Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958) is an American singer, musician, dancer, actor, music producer, writer, entertainer, singer-songwriter, choreographer, recording artist, arranger, businessman, and philanthropist.

Often called the King of Pop (or by his initials MJ ), Jackson is recognized as the most successful singer and entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contributions to music, dance, and fashion (along with his publicized personal life) made him a global figure in popular culture for over 4 decades.

Occasionally, Jackson is referred to as "Wacko Jacko," which he has an extreme dislike and irritation for.

In 2005, Jackson was taken to a court trial since he had molested young boys, but did not get arrested as there was no evidence or proof.

On The Simpsons, he guest-starred under the pseudonym John Jay Smith.

On June 25, 2009, it has been reported that Jackson has passed away in his home in Los Angeles, California of cardiac arrest at age 50, 2 months shy of his 51st birthday. Since that incident, many rumors have spread, claiming that Jackson is still alive and in hiding.

Career
On The Simpsons, Jackson guest-starred in "Stark Raving Dad." He performed the speaking voice of Leon Kompowsky under the alias John Jay Smith. Jackson was a fan of the show and called Matt Groening one night and offered to do a guest spot for one of his episodes. The idea for the episode was pitched by James L. Brooks and the script was written by Al Jean and Mike Reiss. In an early version of script, Homer decided to take Barney in for rehab, but whilst there Homer began acting crazily so the doctors assumed he was the one to be committed. Jackson pitched several story ideas for the episode, including Bart telling everyone in town that Jackson was coming to his house. He also requested several script changes, including that he wanted to have a scene in which he and Bart wrote a song and asked that a joke about Prince be changed to one about Elvis Presley.

Jackson especially liked Bart and wanted to give him a #1 single, so he wrote much of "Do the Bartman," even though he didn't receive credit for it. Jackson also wrote the song "Happy Birthday, Lisa" for the episode, which was later included in the album Songs in the Key of Springfield.

One of Jackson's conditions for guest starring was that he voiced himself, but a sound-alike would receive credit. While he recorded the voice work for the character, all of his singing was performed by Kipp Lennon, because Jackson wanted to play a joke on his brothers and fool them into thinking the impersonator was him. His lines were recorded at a second session by Brooks. Jackson showed up for the recording session alone and didn't use the special trailer that was set up for him. Lennon and Jackson recorded their parts at the same time, and Jackson found Lennon's impersonations hilarious. Jackson actually did record versions of the songs, and while there have been rumors that those tracks were the ones used in the final episode, Chris Ledesma says that the Lennon versions were used. Leon Kompowsky's normal speaking voice was recorded by Hank Azaria.

He was mentioned in the episode "Bart Sells His Soul" when Bart says, "Milhouse, there is no such thing as a soul. It's just something parents made up to scare children, like the boogeyman or Michael Jackson."

Jackson was also mentioned in "The Bart of War," where Homer refers to him having bought the rights to the Beatles' library of music.

The producers of the series were actually legally prevented from confirming Jackson guest-starred at the time, although many media sources assumed it was really him. After this episode, the producers decided that if a celebrity wished to guest star on the show, he or she had to be willing to be credited under his or her real name and not a pseudonym. In "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," during the commentary, the producers of the episode confirm that Jackson and Dustin Hoffman were actors who were given pseudonyms.

Death and memorial hoax
On June 25, 2009, it was reported that Jackson had died while in his bed at his rented mansion at 100 North Carolwood Drive in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles. Attempts at resuscitating him by Conrad Murray, his personal physician, were unsuccessful. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics received a 911 call at 12:22 (PDT, 19:22 UTC), arriving three minutes later at Jackson's location. He was reportedly not breathing and CPR was performed. Resuscitation efforts continued en route to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and for more than an hour after arriving there at 1:13 (20:13 UTC). He was pronounced dead at 2:26 local time (21:26 UTC). Jackson's death triggered a global outpouring of grief.

