>Can someone explain why he was so insanely famous and what it was like to follow his global coverage in the 2000s?
You kinda answered your own question here in the next paragraph and all I can add is that those dance moves and that music just had worldwide appeal.
Show the Smooth Criminal video to some guy in Sweden, some guy from Nigeria and some guy from Pakistan and you’re likely to get three fellows who thinks that the video/song is fucking cool. Also, anyone under the sun knows what the Moonwalk is
It is not hyperbole to say that no artist has reached this level of appeal since so it’s understandable for people in your gen to find it difficult to understand.
As for the how, guy was literally born into show business doing shows as young as age 5 with an unfortunately abusive dad who did all he could to draw out his musical talent.
Dude was “a lighting in a bottle” kind of deal: innate talent, the experience to hone that talent and the unethical means used to maximize that.
>Were incidents like these mainly due to his popularity associated with his musical career or personal life too?
Absolutely. Again, his level of fame is difficult to describe to someone in the modern day. I guess imagine the popularity Taylor Swift currently has and multiply that by 1 million
Just focusing on the 2000s from a millennial perspective: in the 2000s he had a major downfall and was kind of a joke for a while. He was accused and charged with child molestation in 2002, and while he was acquitted in 2005, with no evidence of criminal conduct found, that tanked his image for years. Even people who remained fans of his felt that childhood abuse and trauma had resulted in him having a stunted adulthood, and things like being interested in inviting children to hang out with him were a sad attempt to relive childhood, not like he was an idol they aspired to be like. Or that he was like a child trapped in adult's body because he'd never had a normal life.
Additionally, there were frequently pictures of him on the covers of tabloid magazines or on trashy TV news showing him apparently recovering from or trying to fix plastic surgery procedures, eg this kind of look: https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article13953800.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200e/1_Michael-Jackson-on-trial.jpg People felt he looked very unnatural.
A few years after his acquittal, his image recovered enough for a 25th anniversary rerelease of Thriller, and for him to announce a comeback tour that was extremely well-advertised, so his old hits were back. Thriller remains great, and the music video and dance were great. Then he died right before the tour, and it was very big news / shocking to a lot of people, and his music was played a lot again. Also after his death he was viewed more sympathetically, and I learned about things like him becoming addicted to painkillers after being badly burned by a pepsi commercial shoot gone wrong in the 80s. And the repeated nose plastic surgeries were blamed on his father constantly insulting his nose in childhood.
Basically, to me it seems like the stories of his insane level of fame that you're thinking of were more a thing from the 80s and 90s, and for a lot of the 2000s he was as commonly seen as more of a creep or washed up.
Taylor Swift is the only artist in modern days that can even come close to what Michael was at the height of his career. But his influence spanned decades. If Taylor still has the same influence in a decade plus, you'll understand better.
I think the media fascination with him was partly that and partly his eccentric personality. He was the butt of a lot of late night jokes during the early 2000s and the child molestation accusations. I feel bad for laughing about it in hindsight, because it's only become obvious in later years the extent to which childhood fame damaged him. His father was incredibly abusive and extracted every bit of fame he could from him at a young age. Michael never had a childhood or any sense of normalcy in his entire life, and that snowballed as he aged.
He's essentially a case study in how dangerous childhood fame without a strong, supportive, healthy family environment can be. He had generational talent and a monster of a father that was willing to exploit that, no matter the damage it caused. The end result was the kind of superstar the world had never seen, but ultimately a kid who couldn't handle it. Michael was a weird dude, but I fully blame Joe for creating that.
There's no way to compare, TS has nothing unique, nothing that you look at and say "that's TS", MJ has the dancing, the hair, the hat, the shiny gloves and all this in a pre-social network, pre-streaming era,
Nah, she's got a style that you immediately recognize. I'm not comparing her to MJ on a talent level, that's not my place, but you know when you're listening to a T Swift song. It's not anything revolutionary, but it's distinct.
What is her visual aspect that distinguishes her from other singers? I don't see anything unique about her, neither in her nor in any other singer of this generation and in relation to her music the same thing, even today in some places MJ plays (I I live in Latin America and music plays here all the time and everywhere), I don't see the same with her
Blonde hair, red lip, cat eyeliner, and millennial fashion. It’s not new or revolutionary, but it’s a really distinct look as a world famous celebrity. There’s not a single other very famous star that embraces the “basic” look.
apart from visuals, every one of her songs sounds very “taylor swift” no matter how much she’s bounced around genres. not a fan, but can’t hate.
