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.
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.
I fucking loved Captain EO. Such insanity and catchy music and dance moves all blended in this 80s dystopian wild ride.
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He was the only one who could pull the microphone from the stone.
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.
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He slayed the previous king of pop
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.
Like Beethoven, the king of classical, an abusive father.
He had a ton of hits. Like, a ton. And he had the moves. That’s what made him The King.
Really super amazing music.