The news spread quickly online, making websites slow down and crash from user overload. Both TMZ and the Los Angeles Times suffered outages. Google initially believed that the input from millions of people searching for "Michael Jackson" meant that the search engine was under DDoS attack, and blocked searches related to Michael Jackson for 30 minutes. Twitter reported a crash, as did Wikipedia at 3:15 pm PDT (22:15 UTC). The Wikimedia Foundation reported nearly a million visitors to Jackson's biography within one hour, probably the most visitors in a one-hour period to any article in Wikipedia's history. AOL Instant Messenger collapsed for 40 minutes. AOL called it a "seminal moment in Internet history", adding, "We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

Around 15% of Twitter posts—or 5,000 tweets per minute—reportedly mentioned Jackson after the news broke, compared to the 5% recalled as having mentioned the Iranian elections or the flu pandemic that had made headlines earlier in the year. Overall, web traffic ranged from 11% to at least 20% higher than normal. MTV and Black Entertainment Television (BET) aired marathons of Jackson's music videos. Jackson specials aired on multiple television stations around the world. The British soap opera EastEnders added a last-minute scene, in which one character tells another about the news, to the June 26 episode. Jackson was the topic of every front-page headline in the daily British tabloid The Sun for about two weeks following his death. During the same period, the three major U.S. networks' evening newscasts—ABC World News, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News—devoted 34% of their broadcast time to him. Magazines including Time published commemorative editions. A scene that had featured Jackson's sister La Toya was cut from Brüno out of respect towards Jackson's family.

Jackson's memorial was held on July 7, 2009, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, preceded by a private family service at Forest Lawn Memorial Park's Hall of Liberty. Because of the high demand, organizers of the service fashioned a lottery style distribution method to give out tickets to members of the public. 1.6 million fans applied for tickets to the service over the two-day period that registration was open. 8,750 names were drawn at random to decide who to distribute tickets to, with each recipient receiving two tickets each. Jackson's casket was present during the memorial but no information was released about the final disposition of the body. The memorial service was one of the most watched events in online streaming history. The U.S. audience was estimated by Nielsen to be 31.1 million, an amount comparable to the estimated 35.1 million that watched the 2004 burial of former president Ronald Reagan, and the estimated 33.1 million Americans who watched the 1997 funeral for Princess Diana.

Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, John Mayer, Jennifer Hudson, Usher, Jermaine Jackson, and Shaheen's Jafargholi performed at the event. Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson gave eulogies, while Queen Latifah read "We had him", a poem written for the occasion by Maya Angelou. The Reverend Al Sharpton received a standing ovation with cheers when he told Jackson's children, "Wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with. But he dealt with it anyway." The memorial is best remembered for when Jackson's 11-year-old daughter, Paris Katherine, speaking publicly for the first time cried as she told the crowd, "Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine ... I just wanted to say I love him ... so much." Reverend Lucious Smith provided a closing prayer. On August 24, several news outlets quoted anonymous sources as stating that the Los Angeles coroner had decided to treat Jackson's death as a homicide; this was later confirmed by the coroner on August 28. At the time of death, Jackson had been administered propofol, lorazepam, and midazolam. Law enforcement officials conducted a manslaughter investigation of his personal physician, Conrad Murray. On February 8, 2010, Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter by prosecutors in Los Angeles. Jackson was entombed on September 3, 2009, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Shortly thereafter, many people have announced that Jackson faked his death and went into hiding to escape from the fame and paparazzi. This might be true after all as there has been all kinds of proof and evidence that Jackson is indeed still alive and well.

On June 25, 2010, the first anniversary of Jackson's "death", fans traveled to Los Angeles to pay their tribute to him. They visited Jackson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and his family's home, as well as Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Many of the fans were carrying sunflowers and other tribute items to drop off at the sites. Members of the Jackson family and close friends arrived to pay their respects. Katherine returned to Gary, Indiana to unveil a granite monument constructed in the front yard of the family home. The memorial continued with a candlelight vigil and a special performance of "We Are the World". On June 26, there was a protest march in front of the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division at the old Parker Center building and a petition with thousands of signatures demanding justice was delivered. The Jackson Family Foundation in conjunction with Voiceplate presented "Forever Michael", an event bringing together Jackson family members, celebrities, fans, supporters and the community to celebrate and honor his legacy. A portion of the proceeds were presented to some of Jackson's favorite charities. Katherine also introduced her new book "Never Can Say Goodbye".

