Singer, songwriter, producer

Artfully clad in an outfit featuring his signature white socks, red leather jacket, and single, sequined white glove, Michael Jackson is widely recognized as one of the world's top musical entertainers. In barely two decades he has grown from a five-year-old boy-wonder singing with his brothers to a legendary solo artist who dazzles audiences worldwide with his deftness as songwriter, producer, video pioneer, showman, and vocalist par excellence. With a knack for translating tunes from almost any genre—rhythm-and-blues, pop, rock, soul—into success, the prodigy defies all labels. Jackson is "a half-mad and extraordinary talent," marveled Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone, with the ability to "combine [his] gifts in an electrifying, stunning way . . . that has only been equalled in rock history by Elvis Presley."

Born into a black, working-class family in Gary, Indiana, Jackson was the seventh of nine children, all of whose lives were shaped by their parents' insistence on firm discipline. The Jackson parents, however, were also musical. Joe Jackson, a crane-operator for U.S. Steel, sang and played the guitar with a small-time group known as the Falcons, and Katherine Jackson played the clarinet. Both believed that encouraging their children to pursue their musical interests was a good way to keep them out of trouble.

By the time he was five years old, Michael, together with his four older brothers (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon), had formed a rhythm-and-blues act called the Jackson Five. Initially enlisted to play the bongos, Michael revealed himself as such a little dynamo that he soon became the group's leader, even at a young age able to mesmerize audiences with his singing and dancing. The group won their first talent competition in 1963, gave their first paid performance in 1964, and had proven themselves a popular local act by 1967. Although primarily imitative at this stage, with their work rooted in the tradition of such musical greats as the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, and James Brown, they were good enough to cut a couple of singles for Steeltown Records, an Indiana label.

They were also good enough to compete, in 1968, at Harlem's Apollo Theatre, then the most prestigious venue for launching black musicians. Their riveting performance brought them so many national engagements that Joe Jackson left his job to manage his sons' act. It also captured the attention of Motown Records, in its golden days as the United States's premier black recording label. Before long, the young musicians signed with Motown and moved to California when the label relocated its headquarters there.

Under the strict guidance of the Motown magnates, the Jackson Five propelled themselves into the public eye with their first Motown single, "I Want You Back." Released in November, 1969, the recording reached number one on the charts in early 1970 and eventually sold more than one million copies. It was quickly followed by other hit singles like "ABC," the Grammy Award-winning pop song of 1970, as well as similarly successful albums. Even a "Jackson Five" television cartoon program was created to showcase the group's music. By the time the Jackson Five took their version of "bubblegum soul," as their music was now called, on worldwide tour in 1972, they were a smashing success, especially among the teenybopper set. Indeed Michael, "the little prince of soul," was barely a teenager himself and had become not only a millionaire, but an international sex symbol ready to launch his solo career.

The rising star premiered as a solo artist with the 1972 album Got To Be There, earning him a Grammy Award as male vocalist of the year, and followed it with the gold album Ben, thus beginning a steady stream of solo recordings. With his first solo tour more than a decade away, however, the young Jackson still directed most of his energy into the group's work. The Jackson Five, in fact, made another breakthrough in 1973 with the single "Dancing Machine." Succeeded by the epynomous album, the sophisticated recording introduced a disco beat that broadened the group's audience.

As members of the Jackson Five matured, so did their music, and they eventually outgrew the agenda Motown had established for them. They were eager for greater artistic control, and when their contract with Motown expired in 1976 they signed with Epic renamed as the Jacksons (Jermaine dropped out of the group while youngest brother, Randy, joined it).

Although frustrated by the creative restrictions placed on their first two albums for the label, the Jacksons were finally given control with Destiny, an album marking Michael's songwriting debut. The risk proved fruitful both for the recording company and for the artists. Featuring the "funkier" sound the entertaining brothers favored, the 1978 album went platinum and spun off two hit singles. In 1980 the group duplicated the feat with Triumph, written and produced by Michael, Jackie, and Randy, and in the summer of 1981 they embarked on the enormously successful thirty-six city tour that produced The Jacksons Live, the group's last album together.

