Case Study

Case study:

Micheal Jackson, also known as the "King of Pop", will always be a strong iconic figure, and still is even after his tragic death in June 2009, in the music scene due to the amount of impact he made to music. Michael Jackson was a singer, dancer and songwriter that were known as the most selling music artist at the time of his death. His style in fashion, dance and music made him a global figure that was able to attain his status for over forty years. Michael was the 8th child out of nine children in the Jackson family. In 1964, him and his brothers formed a group with his older brothers and was officially a member of the 'Jackson 5', moving on from this a few years later, Michael became an independent artist with so much potential to become the greatest, the shoes he then went later on to fulfil.  The song that really changed the music world forever was Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. 'Thriller' was not only a hit that sold over 65 million copies worldwide, but concept portrayed in the video till this day is absolutely incredible, helping channels such as MTV becoming popular and supporting its rise to fame.


Jackson 5 - ABC
From one of Michael Jackson's earliest appearances, he already showed that he had more potential and stood out from the rest of his brothers, automatically starting got create his own star image. Michael Jackson's star image was his ability to sing and unique dancing, nobody had seen anyone like Michael which already separated him from everyone. During the Jackson 5, even being the youngest, Michael Jackson was already the lead singer.

 Michael Jackson - Thriller - 1982
One of his biggest solo songs. In 1982, Michael Jackson wrote 'Thriller', this turned into one of his most well known songs and became a song to show a clear portrayal of his star image becoming stronger and leading him to develop into the Micheal we all knew. Furthermore, the music video itself is another reason for Michael Jackson's uniqueness, in these times there had not been video similar to this. It almost came along as a movie to the audience. The part that was most appealing to the audience was the choreography performed, this really did push Michael Jackson's career.

 Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal - 1987
Secondly, another one of Michael Jackson's biggest solos is "Smooth Criminal". This also represented Michael's unique style of star image =. The setting being old gangsters was phenomenal and something that the audience would never see coming. Once again, the music video starts off similar to a film (long intro), in my opinion i believe Michael Jackson realised that his audience would expect a film type intro as it would immediately grabbed their attention. Furthermore, their is also many dance routines throughout with one main dance which led Michael Jackson to 'Defy gravity' with his almost 45 degree lean. The audience found this remarkable and also increased Micheal Jackson's star image as it seemed that all his music videos will catch them off guard. The ideology that is shown is the idea of being pure and dominant, this is connotations given off from Michael Jackson wearing a white suit.

 Michael Jackson - Black or White - 1991
Michael Jackson realised 'Black or White' in 1991. The theme of this song is purely based on the racism that continues to happen around the world and also a direct address to some of the racism that Michael Jackson had received during his career. Speaking on problems in the world was a turn in Michael Jackson's career, he was now getting older and his star image was also changing, whilst keeping the target audience he already had, he was able to increase it due to bringing a real issue that many countries face, to the surface.

 Michael Jackson - They don't really care about us - 1995
In 1995, Michael Jackson had produced 'They Don't Care About Us". This was another song discussing a real problem about the division in countries and different cultures. This was now the star image that Michael Jackson would be known for songs with meaningful topics.

To conclude Michael Jackson's career and rein as the 'King of Pop', it was clear from the early stages of his singing that he would become one of the greatest. At first his videos were almost completely simple but as he started to become more of a star and began to create his own star image, his music videos had much more detail and creativity. Successful examples of this are 'Thriller' and 'Smooth criminal' as these were some of the first music videos that contained a choreographed dance routine that the audience would remember forever. Even coming to the later stages of Michael's career, he still managed to maintain his popular style of clothing and music that his audience would still relate to. The reason Michael Jackson was such an icon to everyone was because he was so different and unique to all the other artist in his time.