In the News: Fans of pop icon Michael Jackson already registered for tickets to his upcoming London concerts.
On Thursday (March 5, 2009) the 50-year-old singer appeared at the O2 Arena in southeast London before a crowd of 20,000 people to announce a line-up of 10 concerts he plans to give there. The mini tour is planned to launch on July 8, 2009.
Concert promoters say around 350,000 people already signed up to purchase tickets before the start of the official sales. Tickets, priced at anywhere from $70 to $105, will be for saleonline at a later date.
Biography: Singer, songwriter. Born August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana, as the seventh of nine children. Jackson and his brothers Jackie, Tito, Marlon, and Jermaine were assembled into a singing group when Michael was only five years old. Despite his extremely young age, he soon distinguished himself as a singer and dancer of prodigious ability. No mere child prodigy, Michael had a gift for vocal phrasing that was not only well beyond his years, but would have been astonishing in a performer of any age. After winning several talent contests, the Jackson 5, as the group was called, signed a recording contract with the trailblazing soul label Motown and proceeded to rule the charts in the late 1960s and early ‘70s with such hits as "I Want You Back," "Stop, the Love You Save," "ABC," and "Dancing Machine." By 1972, Michael had begun releasing solo albums, and he sang the hit title song to the movie Ben.
Michael and the group (with the exception of brother Jermaine) left Motown in 1975, signing with Epic Records, which also gave Michael a solo deal. Two years later, he starred in the film version of the hit musical The Wiz, which also featured singer Diana Ross and comic Richard Pryor. Quincy Jones, who produced the soundtrack album, became one of Michael's longtime friends and collaborators. The year 1979 saw the release of Jackson's extraordinarily successful album Off the Wall; this record included the hit singles "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and eventually sold some 10 million copies. The singer had matured into a dynamic adult entertainer, but he also began to make his mark as a songwriter, crafting durable pop that synthesized rock and disco.
Jackson's next album, Thriller, was a quantum leap for him both creatively and commercially. Produced by Jones, the recording spanned a number of pop genres—cannily enlisting rock guitar idol Eddie Van Halen to play a solo on "Beat It," for example, guaranteed access to listeners Jackson might not otherwise have reached—and fired a record-setting seven Top 10 singles up the charts, notably the title track, a duet with Paul McCartney titled “The Girl Is Mine,” the insinuating "Billie Jean," and the raucous "Beat It." The state-of-the-art videos that accompanied these singles, meanwhile, coincided with the sudden dominance of Music Television (MTV); Jackson's distinctive "Moonwalk" and overall visual panache (combined with brilliant choreography and lavish special effects) won him an even vaster audience. Thriller went on to become the bestselling album of all time and garnered an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards; Jackson also snagged a Grammy for his participation in the E.T.: The Extraterrestrial soundtrack album.
