4. Michael Jackson
It’s a brutal thing to say but also true: Dying in 2009 was the best thing to happen to Michael Jackson’s legacy. From 1983 to 1992, no one on the face of the planet was a bigger star than Jackson. He pioneered music videos as big-budget art, his dancing stunning and his singing huge as he was a massive star. It was in the late 1980s that things started to change with talk of Jackson’s strange ways with surgery and his skin lightening majorly to the point of looking like an albino and thus becoming more of a tabloid fixture. In 1993, it came crashing down with Jackson accused of molestation charges of young boys and a major backlash against him and his music. Attempts at comebacks faltered as Jackson added to it with more crazy stuff from his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley to dangling his newborn baby over a balcony and more. More legal problems followed as the man became more a recluse before announcing his 2009 “This Is It” tour as his grand farewell. He died during rehearsals and in his passing, many have noted the good he did and how iconic a figure he is in modern music. However, it still showcases how Jackson’s strange choices helped bring him down to the point where death was the only way to remind folks how important his work had been.
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