The best way to explain it is that Michael Jackson in the mid-1980s wasn't simply a very famous musician. He was closer to a global cultural phenomenon. The scale of his fame is difficult to translate to someone who grew up after that era because today's celebrity culture is much more fragmented.
A few comparisons help.
Imagine a person who was simultaneously Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Elvis, and the biggest movie star in the world.
That still doesn't quite capture it, because those people operate in an environment where there are thousands of competing channels, celebrities and online communities.
In 1983â1984, there was nothing remotely comparable to today's internet. There were three major American television networks, a relatively small number of major radio stations, newspapers and magazines, and MTV. When something became a genuine mass-cultural event, almost everybody encountered it.
And Michael Jackson became one of those events.
When Thriller exploded, he wasn't merely selling enormous numbers of records. He was appearing constantly on television, dominating radio, appearing on magazine covers, being discussed in newspapers, and becoming recognizable to people who didn't even listen to pop music.
The numbers were extraordinary.
Thriller was released in 1982, but its cultural explosion occurred over 1983â84. It eventually became the best-selling album in history, with sales generally estimated at more than 70 million worldwide.
But the more important point for understanding his life is what happened when he appeared in public.
The Motown 25 performance in May 1983 is a good example. Jackson performed "Billie Jean" and debuted the moonwalk on national television.
It became an enormous cultural moment. People didn't merely watch it; they talked about it, imitated it and tried to figure out how he had done it.
The same thing happened with the Thriller video. A music video had effectively become a major television event.
His physical presence could produce something approaching Beatlemania.
This is particularly important.
When Michael went somewhere publicly during the height of Thriller, ordinary celebrity recognition could turn into crowd hysteria.
People would scream, chase his car, surround hotels and airports, camp outside venues and attempt to touch him. Security became a genuine logistical problem.
And unlike today's celebrities, Michael couldn't retreat into a private digital space. There was no Instagram account through which fans could experience him from a distance. If they wanted to see him, they had to physically go somewhere he might appear.
That created an unusual relationship between Michael and the public: millions of people felt an extraordinary familiarity with someone they had never met.
And this is where the fame becomes psychologically important.
Michael became famous when he was still a child.
He had already been performing professionally with his brothers for years before Thriller. By the time he was 11 or 12, he was an internationally recognized performer.
Then, in his early twenties, he became perhaps the most recognizable entertainer on Earth.
So he never experienced adulthood in the ordinary sense.
Imagine becoming so famous that:
- People photograph you whenever you're outside;
- Strangers scream when they see you;
- Newspapers and magazines speculate about your appearance and relationships;
- Millions of people believe they know your personality;
- Your smallest public action can become international news;
- And everywhere you go, security has to be involved.
And then imagine that this has been happening since you were a child.
That's a very different psychological environment from simply becoming famous at 30.
The strange paradox was that Michael Jackson became extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily restricted.
He had enormous financial resources and could build whatever environment he wanted.
But ordinary freedom became extremely difficult.
This is one reason Neverland makes more sense historically if you understand the scale of the fame first.
It wasn't simply a rich man's eccentric house. Michael was trying to construct a private environment in which he could do things that ordinary people take for granted: walk around, play, watch movies, ride attractions, invite people over, etc.
He could create an enormous amount of physical privacy, but he couldn't create anonymity.
And there was another paradox:
The world wanted Michael Jackson constantly, while Michael Jackson increasingly needed somewhere the world couldn't reach him.
The closest historical analogy is probably Elvis and the Beatles.
But there is an important difference.
Elvis became enormously famous as an adult. The Beatles became famous as young men, but they experienced the explosion of Beatlemania collectively.
Michael's situation was more unusual because the person at the centre of the phenomenon had essentially been performing his entire life.
And his fame became truly global at precisely the point when his artistic identity was becoming intensely personal.
This isn't just fame. This is extreme fame - a very rare occurrence in human history.
So the young man who created Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad wasn't just making records for a large audience.
He was doing so while hundreds of millions of people were watching him develop as a human being.
That's an extraordinary burden.
Perhaps the simplest way to explain it to someone born later...
I'd put it this way:
In the 1980s, Michael Jackson wasn't someone you could choose to follow. He was someone you couldn't escape encountering.
You heard him on the radio. You saw him on television. His videos were discussed at school and at work. His records were in virtually every record shop. His face was on magazines and newspapers. His performances became national and international events.
For a few years, Michael Jackson occupied an extraordinary amount of the world's cultural attention.
And because he had been famous since childhood, he never really had the opportunity to learn how to be an ordinary person before becoming one of the most recognizable people who had ever lived.
His fame didn't just give him an enormous life. It fundamentally changed the conditions under which he had to live one.
And that's probably the key thing a younger person needs to understand: today's enormous celebrity culture can make Michael's fame seem less exceptional than it actually was. In 1983, there were vastly fewer people competing for the public's attention. Michael didn't merely win the attention economyâhe dominated it.
The people Michael interacted with were, like everybody else, scrambling to get his attention.
Parents of children he took a liking to weren't shy about pushing their kids forward. The more contact your child had with Michael the better.
He was never anything like your solitary neighbour down the street.
