Michael Jackson

Few performers have reshaped the way a pop audience watches as thoroughly as Michael Jackson, whose songs, videos, concerts and fashion turned visual performance into part of the music itself. The eighth of ten children, he was born in Gary, Indiana, and first performed in public at six as lead singer of the Jackson 5. Dubbed the King of Pop, he is widely seen as one of the most culturally significant figures of the twentieth century, and he popularised street dance moves such as the moonwalk, the robot and the anti-gravity lean.

His solo breakthrough came with Off the Wall in 1979, and Thriller in 1982 became the best-selling album in history, its videos redefining the medium. Bad in 1987 was the first album to yield five US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles. From the mid-1980s he faced public scrutiny, with a child abuse accusation settled out of court in 1994 and an acquittal on other charges in 2005. He died in 2009 while preparing the This Is It comeback concerts, and posthumous albums Michael (2010) and Xscape (2014) followed.