He slayed the previous king of pop
There is no way to convey to you how unbelievably cool Michael was in the 80’s and how amazing his fresh new sound was. The sidewalk lighting up as he walked on it in the Billy Jean music video was the coolest thing we’d seen on TV back then. He perfectly blended music, dancing, fashion, style, attitude, and theatrics to create an entire persona that all the listeners and viewers could share in. He set trends, broke records, and topped charts. I cannot convey what it felt like to back then to young people because there hasn’t been anything that original since the 90’s when Nirvana and Grunge exploded across the music scene. I wish there was something recent to point to and say “it was like that!”, but there’s nothing.
A lot of marketing, but also he had to be incredibly talented and successful for the marketing to work, and he was.
Thriller is the best selling album of all time by a wide margin:
I didn’t care much about Michael Jackson when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, but I came to appreciate his talent more once I was older. Aside from some of the other things that were already mentioned, he was known for some insanely unique and distinctive dance moves, and everyone wanted to do them. You know how kids these days are ‘dabbing’ or doing these dances that they saw on fortnight or wherever? Where did any of those popular moves originate from? I have no idea. But when you saw someone doing a Michael Jackson move, you knew EXACTLY who it came from.
Like Beethoven, the king of classical, an abusive father.
Really super amazing music.
He was the only one who could pull the microphone from the stone.
Good marketing and lucky timing. He benefited greatly from the rise of MTV and music videos. With his talents for music and dance, he was the right person at the right time to really take off. His music videos were good.
And his PR people did fantastic work marketing him. Whoever convinced Disney to make the Captain EO ride at Disneyland was a genius.
His music videos were’nt just good, they were genre defining. They were and still are outstanding.
I fucking loved Captain EO. Such insanity and catchy music and dance moves all blended in this 80s dystopian wild ride.
Hard to describe the impact he had, even if you didn’t care for his music. On fashion, choreography, design, the 80s were really driven by Jackson.
Decades of complexity all wrapped up into one word: Thriller.
More like the word “publicist”.
Yeah, I was so fooled. I was never really into him, but I do remember Thriller.
He had a ton of hits. Like, a ton. And he had the moves. That’s what made him The King.
The fact that Thriller has been and still is the world’s best selling album for 42 years probably
