The king is dead

Michael Jackson gained the whole music world but lost his reputation | Arsenio Orteza

Associated Press/Photo by Joel Ryan

This summer was supposed to be a good one for Michael Jackson. His London comeback concerts, and thus his victory over years of scandal, were to begin in July. Instead, he died, leaving fans and pundits to wonder whether he might have been too far gone to come back at all.

Even if Jackson hadn't married Lisa Marie Presley, he would've been compared to Elvis, who also revolutionized pop music and spent his last years exhausting himself to pay bills. Jackson's revolution began with his 1982 album Thriller. Besides selling 100 million copies, it yielded an unprecedented seven Top 10 singles.

Before Thriller, an album would've run its course after six months, at which time a performer would already be working on a follow-up to keep his cycle in motion. But the chart time taken up by Thriller's hits made a hasty follow-up unnecessary. Five years elapsed before Jackson released Bad, years in which his timetable had become the music-industry norm.