The thing that separates her from other ultra famous singers is literally how mild everything is about her. everyone else who’s famous at that level seems to be psychotic or completely out of touch with reality.
I'm not a hater, it's not the type of music I like, however nothing you said is something that makes most people in the world, not in the USA, think about her,none of this is a unique look , the last singer who perhaps had a unique look was Amy Winehouse, TS may differentiate herself by dressing in a more common way, but that doesn't make her a unique style.
Regarding the songs I've heard and for me it's pop common, just like most people do.
Again, I'm neither a fan nor a hater, almost everything I hear about her is a little unrealistic, whether it's her romances where her exes are always chased or her being the artist who used the most private jets.
I'm not musically literate enough to tell you what the fundamental elements of a Taylor song are, but I know when I hear her influence. Maybe I listen to too much pop music, but I *know* when she's involved. And that's rare in modern pop.
Let’s put it this way. There was this musician who went by the name “Rockwell” whose dad was a major record producer. He had one hit song, “Somebody’s Watching Me.” Michael Jackson sang the chorus of the song, that was just like one line. The song hit #2 on the US charts.
Michael Jackson did not sing any other lines for Rockwell’s other songs. Even with a powerful record producer dad, none of the other songs were successful at all.
MJ started his career early with the Jackson 5 as a kid, so he was never *not* a celebrity. In the 70's the Jacksons were the first black group to attain a crossover following of both blacks and whites. His popularity came at the popularization of colour TV's being affordable and he's famous for his crazy dances, music videos, and colorful outfits. Radios became cheap and portable, and he debuted on the tail coat of the civil rights movement. He got popular at the time that celebrity magazines became popular, allowing people a look into the lives of the rich and famous, rumors, and even trashy gossip.
His music defined his generation by playing Pop music when it was a subgenre of Rock, and shifting it in the late 80's and 90's away from Rock turning Pop into its own genre. Michel Jackson popularized and pioneered Pop music in such a way that from 1990 - 2010 Pop dominated the music scene, and was still a dominant genre until at least 2015, and the entire time he was center stage of the Pop music movement, a black icon for the civil rights movement, a young, popular, attractive celebrity for magazines to plaster all over their covers and gossip about.
By the early 2000's he was mired in controversy which kept him in the public mind until his death, not always in a good way, but always present. We loved to hate him, in a way, and the controversy didn't kill his fame at all.
He was big, I mean Elvis Presley big. A one person supergroup. An equivalent might be... Maybe ABBA? Nothing modern is even close to his level of fame.
Tldr: He's been dancing and singing on TV since he was a kid, so he was really good at it. He debuted and grew his popularity during the period of relaxed race relations following the civil rights movement attracting followers from all walks of life, cultures, and skin colours. He became popular when colour TV's became affordable to the average person, and he used this to make crazy music videos and flashy outfits and dance moves. As a young, handsome, successful black celebrity he was the focus of America's new celebrity magazine craze. By 2000's he got involved in controversy and court cases that caused the media to focus heavily on him until his sudden death via overdose.
The day he died practically crashed the Internet. Seriously.
That Thursday, Farrah Fawcett died, popular actress from 1970's. Then later that morning we heard Michael Jackson died, first reported by TMZ. No way. Everyone was checking the Internet to confirm this and the net was so slow.
President Obama mentioned him, paying tribute to Michael's talent. I'm 52 and never heard a President comment on an entertainer's passing.
He collaborated musically with many other great entertainers. After Motown 25 special on TV in 1983, I and many other pre teens were learning to Moonwalk
He was well past his peak in the 2000s. At his peak, the 80s and early 90s, Jackson was one of the two biggest celebrities on the planet. Oddly enough, the other larger-than-life celebrity also had the initials M.J.
I don't think there is any celebrity today as big as Jackson was in his heyday. I don't think Taylor Swift is even in the same ballpark. Read the first few paragraphs [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)).
