claim that he slept in it to live longer. In 1987 his publicist was reported to have bid a million dollars for the skeleton of Joseph Merrick, the so called Elephant Man, which the London hospital that held it said was not for sale. And there was Bubbles, a chimpanzee bought from a research facility in Texas, who drank tea with the mayor of Osaka on the Bad tour and had his own talent agent. Manager Frank DiLeo denied most of the rumours, but not the chamber.[1] [2] [3]

Bad, the Bad tour and Neverland

Following Thriller was an impossible job, and Michael took nearly five years. Bad came out on the thirty first of August 1987 and sold more than two and a quarter million copies in America in its first week. Michael wrote all but two of its songs. The title track was first meant as a duet with Prince, who turned it down, and Michael also hoped for duets with Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin that never happened. The album's big ballad of conscience, Man in the Mirror, was written by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard after Quincy Jones told a room of songwriters he only wanted hits. Garrett also sang with him on the duet I Just Can't Stop Loving You.[1] [2] [3]

Bad became the first album ever to send five singles to number one in America: I Just Can't Stop Loving You, Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Man in the Mirror and Dirty Diana. The long video for Bad was directed by Martin Scorsese, with a young Wesley Snipes. For Smooth Criminal, Michael and his designers came up with a special shoe that hooked into the stage so dancers could lean forward at a seemingly impossible angle, and they were granted a US patent for it. Michael's first solo world tour ran from September 1987 to January 1989. Seven nights at Wembley Stadium drew five hundred and four thousand people, a world record at the time.[1] [2] [3]

In 1988 he published an autobiography, Moonwalk. It was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, then an editor at Doubleday, who paid a three hundred thousand dollar advance and, after some persuading, wrote a short foreword. In it Michael wrote openly about his father's beatings. That same year he released the film Moonwalker, and bought a ranch of about two thousand seven hundred acres near Santa Ynez in California for around seventeen million dollars. He named it Neverland, after Peter Pan, and filled it with a Ferris wheel, a carousel, a cinema and a zoo, guarded by a security staff of forty. The nickname King of Pop, pushed by his publicists, began to stick.[1] [2] [3]

By the end of the decade Michael was the best selling artist of the eighties, and the honours piled up. Fisk University gave him an honorary doctorate in 1988. In 1989 Elizabeth Taylor presented him with an award and called him the true king of pop, rock and soul, and the next year President George H. W. Bush named him the White House artist of the decade. Much of his success went back out as charity. He gave all his profits from Man in the Mirror to good causes and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Negro College Fund. He also formed close friendships with child stars, and with Taylor, who married her last husband at Neverland in 1991.[1] [2]

Dangerous, and the 1993 accusations

In March 1991 Michael renewed with Sony, which now owned CBS Records, in a deal reported at sixty five million dollars. For his next album he split from Quincy Jones and turned to younger producers, above all Teddy Riley, the inventor of new jack swing, and Bill Bottrell. Dangerous came out in November 1991. Black or White went to number one for seven weeks, and its video premiered around the world on the same night to an estimated five hundred million viewers, featuring Macaulay Culkin. Its final section, with Michael smashing car windows, caused an uproar and was cut. Remember the Time came with a video set in ancient Egypt, starring Eddie Murphy, Iman and Magic Johnson.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1992 he founded the Heal the World Foundation and toured Africa, where more than one hundred thousand people greeted him in Gabon and a village chief in Ivory Coast crowned him King Sani. The Dangerous World Tour raised money for the foundation, and HBO paid twenty million dollars to broadcast his concert in Bucharest. In January 1993 he played the Super Bowl halftime show in Pasadena, the first halftime show watched by more people than the game itself. A few weeks later, on the tenth of February, he gave Oprah Winfrey a ninety minute interview. More than ninety million Americans watched him talk about his father's abuse, deny bleaching his skin, and reveal for the first time that he had vitiligo.[1]