Aftermath
After his death, Jackson became the best-selling albums artist of 2009. He sold over 8.2 million albums in the United States, and a total of 35 million albums worldwide, in the 12 months that followed his death. Jackson became the first artist to sell one million downloads in a week in download history, with a record-breaking 2.6 million downloads of his songs. After his death three of his albums sold more than any new album which was the first time a catalog album has ever scanned more sales than any new album. Jackson also became the first artist in history to have four of the top 20 best selling albums in a single year in the United States. Following this surge in sales, Sony announced that they had extended their relationship with his material. The distribution rights held by Sony Music were due to expire in 2015. On March 16, 2010, Sony Music Entertainment, in a move spearheaded by its Columbia/Epic Label Group division, signed a new deal with the Jackson estate to extend their distribution rights to his back catalogue until at least 2017, as well as to obtain permission to release ten new albums with previously unreleased material and new collections of released work. On November 4, 2010 Sony announced the release of Michael, the first posthumous album set to be released on December 14, with the promotional single released to the radios on November 8, titled "Breaking News". The deal was unprecedented in the music industry as it is the most expensive music contract pertaining to a single artist in history; it reportedly involved Sony Music paying $250 million for the deal, with the Jackson estate getting the full sum as well as its share of royalties for all works released. Video game developer Ubisoft announced it would release a new dancing-and-singing game featuring Michael Jackson for the 2010 holiday season. The game titled Michael Jackson: The Experience will be among the first to use Kinect and PlayStation Move, the respective motion-detecting camera systems for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 due out later that year.

Michael Jackson was reported to be one of the largest owners of property on the moon. In 2005, he bought a 1200 acre plot in the Lake of Dreams and owned a smaller parcel in the Sea of Vapours. After his death, a crater on the moon was renamed Michael Joseph Jackson by The Lunar Republic Society in Jackson's honor. The crater, officially named Posidonius J, is located on an area of the moon known as the Lake of Dreams, or Lacus Somniorum. The crater is 22 kilometers across and is situated near Jackson's owned land. A spokesman for the society said: "The official designation of a Lunar crater is a singular honor bestowed upon only a select few luminaries. "Among those receiving this rare tribute over the past century are Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Columbus, Sir Isaac Newton, Julius Caesar and Jules Verne."

On November 3, 2010, the theatrical performing company Cirque du Soleil announced that it would launch "Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour" in October 2011 in Montreal, while a permanent show will reside in Las Vegas. The 90-minute US$57M production will combine Jackson's iconic musical oeuvre and choreography with the Cirque's signature artistry, dance and aerial displays involving 65 artists. The tour was written and directed by Jamie King and centers on Jackson's "inspirational Giving Tree – the wellspring of creativity where his love of music and dance, fairy tale and magic, and the fragile beauty of nature are unlocked." On October 3, 2011, the accompanying compilation soundtrack album Immortal was announced to have over 40 Jackson's original recordings re-produced by Kevin Antunes. A second, larger and more theatrical Cirque show entitled Michael Jackson: One set for residency at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas was announced on February 21, 2013. This show, whose production was written and directed by Jamie King who produced the Immortal show, is scheduled to begin on May 23, 2013 in a newly renovated theater.

In April 2011, Jackson's longtime friend and billionaire businessman Mohamed al-Fayed, chairman of Fulham Football Club, unveiled a statue of Jackson outside the club's stadium, Craven Cottage. Fulham fans were however bemused by the statue and failed to understand the relevance of Jackson to the club. Al Fayed however defended the statue and told the fans to "go to hell" if they did not appreciate the statue.

In 2012, in an attempt to end family public feuding, Jermaine Jackson retracted his signature on a letter made public criticizing executors of Michael Jackson's estate and his mother's advisers concerning the legitimacy of his brother's will. T.J. Jackson, son of Tito Jackson, was given co-guardianship of Michael Jackson's children after false reports surfaced of Katherine Jackson going missing.

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