Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, singer-songwriter, and philanthropist. Referred to as the King of Pop, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The eighth child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in the mid-1960s, and began his solo career in 1971. In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. The music videos for his songs including "Beat It", "Billie Jean" and "Thriller", were credited with transforming the medium into an art form and a promotional tool, and the popularity of these videos helped to bring the relatively new television channel MTV to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made him a staple on MTV in the 1990s. Through stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style have influenced numerous hip hop, pop, contemporary R&B and rock artists. Jackson's 1982 album Thriller is the best-selling album of all time. His other records, including Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995), also rank among the world's best-selling. Jackson is one of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. He was also inducted into the Dance Hall of Fame as the first (and currently only) dancer from the world of pop and rock 'n' roll. Some of his other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records; 13 Grammy Awards (as well as the Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award); 26 American Music Awards (more than any other artist, including the "Artist of the Century"); 13 number-one singles in the United States in his solo career (more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era); and the estimated sale of over 800 million records worldwide. Jackson won hundreds of awards, which have made him the most-awarded recording artist in the history of music. He was also a notable humanitarian and philanthropist, donating and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for beneficial causes and supporting more than 39 charities. Aspects of Jackson's personal life, including his changing appearance, personal relationships and behavior, have generated controversy. In 1993, he was accused of child sexual abuse, but the case was settled out of court and no formal charges were brought. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of further sexual abuse allegations and several other charges after the jury ruled him not guilty on all counts. While preparing for his concert series This Is It, Jackson died on June 25, 2009, after suffering from cardiac arrest. Before his death, Jackson had reportedly been administered drugs such as propofol and lorazepam. The Los Angeles County Coroner declared his death a homicide, and his personal physician pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter. Jackson's death triggered a global outpouring of grief, and as many as one billion people around the world reportedly watched his public memorial service on live television. In March 2010, Sony Music Entertainment signed a US$250 million deal with Jackson's estate to retain distribution rights to his recordings until 2017, and to release seven posthumous albums over the decade following his death.
The British Invasion
Beatles' releases in the United States were initially delayed for nearly a year when Capitol Records, EMI's American subsidiary, declined to issue either "Please Please Me" or "From Me to You". Negotiations with independent US labels led to the release of some singles, but issues with royalties and derision of The Beatles' "moptop" hairstyle posed further obstacles. Once Capitol did start to issue the material, rather than releasing the LPs in their original configuration, they compiled distinct US albums from an assortment of the band's recordings, and issued songs of their own choice as singles. American chart success came suddenly after a CBS news broadcast about British Beatlemania triggered great demand, leading Capitol to rush-release "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in December 1963. The band's US debut was already scheduled to take place a few weeks later.
The Beatles arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964
When The Beatles left the United Kingdom on 7 February 1964, an estimated four thousand fans gathered at Heathrow, waving and screaming as the aircraft took off. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had sold 2.6 million copies in the US over the previous two weeks, but the group were still nervous about how they would be received.At New York's John F. Kennedy Airport[70]The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 74 million viewers—over 40 percent of the American population.The next morning one newspaper wrote that The Beatles "could not carry a tune across the Atlantic",but a day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at Washington Coliseum. Back in New York the following day, they met with another strong reception at Carnegie Hall. The band appeared on the weekly Ed Sullivan Show a second time, before returning to the UK on 22 February. During the week of 4 April, The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five. That same week, a third American LP joined the two already in circulation; all three reached the first or second spot on the US album chart. The band's popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion.The Beatles' hairstyle, unusually long for the era and still mocked by many adults, was widely adopted and became an emblem of the burgeoning youth culture. they were greeted by another vociferous crowd, estimated at about three thousand people. They gave their first live US television performance two days later on
The Beatles toured internationally in June. Staging thirty-two concerts over nineteen days in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, they were ardently received at every venue. Starr was in hospital after a tonsillectomy for the first half of the tour, and Jimmie Nicol sat in on drums. In August they returned to the US, with a thirty-concert tour of twenty-three cities. Generating intense interest once again, the month-long tour attracted between ten and twenty thousand fans to each thirty-minute performance in cities from San Francisco to New York. However, their music could hardly be heard. On-stage amplification at the time was modest compared to modern-day equipment, and the band's small Vox amplifiers struggled to compete with the volume of sound generated by screaming fans. Forced to accept that neither they nor their audiences could hear the details of their performance, the band grew increasingly bored with the routine of concert touring. At the end of the August tour they were introduced to Bob Dylan in New York at the instigation of journalist Al Aronowitz. Visiting the band in their hotel suite, Dylan introduced them to cannabis.Music historian Jonathan Gould points out the musical and cultural significance of this meeting, before which the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's core audience of "college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with The Beatles' core audience of "veritable 'teenyboppers'—kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialized popular culture of television, radio, pop records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters, not idealists." Within six months of the meeting, "Lennon would be making records on which he openly imitated Dylan's nasal drone, brittle strum, and introspective vocal persona." Within a year, Dylan would "proceed, with the help of a five-piece group and a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, to shake the monkey of folk authenticity permanently off his back"; "the distinction between the folk and rock audiences would have nearly evaporated"; and The Beatles' audience would be "showing signs of growing up".