In the summer of 1993 everything came apart. Michael had befriended a boy named Jordan Chandler and his family, and the boy had stayed over with him on many nights. His father, the Los Angeles dentist Evan Chandler, accused Michael of sexually abusing his thirteen year old son. A secret recording caught Evan Chandler threatening, weeks earlier, that Michael's career would be over if he did not get what he wanted, and he demanded twenty million dollars. Michael refused. Police opened an investigation and raided Neverland in August, and in December Michael was made to submit to a strip search so detectives could compare his body with the boy's description. He called it the most humiliating ordeal of his life.[1] [2] [3]

Michael denied everything. In January 1994 he settled the family's civil lawsuit for a sum later reported at more than fifteen million dollars, stressing it was not an admission of guilt. Two grand juries heard evidence, and no criminal charges were ever filed. The investigation closed in September 1994, after Jordan declined to testify. Michael's sister La Toya publicly called him a paedophile in December 1993, but produced no evidence, and years later retracted it, saying her abusive husband Jack Gordon had pushed her into it. The case split public opinion then, and it still does. Tragically, Evan Chandler died by suicide in November 2009, a few months after Michael's own death.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The stress fed an addiction. Michael had been taking painkillers since the scalp surgeries that followed the Pepsi accident, and now he became dependent on them and stopped eating. In a court deposition in Mexico City he seemed drowsy and slurred his words. On the twelfth of November 1993 he cancelled the rest of the Dangerous tour and flew out with Elizabeth Taylor, entering treatment in London. Pepsi ended its sponsorship. Meanwhile he had grown close to Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis's daughter, who stood by him. He proposed over the phone, and they married quietly in the Dominican Republic in May 1994. Many assumed it was a stunt. She said she had fallen for him and wanted to save him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

HIStory, fatherhood and Invincible

Michael answered his critics with music. HIStory, released in June 1995, was a double album, one disc of hits and one of new songs full of anger at the press and the prosecutors. Its first single was Scream, a furious duet with his youngest sister Janet, whose video Guinness later listed as the most expensive ever made. You Are Not Alone became the first song ever to enter the Billboard Hot 100 at number one. The album also brought trouble. Jewish groups condemned slurs in the lyrics of They Don't Care About Us, and Michael re recorded the lines. Late that year he collapsed in rehearsal for a television concert with what was diagnosed as a stress related panic attack.[1] [2]

Earth Song, a song he had written in a Vienna hotel room during the Bad tour, spent six weeks at number one in Britain over Christmas 1995. When he performed it at the Brit Awards in February 1996, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp invaded the stage, saying he was protesting against what he saw as Michael's Christ like persona. Michael called the stunt disgusting and cowardly. The HIStory World Tour that followed became his biggest ever, with eighty two concerts in thirty five countries for more than four and a half million people. He also played privately for the Sultan of Brunei's fiftieth birthday, reportedly for seventeen million dollars.[1] [2]

Michael and Lisa Marie separated in December 1995, and the divorce was finalised the following summer. In November 1996, during the tour, he married Debbie Rowe in Sydney. She was an assistant in the office of his dermatologist Arnold Klein, and she was six months pregnant. Their son Michael Joseph Jackson Junior, known as Prince, was born in February 1997, and their daughter Paris in April 1998. The couple divorced in 2000, and Rowe gave up custody in return for a settlement. A third child, Prince Michael the Second, known as Blanket and later as Bigi, was born to an unnamed surrogate mother in 2002. Michael kept all three children masked in public, to shield them from photographers.[1] [2] [3] [4]

His last studio album of new material took almost four years and about thirty million dollars, making Invincible reportedly the most expensive album ever recorded. Before it came out, Michael fought with Sony. He had expected the rights to his master recordings to revert to him, but found the date was years away. Invincible appeared in October 2001, topped the charts in many countries and sold around eight million copies, a strong result for anyone else and a disappointment for him. In July 2002, at Al Sharpton's National Action Network in Harlem, he called Sony boss Tommy Mottola a racist who exploited Black artists. Sony called the charge ludicrous and let his contract lapse.[1] [2]

