In 2009, this much can be said with conviction: Music fans will never again agree on anything the way they once agreed on Michael Jackson.
Despite the outpouring of grief and adoration for Jackson on display around the world, around the Web, and on top of the iTunes and Amazon sales charts this week, the one-gloved moonwalker has not been occupying a place anywhere near the center of the pop universe for the last two decades.
But in his megaselling 1980s heyday, and before he saw fit to proclaim himself as such, Jackson truly was the King of Pop.
Depending on who's counting, The Eagles' Greatest Hits, 1971-1975, which came out in 1976, may have overtaken Jackson's Thriller as the biggest-selling album of all time. But the California country-rock Eagles are the slow and steady tortoise in the race. The sleek and sexy Thriller, produced by Quincy Jones, was exactly what its title implies: a lightning-fast hare that sold 25 million copies within just a few years of its 1982 release.
Fired up by MTV, the music-video channel that used Jackson just as much as he used it, the album was a multimedia blitzkrieg that sent seven singles to the pop Top Ten and achieved a level of cultural ubiquity the pop world has not seen since.
That is partly because Jackson, in the years before his appearance became grotesque and his image was permanently soiled by allegations of child molestation, was such an enormous talent and uniquely complex figure.
Androgynous to the point of being borderline asexual, he nonetheless threw himself into his performances with a highly sexualized passion that was electrifying to witness. He took his private obsessions and, with a mix of musical genius and a flair for show-biz spectacle, made them our own. Take a look at a YouTube video of Jackson performing "Billie Jean" on the 1983 TV show Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, and just try to turn away.