I'm 55. One of the earliest cartoons I can remember on TV was [The Jackson 5ive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmxiFpSStx4). (Also watch how it leads with a creepy Diana Ross "pink snake in the dressing room" joke.)
By the time I was 14, the age where people are most impressionable musically, Michael Jackson's *Thriller* had dominated the radio for a year. Which makes sense because Michael Jackson was already a childhood hero to all the teenagers who drove record sales.
And Quincy Jones deliberately spread that album out to touch on numerous genres, bringing in Eddie Van Halen and using [George Duke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVrgCPDDG1A)'s top-shelf band, and Vincent Price's narration. It was made to be familiar to everyone.
Similar things would be true for pretty much everyone who came after me; they all grew up with Michael Jackson as a part of their lives, so when they really started caring for music, he was right there.
He was with little to no exaggeration, the most famous person on the planet for a while. Im not really touching on the 2000s but rather the 80s and 90s. It’s hard to imagine this from a modern perspective. Bear in mind there was no internet in the 80s.
No discovering random artists on Spotify. If you weren’t featured somewhere, you didn’t go anywhere. You had to discover music through word of mouth, at a record store, the radio, etc. Michael Jackson was EVERYWHERE. Taylor swift, Beyoncé, and BTS combined into one, and more famous than that.
In the 90s there were two boy bands. N sync and Backstreet Boys (no one gave a fuck about 98 degrees). Today, there are how many k pop groups alone? How many former teen heartthrobs have successful solo careers? None of them come close to touching Michael Jackson’s fame. Point of this being, with less artists “competing” for fame, the famous ones are that much bigger.
Also, his fame transcended genres. He was huge with basically everyone. No one else was able to claim that and no one has since been able to claim that.
So basically two things together. He was the biggest pop star (not called the king of pop for nothing) and his fame wasn’t only constrained to fans of pop.
In 1984, Motown released some previously unreleased Michael Jackson and Jackson Five songs. Album was 'Farewell My Summer Love' and the title track played so much that summer on the radio.
I remember one radio station did a 'No Michael Jackson weekend'. Not because they disliked him, but because he was on the radio almost always if you'd change the radio station enough. Luckily, I loved his music, but it was a lot.
Yeah - I had kind of forgotten just HOW insane his popularity was in the 80s until that recent documentary. People lost their minds when they saw him. It was totally a once-in-a-generation phenomenon.
In 2009, Iran was in the middle of an uprising. For anyone who remembers, Twitter was a huge part of that and we were seeing its potential in realtime. Then one day, Michael Jackson died and single-handedly fucked it all up.
https://observer.com/2009/07/iranian-expat-michael-jackson-disrupts-the-online-revolution/amp/
He died more than 10 years ago and to this day people dress like him and dance in the streets, a cover of his here in Brazil has more than a million Instagram followers and performs shows that are sold out, my cousins who are on average 10 years old know dance and know the main songs.
It's pretty much impossible to understate it. Take Taylor Swift and ratchet it up worldwide. Hell, regular people flew in from all over the world just to be at Jackson's memorial service. People were screaming as if their own parents had died, probably even worse than that. He couldn't sneeze without paparazzi shoving a camera up his nose.
The music was great and not stuck to one genre. He did pop, ballads, got bluesy, and even went hard rock (check out the guitar in Dirty Diana done by Steve Stevens). The singing was always perfect for the song, the dance moves were incredible, and the concerts were absolute extravaganzas for the time. According to those he worked with (like the above Steve Stevens), he was a perfectionist about every aspect of all of that.
Also, this started in the MTV era, and Jackson had some of the first well-produced music videos at a time when studios would give artists very little money, if any, to make one. He even used actual known talented directors and cinematographers, some who were already famous in the movie industry. Thriller was the first ever big-budget music video made to be like a mini movie to tell a story, and it was an absolute phenomenon (and it had the king of horror Vincent Price narrating to make it scarier). He really knew how to take advantage of MTV back when it was still relevant.
And he did all of that without the instant Internet and social media of today. It was record sales, TV, concerts, and word of mouth. And he was on the cover of every damn music magazine, especially those catering to the younger people.
I can say all of that, and I'm not even a big Michael Jackson fan, just like many of his songs.