There was also a public moment that shocked many fans. In November 2002, greeting a crowd outside his hotel in Berlin, Michael briefly held his baby son Blanket over a balcony railing four floors up. The images went round the world, and Michael apologised, calling it a terrible mistake. Around the same time his finances were deteriorating. He was spending heavily, fighting a stream of lawsuits, and borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars against his half of the Sony music publishing business. In September 2001 he had reunited with his brothers on stage for two anniversary shows at Madison Square Garden, their first performance together in seventeen years.[1]

Bashir, the trial and exile

In 2002 Michael let the British journalist Martin Bashir follow him for months. The documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, aired in February 2003. In one scene Michael sat holding hands with a twelve year old cancer survivor, Gavin Arvizo, and calmly said he saw nothing wrong with sharing his bed with children, adding that he himself slept on the floor. He called it a beautiful thing. Millions of viewers were alarmed. Michael felt betrayed and put out his own rebuttal film using footage his camera crew had shot of Bashir praising him. But the damage was done, and in Santa Barbara the district attorney Tom Sneddon, who had pursued him ten years earlier, opened a new investigation.[1] [2] [3]

In November 2003 detectives searched Neverland while Michael was in Las Vegas, and he was arrested and released on a three million dollar bail. In December he was charged with child molestation and with giving alcohol to a minor, and later indicted on further charges including conspiracy. He pleaded not guilty and faced up to eighteen years in prison. On the day of his arraignment he climbed onto the roof of his car and danced for his fans. The trial began in Santa Maria in early 2005, with cameras banned. One morning Michael arrived more than an hour late in pyjama bottoms, saying he had fallen in the shower, after the judge threatened to revoke his bail.[1] [2]

Gavin Arvizo and his younger brother testified that Michael had given them wine, shown them pornography and molested Gavin. Prosecutors also called witnesses about earlier claims, including former staff who said they had seen abuse. The defence, led by Thomas Mesereau, attacked the accusers' credibility, pointing to the Arvizo family's history of lawsuits and to former employees who had sold stories to tabloids. Macaulay Culkin testified that he had shared a bed with Michael many times as a boy and had never been touched. So did the choreographer Wade Robson. On the thirteenth of June 2005 the jury acquitted Michael on every count. Years later Robson would change his account.[1] [2] [3]

Michael never went back to Neverland. He moved to Bahrain as a guest of Sheikh Abdullah, then to Ireland, where he worked on new music at a studio in County Westmeath with will.i.am and others. He was deep in debt, facing dozens of lawsuits, and in 2006 he refinanced loans of hundreds of millions of dollars using his stake in the Sony publishing company as security. He settled in Las Vegas late that year. In December 2006 he spoke at the funeral of James Brown, calling him his greatest inspiration. In 2008 he released Thriller 25, and that November transferred Neverland's title to a joint venture with the investment firm Colony Capital to avoid foreclosure.[1] [2] [3]

This Is It and the last day

On the fifth of March 2009, at the O2 Arena in London, Michael announced a run of comeback concerts called This Is It, calling it the final curtain call. Demand was so enormous that the run grew to fifty shows, with more than a million tickets sold in a few hours. According to AEG boss Randy Phillips, an earlier figure of thirty one was chosen so that Michael would play ten more nights there than Prince, who had opened the arena with a residency in 2007. Back in Los Angeles, he rehearsed at the Forum and the Staples Center with his old friend and director Kenny Ortega, who later said Michael had come alive again. By then his debts were close to half a billion dollars.[1] [2] [3]

Michael had suffered from insomnia for years, and he had been using the surgical anaesthetic propofol as a way to sleep. For the concerts, AEG hired the cardiologist Conrad Murray as his personal physician, at Michael's insistence, for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month, although Murray was never actually paid. Murray spent six nights a week at the rented mansion in Holmby Hills. Michael called propofol his milk. On the night of the twenty fourth of June he rehearsed at the Staples Center until after midnight, and those who saw him said he looked strong. He went home around one in the morning, and Murray began giving him sedatives to help him sleep.[1] [2] [3]

