As the world celebrates Michael Jackson 6 years after his sudden and painful demise, here are 6 reasons why he remains the most successful musician ever.
1. Even after his death, Michael Jackson continued to rake in millions in sales. A year after he died, Sony Music Entertainment signed a deal with his estate to release 7 posthumous albums. This deal is worth $250 million.
2. About one billion people watched his memorial service worldwide and it also drew one of the biggest gathering of celebrities in one night.
3. Michael Jackson’s death actually shut down the internet. Moments after it was announced that the ‘Thriller’ singer had died, searches about him tripled which made Google return a search response of ‘error message’ believing its servers were being hacked. Twitter also shut down temporarily after it was overwhelmed by mentions of the late pop king. Jackson’s wikipedia page also got visited about one million times in one hour making it the busiest one hour period in the history of the site. Perhaps this moment can best be captured with the headline CNN used in reporting the story: ‘Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him.’
4. While alive, Michael Jackson won several awards that he must have lost count of. But even in death, his winning ways didn’t stop. His funeral which was shown globally on networks including MTV, CNN, ABC, BET etc won NAACP award for Most Outstanding Variety. Jackson also posthumously won 4 awards at the American Music Awards making him the all time most honored musician in the history of the awards. MJ also got a posthumous Grammy awards in 2010 after initially getting 13 gramophone trophies in his lifetime.
5. Michael Jackson earnings since his death accumulates to more than what the combination of Jay Z, Taylor Swift and Kanye West joined together have earned since 2009. According to Forbes, the trio has garnered a total of $544 million since 1999 while Jackson since his demise has earned over $700 million.
6. The state of Los Angeles Police Department actually deployed 3,200 officers to secure the areas leading to the Staple Centre where Jackson’s funeral was held. This cost the state a whoping $1 million dollars of tax payers fund and this is just money spent on police working overtime. $1 million dollars on security alone? Only the king of pop could get that treat!...