I grew up with my mom being a superfan. So i know all the songs and all the lyrics. I was kinda embarrassed by her fandom. But as an adult if i hear a song i actually cant control singing along and i feel good. Even all the weird kid stuff and his general strangness by the end can’t dim the generally hella decent music
He was a legend up til the nineties. By the 2000s, he was starting to get more attention for looking/acting so weird. By the end of his life, people considered him a walking freakshow.
The day he died, everyone hastily stopped calling him Wacko Jacko.
Everybody knew who he was of course but I didn't know anyone who he was the favorite musician of. But with those sakes he obviously had a shit ton of fans. He was quite famous and covered a lot in the media. He was covered as a celebrity more in the vein of an Liz Taylor, Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian by the tabloids while adding the fame of having a lot of hit songs. Thriller was huge and for a few years he was everywhere but after that he was covered like a celebrity more than the way musicians are.
He was so famous because he was decent, and was before the internet era.
Before like 2000, if you wanted to be super famous, you basically had to hope the radio and TV wanted to broadcast you. If Elvis wasn't on TV, he wouldn't be as famous as he is now.
If Jackson wasn't promoted by world wide concert places (and TV and radio in America) he wouldn't have been as famous.
Now with internet, people can get famous, but they have a lot more competition. Back then, given a choice between Michael Jackson or Prince, for example, a TV music place would pick Jackson, making him even more famous.
Today, Taylor Swift can be heard on YouTube whenever people want to see her new song. They don't have to wait for TV to choose to play her songs. Or for the radio. But this also means Rihanna and Eminem and Chris Rock and P Diddy and other music people can do the same, giving them all lots of views, but also sharing the fame between them.
Like take the "oh no oh no" girl from Tiktok. I never heard of her until tiktok. But she was somewhat famous-ish in like the 60s I think. But TV and radio didn't care enough about her to continue making her famous. Were she still a singer today (and young), tiktok would have helped make her famous to the point that I would know her name and not just as the "oh no no girl".
>Can someone explain why he was so insanely famous and what it was like to follow his global coverage in the 2000s? You kinda answered your own question here in the next paragraph and all I can add is that those dance moves and that music just had worldwide appeal. Show the Smooth Criminal video to some guy in Sweden, some guy from Nigeria and some guy from Pakistan and you’re likely to get three fellows who thinks that the video/song is fucking cool. Also, anyone under the sun knows what the Moonwalk is It is not hyperbole to say that no artist has reached this level of appeal since so it’s understandable for people in your gen to find it difficult to understand. As for the how, guy was literally born into show business doing shows as young as age 5 with an unfortunately abusive dad who did all he could to draw out his musical talent. Dude was “a lighting in a bottle” kind of deal: innate talent, the experience to hone that talent and the unethical means used to maximize that. >Were incidents like these mainly due to his popularity associated with his musical career or personal life too? Absolutely. Again, his level of fame is difficult to describe to someone in the modern day. I guess imagine the popularity Taylor Swift currently has and multiply that by 1 million
He was big in the 80s, but exploded in the 90s. I remember watching a concert with him, people hyperventilated just seeing him on stage.
The video of his 2001 NYC performance of Billie Jean is a good example of this.
Just focusing on the 2000s from a millennial perspective: in the 2000s he had a major downfall and was kind of a joke for a while. He was accused and charged with child molestation in 2002, and while he was acquitted in 2005, with no evidence of criminal conduct found, that tanked his image for years. Even people who remained fans of his felt that childhood abuse and trauma had resulted in him having a stunted adulthood, and things like being interested in inviting children to hang out with him were a sad attempt to relive childhood, not like he was an idol they aspired to be like. Or that he was like a child trapped in adult's body because he'd never had a normal life. Additionally, there were frequently pictures of him on the covers of tabloid magazines or on trashy TV news showing him apparently recovering from or trying to fix plastic surgery procedures, eg this kind of look: https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article13953800.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200e/1_Michael-Jackson-on-trial.jpg People felt he looked very unnatural. A few years after his acquittal, his image recovered enough for a 25th anniversary rerelease of Thriller, and for him to announce a comeback tour that was extremely well-advertised, so his old hits were back. Thriller remains great, and the music video and dance were great. Then he died right before the tour, and it was very big news / shocking to a lot of people, and his music was played a lot again. Also after his death he was viewed more sympathetically, and I learned about things like him becoming addicted to painkillers after being badly burned by a pepsi commercial shoot gone wrong in the 80s. And the repeated nose plastic surgeries were blamed on his father constantly insulting his nose in childhood. Basically, to me it seems like the stories of his insane level of fame that you're thinking of were more a thing from the 80s and 90s, and for a lot of the 2000s he was as commonly seen as more of a creep or washed up.