After hours of injections of other drugs, Michael was still awake. At about twenty to eleven in the morning, Murray gave him propofol. By his own account he then left the room for a couple of minutes, and returned to find Michael not breathing. Murray tried CPR on a bed rather than on the floor, and made phone calls, and it was nearly an hour and a half before a security guard called for an ambulance, at twenty one minutes past noon. Paramedics worked on him at the house and doctors at UCLA Medical Center for more than an hour. Michael Jackson was pronounced dead at twenty six minutes past two in the afternoon on the twenty fifth of June 2009. He was fifty.[1] [2] [3]

The news crashed websites and slowed down Google, Twitter and Wikipedia. MTV went back to wall to wall music videos. More than a million fans applied for tickets to the memorial at the Staples Center on the seventh of July, which an estimated two and a half billion people watched around the world. Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey and Lionel Richie sang, and his brothers each wore a single sequined glove. The most painful moment came when his eleven year old daughter Paris took the microphone and said he had been the best father you could ever imagine. In August the coroner ruled the death a homicide, caused by acute propofol intoxication. He was entombed at Forest Lawn in Glendale in September.[1] [2]

Conrad Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter. His televised trial ended on the seventh of November 2011, when a jury found him guilty. His lawyers had argued that Michael gave himself the fatal dose while the doctor was out of the room. Judge Michael Pastor gave Murray the maximum four years, and he was released after less than two, in October 2013, because of prison overcrowding. Michael's mother and children also sued AEG Live, arguing it had negligently hired Murray. In 2013, after a trial lasting five months, the jury cleared AEG. Murray later published a memoir about his time as Michael's doctor.[1] [2] [3] [4]

After Michael: estate, allegations and the biopic

Michael's will, signed in 2002, left everything to a family trust, with his mother Katherine and his three children as the main beneficiaries and a share for charity. It named his old lawyer John Branca and John McClain as executors, and asked that if Katherine could not raise the children, Diana Ross should. The film of his rehearsals, Michael Jackson's This Is It, became the highest grossing concert film ever. In 2010 Sony signed a deal worth a reported two hundred and fifty million dollars for his recordings. In 2016 the estate sold his half of the Sony publishing business to Sony for about seven hundred and fifty million dollars.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The posthumous music was not always welcome. The 2010 album Michael drew complaints from his family and fans that three of its songs were sung by an impersonator, and will.i.am said Michael would never have approved its release. In 2022 those three songs were withdrawn. The 2014 album Xscape did better. Its single Love Never Felt So Good, with Justin Timberlake, made him the first artist with top ten hits in five different decades. There were Cirque du Soleil shows, a video game and the Broadway hit MJ the Musical. The family also went through grief of its own. Joe Jackson died in 2018, and Lisa Marie Presley in January 2023.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2013 Wade Robson, who had defended Michael under oath in 2005, sued the estate, saying Michael had sexually abused him for years from the age of seven. The following year James Safechuck, who had known Michael as a boy in the late eighties, made similar claims from the age of ten. Their accounts became the 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, directed by Dan Reed. Both men told the BBC the abuse had happened hundreds of times. The estate called the film a tabloid character assassination, and the family called it a public lynching. Some radio stations dropped his songs, and a Simpsons episode he had voiced was pulled, yet his record sales went up.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The lawsuits went back and forth for years. Courts first threw them out as too late under California's time limits, then ruled that Michael's companies had no duty to protect the boys. In 2023 a California appeals court revived both cases against the companies MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures, which the estate now owns, allowing them to head towards trial. The estate has always maintained Michael's innocence, and as of 2026 no court has ever found him guilty of abuse. In 2019 the four Cascio siblings, once close family friends and defenders, also accused him, and the estate paid them a settlement without admitting wrongdoing. The subject remains deeply divisive among fans and critics.[1] [2] [3]

