The dance move that broke the world's neck. Michael Jackson -- did not just make pop music. He made pop music into a global religion with a single choreographed move.
The moonwalk was a trick of the feet. The man behind it was a force of nature that reshaped the entire music industry around his will. Before Michael, pop stars sang. After Michael, they had to dance, perform, produce, and command the world.
The cost of that force was a childhood spent entirely in the spotlight. Jackson started with The Jackson 5 as a child prodigy, his voice unnaturally powerful and soulful for a boy his age. Motown worked the group like a machine. Michael was the engine that made it run. He went solo in the 1970s and found his artistic partner in Quincy Jones, together making "Off the Wall" in 1979 and then "Thriller 0:30" in 1982. The latter sold more copies than any album in history. The pressure to top it never stopped. His appearance changed over the years in ways that fascinated and troubled the public. His relationship with his family fractured under the weight of fame. His finances became a maze of debt masked by the appearance of success. The cost of being the King of Pop was everything else in his life.
"Billie Jean 0:30" is the peak -- a song built on a bassline and a drum machine and a vocal performance that walks the line between paranoia and pride. The video broke racial barriers on MTV, forcing the channel to play Black artists. The performance on Motown 25 in 1983 introduced the moonwalk to the world and changed what a live TV performance could be. Jackson followed with "Beat It 0:30," "Thriller," "Bad 0:30" -- each video a short film, each tour a spectacle that redefined stadium entertainment.
He wrote, produced, choreographed, and directed his own image with obsessive precision. He won 13 Grammys. He sold hundreds of millions of records. He became the most famous human being on the planet, recognized in every country on earth.
Michael Jackson cost himself his privacy, his health, and his relationship with reality. The controversies that surrounded the last decades of his life made him as reviled as he was beloved, splitting public opinion in ways few artists have experienced. His death in 2009 left a complicated legacy -- the music undeniable, the man unknowable. But the records remain. "Billie Jean" still hits as hard as it did in 1983. The moonwalk still mesmerizes. The pop world still orbits around the gravity he created. He paid the highest price. He left the biggest footprint. Nobody has filled it since.
Michael Jackson was profiled in the documentary, This Is It, in 2009.
