Where do you live ?

Do you realize how wrong that statement is?

The heck? I stole a ton of his music from airmp3.com and put it on my PS3.  My mom loaned me the Jackson 5 CD so that I could rip it to my 360 before he died.  His concert announcement made headlines.  There were multiple threads and people with his avatar on this very site, months before his death!!  I only had to go back and buy Invincible and Dangerous, after his death.  At some point or another, I owned everything else (legally, too).

The man hasn't made an album in years.  The interest tends to fade, if you go almost a decade without new material.  And yet, we were still interested.  Sooooooo no.  He's well known, especially for those of us who listened to him in his prime for all of the right reasons.

@d21. Actually the reason why people were still interested is because his life was a ridiculous sideshow.

If you had asked between the year after thriller and just before he died 'who is the most famous person in the world' almost nobody would have said Michael Jackson. His fame has certainly risen after his death.

In reality the man only had one truly transcendent album - Thriller - and the rest varied between very good and average. Thriller itself isn't the greatest album of all time (although it is up there). Other music stars that have had as much fame as MJ are The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Elvis Presley.

He ranks up there with the great stars, but he isn't the sole star.

Nah. He was still the man. Bad, Dangerous, HiStory, and Invincible were all still number one sellers. I have his performance/dedication to show on my DVR right now from when he was given a tribute, back in 2001. His documentary (which also began his legal problems) was the biggest ratings draw the night it aired. Spotlight or not, his every move was anticipated and scrutinized.

We live in a world where there aren't any stars, anymore. Michael.....I can't explain it. He was magic.

California, Why does that matter?

OKay I shouldn't have said no one, UNtil he died only my frind Nicole liked Michael Jackson, everyone else I know thought he was creepy. Now that he is dead, nearly everyone listens to him constantly. I think Michael Jackson is HUge, he just isnt the biggest star out there 

True.  He's dead.  But back in the day, his videos would premier on network television AND MTV at the same time.  And we'd all go crazy over it.  He could look at a lady and she'd faint on contact.  Never seen anything like it, in my lifetime.

But if you really want to see first hand what it was like, go to a showing of This is It.  The man is dead and I promise you, people (especially, older people) are going to go to the theater and lose their fucking minds!  I went to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and people were crying in the audience over the TRAILER for the movie.  If he were alive, imagine that type of scene multiplied by ten. I dunno.  Guess you had to be there.

I lived in the middle east visited far east and now i live in Sudan (Africa), and in all these places people grew up listening to MJ music

Maybe in America its different 

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