In April 2026 a biopic called simply Michael reached cinemas, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Michael's nephew Jaafar Jackson, son of Jermaine. It told the story from Gary to the Bad tour and stopped there. An earlier version had covered the 1993 accusations, but lawyers found that the settlement with Jordan Chandler barred any depiction of him, and the ending was reshot. Critics called it sanitised, and Paris Jackson called an early script sugar coated. Audiences flocked anyway. It opened to around two hundred and seventeen million dollars worldwide and became the highest grossing biopic ever, and in May 2026 Billie Jean became the number one song on the planet on Billboard's global chart.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

The people around Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson and Joe Jackson. Joe built the Jackson 5 with relentless rehearsals and, by Michael's account, a belt. He managed his sons into stardom and fought Motown for them, but Michael grew up afraid of him and later spoke openly about the beatings. As an adult Michael took charge of his own career and cut his father out of his business. Joe outlived his son by nine years, dying in 2018.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Katherine Jackson. His mother was his anchor. A devout Jehovah's Witness who had survived polio, she raised ten children and stayed close to Michael even after he drifted from the faith. His will made her guardian of his three children and a main beneficiary of his estate, and in 2010 she sued the concert promoter AEG over his death, and lost.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. They met on The Wiz and made Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad together, the most successful run in pop history. Jones found Michael shy at first, and they clashed over Billie Jean, but he trusted Michael's instincts. They parted ways after Bad. After Michael's death, Jones sued the estate over royalties, and in 2017 a Los Angeles jury awarded him about nine million dollars. Jones died in November 2024.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. Motown pretended she had discovered the Jackson 5, but she became a real mentor. As a boy Michael watched her rehearse, copied her vocal habits and called her a mother figure who gave him confidence. They starred together in The Wiz. His will named her as guardian of his children if his mother could not serve, and Remember the Time was reportedly dedicated to her on release.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney. They sang together on The Girl Is Mine and Say Say Say, and it was McCartney who explained to Michael how lucrative song publishing could be. Michael then outbid everyone for ATV Music in 1985, buying most of the Beatles catalogue. McCartney felt betrayed and criticised the deal for years, and the friendship cooled for good.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. They first met as children in Lake Tahoe in 1974, and reconnected in 1992. She supported him through the 1993 accusations, saying she wanted to save him, and they married in the Dominican Republic in May 1994. Many called it a publicity stunt. They separated in December 1995 and divorced in 1996, but she said they kept trying to reconcile for years. She died in January 2023.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe. She worked as an assistant at the dermatology office where Michael was treated for vitiligo. They married in Sydney in November 1996, when she was pregnant with Prince, and Paris followed in 1998. They divorced in 2000 and she gave up custody for a settlement. At the 2005 trial, called as a prosecution witness, she defended Michael instead.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor. The film star became one of his closest friends. She called him the true king of pop, rock and soul, married her last husband at Neverland in 1991, flew him out of the United States when he collapsed into painkiller addiction in 1993, and by his own account spoon fed him when he would not eat.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. His youngest sister grew into a superstar in her own right. They recorded Scream together in 1995 as a defiant reply to the press. Janet later said the family had tried to stage an intervention about his drug use in 2007 and were turned away. After his death she paid tribute to him by performing Scream at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Prince. The two biggest Black stars of the eighties were quiet rivals. Michael wanted Prince to sing Bad with him, and Prince said no. Prince also later turned down a Simpsons sequel to Michael's episode. The rivalry lasted. When Michael planned his London comeback in 2009, AEG's Randy Phillips said the original show count was picked so Michael would play ten more nights than Prince had.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Jackson and Tommy Mottola. Mottola, the head of Sony Music, had worked with Michael since Dangerous. When Invincible underperformed and Sony stopped promoting it, Michael publicly called him a racist who exploited Black artists, at a 2002 rally with Al Sharpton. Sony called the claims ludicrous, spiteful and hurtful, and the relationship between Michael and his label never recovered.[1] [2]

