On August 29, 1958, a baby boy named Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, the seventh of nine children in a small house on Jackson Street. Nobody at the hospital that day could have guessed that this tiny newborn would grow up to sell over 400 million records and invent a dance move that the whole world would try to copy.
By the time he was five, Michael was singing lead with his brothers in a group called The Jackson 5, and by eleven he had a number one hit. As he grew up, he kept pushing music further. His 1982 album Thriller became the best-selling album of all time, and the spooky music video featured a 13-minute story with dancing zombies that kids stayed up late to watch on MTV. In 1983, during a live TV show, he glided backward across the stage doing a move he called the moonwalk, and within weeks playgrounds everywhere were full of kids trying to slide like him.
Michael Jackson became known as the King of Pop because he combined singing, dancing, and storytelling in a way nobody had done before. He inspired huge stars like Beyonce, Bruno Mars, and Justin Timberlake, and pop concerts still copy his lights, costumes, and choreography. Even now, decades after that song first hit the radio, Thriller starts playing every Halloween and people of all ages know exactly which dance to do.