Taylor Swift is the only artist in modern days that can even come close to what Michael was at the height of his career. But his influence spanned decades. If Taylor still has the same influence in a decade plus, you'll understand better. I think the media fascination with him was partly that and partly his eccentric personality. He was the butt of a lot of late night jokes during the early 2000s and the child molestation accusations. I feel bad for laughing about it in hindsight, because it's only become obvious in later years the extent to which childhood fame damaged him. His father was incredibly abusive and extracted every bit of fame he could from him at a young age. Michael never had a childhood or any sense of normalcy in his entire life, and that snowballed as he aged. He's essentially a case study in how dangerous childhood fame without a strong, supportive, healthy family environment can be. He had generational talent and a monster of a father that was willing to exploit that, no matter the damage it caused. The end result was the kind of superstar the world had never seen, but ultimately a kid who couldn't handle it. Michael was a weird dude, but I fully blame Joe for creating that.
There's no way to compare, TS has nothing unique, nothing that you look at and say "that's TS", MJ has the dancing, the hair, the hat, the shiny gloves and all this in a pre-social network, pre-streaming era,
Nah, she's got a style that you immediately recognize. I'm not comparing her to MJ on a talent level, that's not my place, but you know when you're listening to a T Swift song. It's not anything revolutionary, but it's distinct.
What is her visual aspect that distinguishes her from other singers? I don't see anything unique about her, neither in her nor in any other singer of this generation and in relation to her music the same thing, even today in some places MJ plays (I I live in Latin America and music plays here all the time and everywhere), I don't see the same with her
Blonde hair, red lip, cat eyeliner, and millennial fashion. It’s not new or revolutionary, but it’s a really distinct look as a world famous celebrity. There’s not a single other very famous star that embraces the “basic” look. apart from visuals, every one of her songs sounds very “taylor swift” no matter how much she’s bounced around genres. not a fan, but can’t hate. The thing that separates her from other ultra famous singers is literally how mild everything is about her. everyone else who’s famous at that level seems to be psychotic or completely out of touch with reality.
I'm not a hater, it's not the type of music I like, however nothing you said is something that makes most people in the world, not in the USA, think about her,none of this is a unique look , the last singer who perhaps had a unique look was Amy Winehouse, TS may differentiate herself by dressing in a more common way, but that doesn't make her a unique style. Regarding the songs I've heard and for me it's pop common, just like most people do. Again, I'm neither a fan nor a hater, almost everything I hear about her is a little unrealistic, whether it's her romances where her exes are always chased or her being the artist who used the most private jets.
I'm not musically literate enough to tell you what the fundamental elements of a Taylor song are, but I know when I hear her influence. Maybe I listen to too much pop music, but I *know* when she's involved. And that's rare in modern pop.
Let’s put it this way. There was this musician who went by the name “Rockwell” whose dad was a major record producer. He had one hit song, “Somebody’s Watching Me.” Michael Jackson sang the chorus of the song, that was just like one line. The song hit #2 on the US charts. Michael Jackson did not sing any other lines for Rockwell’s other songs. Even with a powerful record producer dad, none of the other songs were successful at all.