Michael Jackson and John Branca. Michael hired the young lawyer in 1979 and together they negotiated record royalty rates and the purchase of the Beatles catalogue. Michael fired him in 2003, suspicious about money, but rehired him on the seventeenth of June 2009, eight days before he died. Branca became co executor of the estate, and his later handling of it, including his depiction in the 2026 biopic, was challenged by Paris Jackson in court.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rare facts about Michael Jackson

• Ben, Michael's first solo number one, was the theme to a horror film about a killer rat, and was written for Donny Osmond. The songwriters offered Ben to Donny Osmond, but he was on tour, so it went to Michael. The song topped the American chart in 1972, won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar.[1]
• Rock with You was first offered to Karen Carpenter, who turned it down. Rod Temperton's song was pitched to Karen Carpenter while she was making her solo album. She passed, and Michael took it to number one for four weeks in 1980.[1]
• Rod Temperton, who wrote Thriller, once worked as a fish filleter in Grimsby. Before joining the band Heatwave, the Lincolnshire born songwriter gutted fish at a frozen food plant in Grimsby. He went on to write Thriller, Rock with You and Off the Wall.[1]
• Thriller was nearly called Starlight or Midnight Man. Rod Temperton tried both titles before settling on Thriller, because he thought the word had merchandising potential. He wrote Vincent Price's spoken passage in a taxi on the way to the studio, and Price finished it in two takes.[1]
• Engineer Bruce Swedien mixed Billie Jean ninety one times, then used the second mix. Swedien normally mixed a song once. On Billie Jean the mixes kept getting worse, until Quincy Jones told him to go back to the second one, which became the released version.[1] [2]
• Michael said he was so lost in Billie Jean while driving that he did not notice his car was on fire. He said a passing motorcyclist had to tell him that his car was burning, because he had been completely absorbed in the song playing in his head.[1]
• Quincy Jones wanted to rename Billie Jean, fearing people would think it was about Billie Jean King. Jones suggested the title Not My Lover. Michael refused, and also asked for a co production credit on the song, which Jones denied him. The two fell out for several days.[1]
• Eddie Van Halen played the Beat It solo for free and first thought the call from Quincy Jones was a prank. Van Halen recorded two takes of the solo as a favour. His band and manager thought he was a fool not to be paid, but he said he knew exactly what he was doing.[1]
• The opening notes of Beat It came straight from a demonstration record for the Synclavier synthesiser. The famous intro is taken note for note from a 1981 demo LP called The Incredible Sounds of Synclavier II, sold by the instrument's makers.[1]
• Tito Jackson recorded a guitar solo for Beat It, which was scrapped for Eddie Van Halen's. Michael's older brother originally contributed the solo on the song, but it was replaced when Van Halen was brought in.[1]
• The day after Motown 25 aired, Fred Astaire phoned Michael to congratulate him. Another hero, Sammy Davis Junior, admired Michael's black sequined jacket from the show and was later given it as a present.[1]
• A New Jersey high school banned pupils from wearing a single white glove. After Motown 25, imitation got so out of hand that Bound Brook High School forbade the one glove look, despite protests from students.[1]
• The white suit on the Thriller cover belonged to the photographer, Dick Zimmerman. The gatefold shows a tiger cub at Michael's leg. Zimmerman said Michael kept it away from his face in case it scratched him.[1]
• A CBS boss reportedly asked who would want a single about monsters. Epic saw the title track Thriller as a novelty song. Michael pushed for its release in late 1983, backed by John Landis's film, and it went top five.[1]
• The Smooth Criminal chorus was inspired by Resusci Anne, the dummy used for CPR training. Trainees practising resuscitation on the dummy are taught to call out to Annie and ask if she is all right, and Michael turned that into the song's refrain.[1]
• Michael held a US patent for the shoe that made his impossible forward lean possible. For Smooth Criminal on stage, he and designers created a shoe that hooked into the floor, letting dancers lean far past their centre of gravity. It was granted US patent number 5,255,452.[1] [2]