As the Jacksons disbanded to pursue individual interests, Michael exploded onto the music scene as an independent artist, outstripping the success of his own multiaward-winning album of 1979, Off the Wall, as well as shattering almost every other record in recording history. His landmark album was Thriller, unleashed in 1982. It was a sensation that appealed to almost every imaginable musical taste and established Jackson as one of the world's pre-eminent pop artists. The album went platinum in fifteen countries, gold in four, and garnered eight Grammys; its sales exceeded thirty-eight million copies worldwide, earning it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest-selling album in recording history; it spun-off an unprecedented seven hit singles; and it enabled Jackson to claim the spotlight as the first recording artist to simultaneously head both the singles and albums charts for both rhythm-and-blues and pop.

The extraordinary Thriller also generated a frenzy among the heartthrob's fans, dubbed Michaelmania by the media, and its remarkable success sealed the musician's reputation as "brilliant" and a "rock phenomenon"; one critic even went beyond "superstar" to call Jackson a "megastar." But success has also brought the artist under intense scrutiny, both by his admirers and the communications industry, and each new achievement—from his innovative video work to his astonishing 1984 reunion "Victory" tour with his brothers to his latest, most startling album, the 1987 Bad has only seemed to fuel the lust for information.

Indeed, for someone who has been in the limelight since the age of five, Jackson has seemingly by magic kept his private life private. Writing for Maclean's, Gillian MacKay reported that he "has astonished his fans by shedding his lively, button-cute image and transforming himself into a mysterious, otherworldly creature perpetually posing behind a mask." So intensely private is this star that he rarely interacts with the media.

His silence, however, has tended to stimulate conjecture, and the tabloids are notorious for speculating about him. One day there are rumors that he has lightened his skin with chemicals and taken female hormones to maintain his falsetto voice quality, while the next day gossip columns question his sexual identity and charge that he has extensively remodeled his body with plastic surgery. He is also infamous for what has been described as a certain "weirdness" or "quirkiness," although many dismiss the charge as nonsense. As Jackson's friend, producer Quincy Jones, was quoted in the star's defense by People: "[Michael is] grounded and centered and focused and connected to his creative soul. And he's one of the most normal people I've ever met."

Dissecting the Jackson mystique is a task that even seems to have eluded more serious journalists. Most view him as a paradox. He is both superstar and devout Jehovah's Witness, a man who—as neither drinker, smoker, nor drug experimenter, has eschewed much of the glamorous life for healthy living. Some see him as a man-child living in his own reality—like one of his heroes, Peter Pan, refusing to grow up. Others, like Newsweek's Jim Miller, find him "a stunning live performer, but also a notorious recluse. . . . He's utterly unlike you and me, with a streak of wildfire that unpredictably lights his eyes."

Theories aside, admirers and detractors alike agree, as Gilmore concluded, that Jackson's success is based on his "remarkably intuitive talents as a singer and dancer—talents that are genuine and matchless and not the constructions of mere ambition or hype." It is this talent, coupled with the star's hard work and often touted perfectionism, that has enabled Jackson to cross virtually every music line ever drawn.

Jackson, in fact, has been credited with resuscitating a languishing music industry and with practically eliminating barriers barring blacks from mainstream music venues. More than one critic has imbued him with a chameleon-like capacity for being all things to all people and thus pleasing everyone. In a review for People, Gary Smith related the artist's musical conquest to his ability to create "a portable dream," explaining that "in this dream world his androgyny does not threaten the virile, his youth does not threaten the old. His blackness does not threaten the white, for nothing seems quite real and all is softened by fragility and innocence."

Although the music idol himself might be eccentric or enigmatic, his achievements are very real. With the completion of his first solo tour, a long, triumphant venture begun in September, 1987, Michael Jackson seems to be at the peak of his powers, a hero living the American Dream. Indeed, experts who appoint Frank Sinatra as the star of the 1940s, Elvis Presley as the star of the 1950s, and the Beatles as the stars of the 1960s have already named Michael Jackson the star of the 1980s—and speculate that he will claim the 1990s as well.

Compositions

Has written and co-written numerous songs, including "Shake Your Body (Down to the Grave)," 1978, "Beat It," 1983, "Billie Jean," 1983, "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," 1983, (with Lionel Richie) "We Are the World," 1985, "Bad," 1987, "I Can't Stop Loving You," 1987, and "The Way You Make Me Feel," 1987.

—Nancy H. Evans