Michael Jackson, Pop Star: 1958 – 2009
Michael Jackson in The Wiz
Michael Jackson was rushed to UCLA medical center earlier this afternoon following an apparent cardiac arrest and the LA Times has confirmed a popular gossip website report that the pop star was pronounced dead soon after arrival – this according to “city and law enforcement sources.”
Jackson’s personal and legal troubles, his sometimes erratic behavior and his increasingly strange physical appearance over the last many years cloud what a magnetic and massively popular entertainer he was throughout the ’70s and well into the ’80s.
Of course, he’s most famous for his career as a pop music icon and that’s how we’ll always remember him, but LiC will save a special place for a memory of The Scarecrow in Sidney Lumet’s big screen adaptation of the popular Broadway musical, The Wiz.
Filed under: Obituaries
Tags: Michael Jackson
I’m sorta flabbergasted by this news. I can’t help but think of the Thriller-era Jackson that seemed eternally a child. In my mind I can see the plastic surgery disaster Jackson of the 21st century but I can’t connect it to the guy that recorded Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad. The guy just always seemed so young and full of life.
Weird day. We lose an icon of the 70’s and the 80’s/90’s.
This is a big surprise and I agree. It’s hard to connect the two images so my brain kind of doesn’t.
He wasn’t in my musical wheelhouse but he was huge at a critical time in my musical appreciation.
This was REALLY shocking to me.
RIP. As Joel says, today has been a really weird day.
I’m not going to lie, I cried like a baby. I grew up on his music. He was an amazing singer-songwriter and entertainer. RIP.
I’m with Dorothy. I am close to bawling as I write this.
One of my coworkers has had a medley of Jackson going for about 45 minutes now on the stereo. I forgot how frigging amazing Off the Wall was. Haven’t listened to that album in years, but I owned Thriller back in the day.
As much as Jackson became a living human caricature of a pop icon eating itself alive, he was still an amazing singer/songwriter/performer. I will never forget the night he literally blew everyone else off the stage at the Motown 25 anniversary. Watching that was like seeing someone do something superhuman right before your eyes.
No need to lie. You’re not alone.
I was just thinking of that Joel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VASYhabHkM
Well said Joel. His decline was terrible but man, was he talented.
This was kind of inevitable – he was clearly fizzling out in the last decade or so, and it was clear he was either going to need severe rehab and therapy or he wouldn’t make it to old age. Which is ultimately the latest in a long line of iconic tragedies.
It’s kind of hard to believe, but this is somebody as big as Elvis or John Lennon, gone forever.
I do not at all condone Jackson’s behavior and really his self-destruction over the years from the changes in physicality to the really appalling molestation scandal. At the same time he was such a transcendent figure that to simply ‘moralize’ about him misses the point. He was both. The biggest cultural icon of the age in a global sense, possibly the greatest in human history of you consider how deeply he penetrated every global market. One must consider the psychological meltdown that can occur when a person is suddenly raised to the heavens as Michael was post Thriller. Again no one could possibly excuse his personal conduct. But this idea that ‘hey he died, it’s no big deal’ as I’ve head from a few is appalling. Frankly even the ‘he’s a freak’ refrain is something I find unacceptable. I wonder how many of us would react if were put on the kind of pedestal he was.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever experience a loss remotely close to this on the cultural scene, and the reaction around the world says it all.
The so called LAWMAKERS were jealous of his succeses so they organised to kill him now they will steal his money from his family but we will always praise him.ON BEHALF OF ALL RASTAMAN LET ME TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SALUTE THE KING OF POP WACKO JACKO AND SAY REST IN PEACE.He left with his crown as king and there will be no other king of pop.