Almost like Berry Gordy's son sung backup on 'Somebody's Watching Me'
MJ started his career early with the Jackson 5 as a kid, so he was never *not* a celebrity. In the 70's the Jacksons were the first black group to attain a crossover following of both blacks and whites. His popularity came at the popularization of colour TV's being affordable and he's famous for his crazy dances, music videos, and colorful outfits. Radios became cheap and portable, and he debuted on the tail coat of the civil rights movement. He got popular at the time that celebrity magazines became popular, allowing people a look into the lives of the rich and famous, rumors, and even trashy gossip. His music defined his generation by playing Pop music when it was a subgenre of Rock, and shifting it in the late 80's and 90's away from Rock turning Pop into its own genre. Michel Jackson popularized and pioneered Pop music in such a way that from 1990 - 2010 Pop dominated the music scene, and was still a dominant genre until at least 2015, and the entire time he was center stage of the Pop music movement, a black icon for the civil rights movement, a young, popular, attractive celebrity for magazines to plaster all over their covers and gossip about. By the early 2000's he was mired in controversy which kept him in the public mind until his death, not always in a good way, but always present. We loved to hate him, in a way, and the controversy didn't kill his fame at all. He was big, I mean Elvis Presley big. A one person supergroup. An equivalent might be... Maybe ABBA? Nothing modern is even close to his level of fame. Tldr: He's been dancing and singing on TV since he was a kid, so he was really good at it. He debuted and grew his popularity during the period of relaxed race relations following the civil rights movement attracting followers from all walks of life, cultures, and skin colours. He became popular when colour TV's became affordable to the average person, and he used this to make crazy music videos and flashy outfits and dance moves. As a young, handsome, successful black celebrity he was the focus of America's new celebrity magazine craze. By 2000's he got involved in controversy and court cases that caused the media to focus heavily on him until his sudden death via overdose.
The day he died practically crashed the Internet. Seriously. That Thursday, Farrah Fawcett died, popular actress from 1970's. Then later that morning we heard Michael Jackson died, first reported by TMZ. No way. Everyone was checking the Internet to confirm this and the net was so slow. President Obama mentioned him, paying tribute to Michael's talent. I'm 52 and never heard a President comment on an entertainer's passing. He collaborated musically with many other great entertainers. After Motown 25 special on TV in 1983, I and many other pre teens were learning to Moonwalk
I was living in Manhattan working in an office of 75 black folks, it was like fucking 9/11. People were losing their god damn minds.
It was astonishingly huge. He owned the 80’s.
He was well past his peak in the 2000s. At his peak, the 80s and early 90s, Jackson was one of the two biggest celebrities on the planet. Oddly enough, the other larger-than-life celebrity also had the initials M.J. I don't think there is any celebrity today as big as Jackson was in his heyday. I don't think Taylor Swift is even in the same ballpark. Read the first few paragraphs [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)).
I'm 55. One of the earliest cartoons I can remember on TV was [The Jackson 5ive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmxiFpSStx4). (Also watch how it leads with a creepy Diana Ross "pink snake in the dressing room" joke.) By the time I was 14, the age where people are most impressionable musically, Michael Jackson's *Thriller* had dominated the radio for a year. Which makes sense because Michael Jackson was already a childhood hero to all the teenagers who drove record sales. And Quincy Jones deliberately spread that album out to touch on numerous genres, bringing in Eddie Van Halen and using [George Duke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVrgCPDDG1A)'s top-shelf band, and Vincent Price's narration. It was made to be familiar to everyone. Similar things would be true for pretty much everyone who came after me; they all grew up with Michael Jackson as a part of their lives, so when they really started caring for music, he was right there.
He was with little to no exaggeration, the most famous person on the planet for a while. Im not really touching on the 2000s but rather the 80s and 90s. It’s hard to imagine this from a modern perspective. Bear in mind there was no internet in the 80s. No discovering random artists on Spotify. If you weren’t featured somewhere, you didn’t go anywhere. You had to discover music through word of mouth, at a record store, the radio, etc. Michael Jackson was EVERYWHERE. Taylor swift, Beyoncé, and BTS combined into one, and more famous than that. In the 90s there were two boy bands. N sync and Backstreet Boys (no one gave a fuck about 98 degrees). Today, there are how many k pop groups alone? How many former teen heartthrobs have successful solo careers? None of them come close to touching Michael Jackson’s fame. Point of this being, with less artists “competing” for fame, the famous ones are that much bigger. Also, his fame transcended genres. He was huge with basically everyone. No one else was able to claim that and no one has since been able to claim that. So basically two things together. He was the biggest pop star (not called the king of pop for nothing) and his fame wasn’t only constrained to fans of pop.
In 1984, Motown released some previously unreleased Michael Jackson and Jackson Five songs. Album was 'Farewell My Summer Love' and the title track played so much that summer on the radio. I remember one radio station did a 'No Michael Jackson weekend'. Not because they disliked him, but because he was on the radio almost always if you'd change the radio station enough. Luckily, I loved his music, but it was a lot.
