He was the king of pop and a troubled soul; a pop-culture icon who recorded the top-selling album of all time before allegations of sexual misconduct tarnished his reputation forever.
Michael Jackson, perhaps the biggest music star of the past century, died Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles. He was 50.
Jackson was rushed to UCLA Medical Center after he was found unconscious in the house he was renting while rehearsing for a string of 50 sold-out concerts in London.
It's simply not possible to overstate Jackson's impact on popular culture in the 1980s. His 1982 album, "Thriller," is the best-selling album of all time worldwide, with sales of more than 100 million units, and Jackson's influence continues to loom large over the worlds of pop, hip-hop and R&B. He was a gifted singer, a talented songwriter and a flashy dancer, and no one in the early '80s made better use of what was then a new format: the music video.
Not only was Jackson the first black artist to land a video in rotation on MTV, the 14-minute monster-movie clip for "Thriller" topped the cable channel's 1999 retrospective of the top-100 music videos. It also won a Grammy and sold more than 9 million copies, making it the best-selling music video of all time.
"I can't stop crying over the sad news," Madonna told People magazine Thursday.
"A major strand of our cultural DNA has left us," musician John Mayer said via the social networking service Twitter. "I think we'll mourn his loss as well as the loss of ourselves as children listening to 'Thriller' on the record player."
The Fairfield native, 31, was one of millions of youngsters who came of age listening to the blend of R&B, funk and rock on Jackson's opus, which featured vocals from Paul McCartney and a guitar solo from Eddie Van Halen.
Jackson got an early start in show business, fronting the Jackson 5 -- a group comprising him and his brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon -- when he was just 10 (though his age at the time was given as 8).
After eight top-10 pop singles and 18 top-10 R&B singles, Jackson left the family band to expand the solo career he had begun with 1972's "Got To Be There," which came out when he was 12.
His first solo album as an adult, 1979's "Off the Wall," was his true breakthrough, showcasing an artist of such depth and talent that there seemed to be no limit to what he could accomplish. "Thriller" merely confirmed that impression three years later, and suddenly pop culture revolved around Jackson.
His one white sparkly glove, black loafers with white socks, the zippered red-leather jacket -- all of them became instantly recognizable trademarks, and his introduction of the moonwalk during a televised Motown anniversary concert in 1983 was surely the most electrifying musical moment on TV since the Beatles played "Ed Sullivan."
If "Thriller" made him a star in the United States, Jackson's 1987 follow-up, "Bad," catapulted him to worldwide superstardom. He toured for the first time without his brothers, and was greeted by screaming hordes of fans everywhere he went.
That's about when things started to get weird.
Jackson had already had plastic surgery, in part because of injuries he received during the shoot for a Pepsi commercial in 1984, and soon stories started circulating about other eccentricities. He started to look paler, for one thing. He also bought a pet chimpanzee and had taken up residence in a Los Angeles mansion, with attendant amusement park, that he dubbed "Neverland."
After the release of his "Dangerous" album in 1991, Jackson's music was increasingly overshadowed by a series of bizarre events, including drug addiction, accusations that he sexually abused a 13-year-old boy (Jackson settled a civil suit out of court and was never charged) and his brief marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, epitomized in the public consciousness by the awkward kiss the couple shared at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.
Jackson married a second time in 1997, and fathered two children: a son, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., and a daughter, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. Jackson and his second wife, Deborah Jeanne Rowe, divorced in 1999. A surrogate mother gave birth to his third child, Prince Michael Jackson II, in 2002.
He continued to release albums: the first volume of his hits compilation "HIStory" came out in 1995, with a second showing up in 2001, around the same time he released the studio album "Invincible." By then, though, the singer's music was something of a side show.
Jackson was accused of sexual abuse again in 2003 after a British television documentary called into question his relationship with another 13-year-old boy. This time Jackson was charged, and though he was found not guilty after a lengthy trial, the negative publicity and expense prompted Jackson to move out of the United States.
Despite banking hundreds of millions of dollars from album sales and concert tours, Jackson's expenses exceeded his income to the point when, in 2006, he shuttered Neverland to save money.
Earlier this year, Jackson announced plans to perform a string of concerts at London's O2 Arena. What had started as 10 shows blossomed into 50, all of which sold out.
Jackson's death came as a shock, judging by reaction online and on various social networking sites.
"I am devastated over this but we all have memories," Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, drummer for Philadelphia hip-hop band the Roots, said in a series of posts on Twitter. "I just hope that he will get due justice in all the press memorials and whatnot. I know he was mired in controversy the last decade of his life but I think it's time we let him rest in peace and learn to separate the art and the artist."
Indeed, despite his troubles, Jackson was a noted philanthropist, co-writing the 1984 hit "We Are the World" that raised millions of dollars for the USA for Africa famine-relief effort. He was also once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for his support of 39 charities, a celebrity record.
