Michael Jackson - the "King of Pop"

Michael Jackson - "The King of Pop"

Michael Jackson is undoubtedly one of the most iconic  figures is the music industry in this day and age. He is known for his extravagant music videos that he produced that arguably set standards for the rest world. He is an inspiration to various artists today such as Chris Brown who dedicated his song "She Ain't You" to Michael Jackson after his death in June 2009. Despite all his controversy, Michael Jackson will be regarded as the true "King of Pop". His career kicked off at the tender age of 5, where he was the lead singer of 'The Jackson 5' which was the 5 brothers in a band. He performed in this band of brothers at local clubs and bars in 1964 and it was quickly identified that he was extremely talented. As Michael grew older, it became more evident that his talent was far superior and it is debatable that the Jackson 5 was holding him back from being a solo star. However, he decided to go solo and one of his very first solo released songs was called 'Rock With You' which was released in November 1979. In this video, Michael caught the attention f the public with his style and dress sense and this helped the song to reach number one in both the R&B and Pop charts as the song was considered different and here a new style of music and videos was born. The song is widely considered to be the song which kick started Michael's career and it is also considered to be one of the leading songs in the disco era. Going further in Michael's career, with more success he was becoming increasingly popular. After a few years, he then released the song "Billie Jean" in January 1983. This song was hugely successful because of the video. It was one of his first really unique videos because of the improvisation in the song. Michael had extraordinary dancing ability and the audience fell in love with this attribute. The music video was depicted as a short story and this was rare in the early 1980s, it was just usually a band singing, but this was more than that, it was a visual performance. In the video, Michael is walking around very nonchalantly and he walks on these tiles and they began to glow as he stepped on them. The director of the video highlighted after the video that only of the few tiles would glow when stepped on and that Michael had to try as much as he could to walk on them. Michael did this exceptionally well with such ease. "Billie Jean" became a worldwide hit and was hugely successful. It was one of the best selling singles in 1983 and is actually one of the best selling singles worldwide! The song easily topped the US and UK charts.

Going further, in 1982 Michael Jackson released his biggest success single of all time called "Thriller". The song broke world records as it is the largest selling album of all time. The album consisted of 7 hit singles and went on to sell well over 50 million copies worldwide. Michael was enthusiastic to use music videos or short films to promote his singles from the album and this is exactly what the Thriller video did. He produced a 14 minute video which caught the attention of a worldwide audience which made the song hugely successful as it was something unseen of in the music industry.