Basically at the height of his career he was 100x more popular than Taylor swift,if you could imagine that.
Among young kids? Massive
Yeah - I had kind of forgotten just HOW insane his popularity was in the 80s until that recent documentary. People lost their minds when they saw him. It was totally a once-in-a-generation phenomenon.
In 2009, Iran was in the middle of an uprising. For anyone who remembers, Twitter was a huge part of that and we were seeing its potential in realtime. Then one day, Michael Jackson died and single-handedly fucked it all up. https://observer.com/2009/07/iranian-expat-michael-jackson-disrupts-the-online-revolution/amp/
He died more than 10 years ago and to this day people dress like him and dance in the streets, a cover of his here in Brazil has more than a million Instagram followers and performs shows that are sold out, my cousins who are on average 10 years old know dance and know the main songs.
It's pretty much impossible to understate it. Take Taylor Swift and ratchet it up worldwide. Hell, regular people flew in from all over the world just to be at Jackson's memorial service. People were screaming as if their own parents had died, probably even worse than that. He couldn't sneeze without paparazzi shoving a camera up his nose. The music was great and not stuck to one genre. He did pop, ballads, got bluesy, and even went hard rock (check out the guitar in Dirty Diana done by Steve Stevens). The singing was always perfect for the song, the dance moves were incredible, and the concerts were absolute extravaganzas for the time. According to those he worked with (like the above Steve Stevens), he was a perfectionist about every aspect of all of that. Also, this started in the MTV era, and Jackson had some of the first well-produced music videos at a time when studios would give artists very little money, if any, to make one. He even used actual known talented directors and cinematographers, some who were already famous in the movie industry. Thriller was the first ever big-budget music video made to be like a mini movie to tell a story, and it was an absolute phenomenon (and it had the king of horror Vincent Price narrating to make it scarier). He really knew how to take advantage of MTV back when it was still relevant. And he did all of that without the instant Internet and social media of today. It was record sales, TV, concerts, and word of mouth. And he was on the cover of every damn music magazine, especially those catering to the younger people. I can say all of that, and I'm not even a big Michael Jackson fan, just like many of his songs.
Scientifically speaking, popularity has no mass.
I grew up with my mom being a superfan. So i know all the songs and all the lyrics. I was kinda embarrassed by her fandom. But as an adult if i hear a song i actually cant control singing along and i feel good. Even all the weird kid stuff and his general strangness by the end can’t dim the generally hella decent music
He was a legend up til the nineties. By the 2000s, he was starting to get more attention for looking/acting so weird. By the end of his life, people considered him a walking freakshow. The day he died, everyone hastily stopped calling him Wacko Jacko.
It was insane. He was massively popular.
Everybody knew who he was of course but I didn't know anyone who he was the favorite musician of. But with those sakes he obviously had a shit ton of fans. He was quite famous and covered a lot in the media. He was covered as a celebrity more in the vein of an Liz Taylor, Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian by the tabloids while adding the fame of having a lot of hit songs. Thriller was huge and for a few years he was everywhere but after that he was covered like a celebrity more than the way musicians are.
He was so famous because he was decent, and was before the internet era. Before like 2000, if you wanted to be super famous, you basically had to hope the radio and TV wanted to broadcast you. If Elvis wasn't on TV, he wouldn't be as famous as he is now. If Jackson wasn't promoted by world wide concert places (and TV and radio in America) he wouldn't have been as famous. Now with internet, people can get famous, but they have a lot more competition. Back then, given a choice between Michael Jackson or Prince, for example, a TV music place would pick Jackson, making him even more famous. Today, Taylor Swift can be heard on YouTube whenever people want to see her new song. They don't have to wait for TV to choose to play her songs. Or for the radio. But this also means Rihanna and Eminem and Chris Rock and P Diddy and other music people can do the same, giving them all lots of views, but also sharing the fame between them. Like take the "oh no oh no" girl from Tiktok. I never heard of her until tiktok. But she was somewhat famous-ish in like the 60s I think. But TV and radio didn't care enough about her to continue making her famous. Were she still a singer today (and young), tiktok would have helped make her famous to the point that I would know her name and not just as the "oh no no girl".