By Chris Lynch

Smothered by fame. Desperate for affection. Murdered by a quest for love.

Michael Jackson was for twenty years easily the most famous person in the world. This is a sad composition of his undying, inspirational and incredible music, and the other Jackson: a controversial celebrity figure. He tested the limits of acceptability across his fans; and his life was characterised constantly by rumours about his health, surgery and child molestation charges. This was also not helped when Jackson hung his baby daughter, Paris Michael, from a balcony window and nearly dropped the young child in 2002.

Michael Jackson was forced to hide the abuse he suffered from his father and from those surrounding him when performing. His exposure to media at such an early age practically forced him to constantly utilise two personalities, to use an emotional front to hide his concerns and feelings of abuse, hatred and ultimately lack of trust.

During his crossover from candy-pop to the heavier, more guitar-based, chorally accompanied sounds of rock and early R&B, Jackson experienced a much wider cultural following: no longer was his fanbase wholly dominated by young black teenagers, but he appealed to adults and children, black and white, rich and poor, and this crossover in his musical style was surely the definition of his label, the ‘King of Pop’. Hence the early 1980s saw him sore to super-stardom status, which he resented but was forced to accept by becoming more and more eccentric and controversial, yet to him the behaviour was a rebellion against a world which he felt made no sense.

Jackson became isolated to the point where he felt the world was alien and made no sense to him. He attempted to live the childhood he never had due to abuse from his father – and purchased the infamous Neverland ranch. However, this was perhaps the most controversial decision Wacko Jacko ever made – he grew so young at heart and so distant from reality that he became only able to relate to children.

In 2005, more paedophilia and abduction charges developed, and after a very long, very public and very discriminative court trial Michael Jackson was acquitted of all charges. He then retired and for the first time in his life in the public eye, disappeared to a private home with his family.

In 2009 however, he returned to the public eye: but this time to London. He vowed that he was to take his ‘final curtain call’ and perform a record-breaking fifty tours which he did partly to solve his debts (now believed to be approximately $200,000,000), but partly to rebuild a brutally tarnished career. The aging King of Pop told the crowd that ‘this is it’ and it soon became clear that the desperate star realised he could never taste the fame he once did.

It would appear, therefore, that Jackson did everything – in his own reasoning – to gain attention. However, the attention he gained was in largely negative forms: being pounced on by the press at every available opportunity. After being abused by his father, he continued to alternate between Jackson the showman and Wacko the mental case. Why? Because ultimately he struggled to cope with the attention and press he received, had no conscious awareness of his monetary spending, and, most significantly, never really felt humanistic love.

Michael Jackson: the prime example of how fame can destroy. He was the most influential and culturally powerful man in the world: ‘power corrupts; but absolute power corrupts absolutely’.