While his personal choices remain in question, the late pop star Michael Jackson unquestionably changed the face of music and video, helping transform a record company promotional tool into an art form. As Jackson's career developed, so did his videos. What began in the 60s with live television performances developed into award winning short films with a single song as soundtrack. The decades of the 1970s and 80s were saturated with Jackson's face and dancing body, but the 90s and current century found Jackson more often televised for court appearances than music video. At his death Jackson was working on his first release in twelve years.

The Jackson 5ive. Goin' Back to Indiana. The Jackson 5 Show. The Jacksons.
When The Jackson 5 won a talent contest at the famed Apollo Theater in 1967, no one could know that it would be a turning point in popular music. By 1970 "Jacksonmania" ran rampant in the U.S. With then grade school aged Michael as lead singer, the band graced the music charts, magazine covers, and television. Our first exposure to Michael was a performance on the Miss Black America telecast. It was followed by the animated series, "The Jackson 5ive," which debuted in 1971 and ran for two seasons on ABC and two Jackson 5 TV specials, "Goin' Back to Indiana" and "The Jackson 5 Show." The decade of the 1970s was filled with magazine photo and TV clips of Jackson's wide smile, chubby cheeks, afro, and wiry build and girls across the nation swooned. As the 70s ended, Michael ended his teens and began manhood with his first hit solo album, "Off The Wall." The album, his fifth solo effort, has sold 20 million copies worldwide. Pre-dating the existence of MTV and VH-1, its sales were a drop in the bucket to the combined attack of radio and video.

Thriller. Beat It. Billie Jean. P.Y.T.
In 1983, the two year old network MTV debuted the video for "Thriller" from the album of the same name. At 14 minutes, it was the longest music video in existence, actually a mini-horror movie guest starring horror movie legend Vincent Price. It's complex story line, feature film quality special effects, and dancing zombies made the video the most successful video to date, selling 9 million copies. In the early 1980s, it seemed more like MTV stood for Micheal TeleVision, with the videos for "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" in heavy rotation along side the lengthy "Thiller," rounded out by "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" and "Smooth Criminal." His boyish good looks and Jeri curls had girls glued to their TVs while guys copied his style, right down to the single white sequined glove, in an effort to get girls. We couldn't see enough of Michael but that extreme press began to work against him as his penchant for plastic surgery and skin bleaching became evident.

Bad. Smooth Criminal. Leave Me Alone. Black or White.
The next era of MJ videos showed a new Michael. This one had largely shed his natural look for what many claimed was an attempt to look "white." His straightened hair, increasingly pale skin, and surgically altered features bore little to no resemblance to the man the girls in the balcony squealed over. His videos began centering more around dance routines and body grabs rather than intricate story lines. The "Bad" video used heavy sexual imagery and included Jackson grabbing and touching his chest, stomach, and crotch. Fans and critics criticized it, and it arguably began the downturn in video popularity for the singer.

The video for "Smooth Criminal," which contained the anti-gravity lean he later patented, was the least controversial of this era. Jackson's video for the anti-fan/anti-press song "Leave Me Alone" was not officially released in the U.S., although it did win three Billboard Music Video Awards in 1989 and a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form in 1990. The artist included numerous sexual and violent scenes in his video for "Black or White" which had to be edited out to prevent the video from being banned. The severely edited version premiered on November 14, 1991, simultaneously in 27 countries drawing an audience of about 500 million viewers.

His videos remained critically acclaimed though. MTV recognized his accomplishments in the early days of music video (the 1980s) by awarding him the first Video Vanguard Artist of the Decade Award which it later renamed in his honor.

Remember the Time. In the Closet. Scream. Earth Song.
As the 1990s wore on, the Michael of "Off the Wall" fame completely disappeared replaced by a more feminine looking alabaster skinned Jackson which turned many fans off. Even without press coverage, his appearances in his own videos did him in. While some of his videos, such as "Remember the Time" resembled the mini-movie videos of the 1980s, others, such as "In the Closet," featured overtly sexually provocative scenes. "In the Closet" had so many such scenes it was banned outright in South Africa.

Although the video for "Scream" received critical acclaim, the 1995 release further hurt Jackson who created the song and video in response to the fan and media backlash from his 1993 accusation that he molested a young boy. It won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form, but turned off more fans.

Jackson followed it with "Earth Song" and "Ghosts," both which received critical acclaim, but drew a blank with fans. The popularity Jackson had enjoyed as a handsome, talented young man in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s disappeared in the 1990s as it became increasingly obvious that there was something seriously wrong in Neverland.

Death.
The last decade of the 20th century and the first of the 21st century were littered with Michael Jackson jokes, including those about his increasingly feminine appearance, his two marriages, his fatherhood, and the growing number of child molestation accusations. The music videos that had helped make Jackson's career and brought him the publicity that helped spawn record breaking music sales became his downfall. Later music videos showed his transformed appearance, increasingly violent and overtly sexual nature, and the publicity that had helped sales, now slowed them to a crawl when his eccentric and odd public actions became news.

His unexpected death on June 25, 2009 at the age of 50 captured the giant audiences Jackson became accustomed to in the 1980s. On YouTube, his classic videos have enjoyed new audiences. For instance, Internet video research firm Visible Measures reported that in the week following Jackson's death, his 14-minute, 1983 video "Thriller" had more than 8.5 million views.

His Los Angeles memorial service drew millions of viewers across the four screens, as well as a considerable number of in person attendees. It was "the first multi-platform significant culture event," said Alan Wurtzel, chief of research at NBC Universal. Jackson's memorial service was carried live by Cinedigm Digital Cinema Network to more than 80 U.S. movie theaters; streamed online by Web sites including Hulu.com, MySpace.com, The New York Times, and The Associated Press; carried on live television; and available on the mobile versions of some of the Web sites which streamed it. Web traffic tracker Akamai reported that the day of Jackson's death brought 4.2 million people per minute to the Web in search of information. His memorial service drew 3.9 million people per minute. Those figures make his death and memorial the second and third largest Internet events of 2009 with President Barrack Obama's inauguration ranking first with 7 million people per minute.

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The references for this article include: "Michael Jackson," Wikipedia, 2009; "Jackson service a national viewing experience," Jake Coyle, July 7, 2009; "Jackson Memorial Brought Out Worst in Networks, Best in Web," Renay San Miguel, TechNewsWorld, July 10, 2009, "Off The Wall," 2009; "Off The Wall (album)," Wikipedia, 2009; and personal remembrances.

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This post blogged by Carlie Lawson. She is a hazards consultant, freelance writer, and weather nerd living in Norman, OK, also known as the weather capital of the United States.