• Earth Song was written in a Vienna hotel room in 1988 during the Bad tour. Years later, bassist Guy Pratt said Michael was recovering from plastic surgery during the session and hid under the mixing desk, passing instructions through an assistant who pretended he was not there.[1]
• The rap on Black or White was performed, uncredited, by co producer Bill Bottrell. Bottrell said Michael's first rough vocal, sung in 1989, was never replaced during eighteen months of work, and is the one you hear on the record.[1]
• Stephen King co wrote Michael's horror short film Ghosts. Directed by the effects wizard Stan Winston, Ghosts ran over thirty eight minutes and held the record for the longest music video until 2013. Michael played five roles, including the town mayor.[1] [2]
• Captain EO, his seventeen minute Disney film, cost around thirty million dollars. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by George Lucas, it was one of the first 4D films, with lasers and smoke in the theatre. At the time it was the most expensive film ever made per minute.[1]
• On The Simpsons, Michael was credited as John Jay Smith, and a soundalike did his singing. He voiced the character Leon Kompowsky in 1991, but record contract terms meant Kipp Lennon sang the songs. Michael did write the episode's song Happy Birthday Lisa.[1]
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis commissioned Michael's autobiography and wrote its foreword. As an editor at Doubleday, she paid a three hundred thousand dollar advance for Moonwalk. She did not like putting her name on books, but agreed to write three paragraphs.[1]
• Bubbles the chimpanzee was bred at a primate research facility in Texas. He slept in a crib in Michael's bedroom at Neverland, had his own agent, and in 1987 drank tea with the mayor of Osaka. Since 2005 he has lived at a great ape sanctuary in Florida.[1] [2]
• Michael recorded demos with Freddie Mercury that were not released until 2014. The pair worked on songs including There Must Be More to Life Than This in the early eighties. Queen finally released it with Michael's vocal on the compilation Queen Forever.[1] [2]
• Michael could not read or write music, and sang every part of his songs into a tape recorder. Engineer Rob Hoffman recalled him singing every note of every guitar chord to a session player, one by one, after writing a song overnight.[1] [2]
• He is the only soloist to win Grammys for pop, rock and R&B vocal performances. He won the pop vocal award for Thriller, the rock vocal award for Beat It, and the R&B vocal award for both Billie Jean and Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough.[1]
• A village chief in Ivory Coast crowned him King Sani in 1992. In the village of Krindjabo he signed documents formalising his title and sat on a golden throne during ceremonial dances. On the same trip, huge crowds met him in Gabon.[1]
• His 1993 Super Bowl show was the first halftime show watched by more people than the game. The NFL booked him to stop viewers switching over at halftime. About one hundred and thirty three million watched, and Dangerous jumped ninety places on the album chart.[1]
• Thriller was the first music video chosen for America's National Film Registry. In December 2009, the Library of Congress picked the John Landis film as a work of enduring importance to American culture, calling it the most famous music video of all time.[1] [2]
• World Vitiligo Day falls on the twenty fifth of June, the anniversary of Michael's death. The date was chosen to raise awareness of the skin condition he lived with. His autopsy confirmed he had vitiligo, answering years of claims that he bleached his skin by choice.[1] [2]
• In May 2026, Billie Jean became the number one song in the world, forty three years after its release. Boosted by the biopic Michael, it topped Billboard's Global 200 in its hundred and forty fourth week on the chart, the longest climb to number one in that chart's history.[1] [2]
• Keyboardist Greg Phillinganes says he wrote the bridge of Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough. Phillinganes said they agreed he would get ten percent of the song, which was then treated as an arrangement instead. Jones backed his claim, and some pressings credit him.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.