Beatlemania and touring years (1963–1966)
UK popularity, Please Please Me and With The Beatles
In the wake of the moderate success of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" met with a more emphatic reception, reaching number two in the UK singles chart after its January 1963 release. Martin originally intended to record the band's debut LP live at The Cavern Club. Finding it had "the acoustic ambience of an oil tank", he elected to create a "live" album in one session at Abbey Road Studios. Ten songs were recorded for Please Please Me, accompanied on the album by the four tracks already released on the two singles. Recalling how the band "rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day", an Allmusic reviewer comments, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins."Lennon said little thought went into composition at the time; he and McCartney were "just writing songs à la Everly Brothers, à la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that—to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."
Released in March 1963, the album reached number one on the British chart. This began a run during which eleven of The Beatles' twelve studio albums released in the United Kingdom through 1970 hit number one. The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit. It began an almost unbroken run of seventeen British number one singles for the band, including all but one of those released over the next six years. On its release in August, the band's fourth single, "She Loves You", achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks. It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978 when it was topped by "Mull of Kintyre", performed by McCartney and his post-Beatles band Wings. The popularity of The Beatles' music brought with it increasing press attention. They responded with a cheeky, irreverent attitude that defied what was expected of pop musicians and inspired even more interest.
The Beatles' iconic "drop-T" logo, based on an impromptu sketch by instrument retailer and designer Ivor Arbiter, also made its debut in 1963. The logo was first used on the front of Starr's bass drum, which Epstein and Starr purchased from Arbiter's London shop. The band toured the UK three times in the first half of the year: a four-week tour that began in February preceded three-week tours in March and May–June. As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold, dubbed " Beatlemania". Although not billed as tour leaders, they overshadowed other acts including Tommy Roe, Chris Montez and Roy Orbison, US artists who had established great popularity in the UK.Performances everywhere, both on tour and at many one-off shows across the UK, were greeted with riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans.Police found it necessary to use high-pressure water hoses to control the crowds, and there were debates in Parliament concerning the thousands of police officers putting themselves at risk to protect the group.In late October, a five-day tour of Sweden saw the band venture abroad for the first time since the Hamburg chapter. Returning to the UK, they were greeted at Heathrow Airport in heavy rain by thousands of fans in "a scene similar to a shark-feeding frenzy", attended by fifty journalists and photographers and a BBC Television camera crew. The next day, The Beatles began yet another UK tour, scheduled for six weeks. By now, they were indisputably the headliners. Please Please Me was still topping the album chart. It maintained the position for thirty weeks, only to be displaced by With The Beatles which itself held the top spot for twenty-one weeks. Making much greater use of studio production techniques than its "live" predecessor, the album was recorded between July and October. With The Beatles is described by 
Allmusic as "a sequel of the highest order—one that betters the original by developing its own tone and adding depth." In a reversal of what had until then been standard practice, the album was released in late November ahead of the impending single "I Want to Hold Your Hand", with the song excluded in order to maximize the single's sales.With The Beatles caught the attention of Times music critic William Mann, who went as far as to suggest that Lennon and McCartney were "the outstanding English composers of 1963". The newspaper published a series of articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of The Beatles' music, lending it respectability. With The Beatles became the second album in UK chart history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958 South Pacific soundtrack
With an early five-piece line-up of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and Pete Best (drums), The Beatles built their reputation in Liverpool and Hamburg clubs over a three-year period from 1960. Sutcliffe left the group in 1961, and Best was replaced by Starr the following year. Moulded into a professional outfit by music store owner Brian Epstein after he offered to act as the group's manager, and with their musical potential enhanced by the hands-on creativity of producer George Martin, The Beatles achieved mainstream success in the United Kingdom in late 1962 with their first single, "Love Me Do". Gaining international popularity over the course of the next year, they toured extensively until 1966, then retreated to the recording studio until their break-up in 1970. Each then found success in an independent musical career. Lennon was murdered outside his home in New York City in 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in 2001. McCartney and Starr remain active.
During their studio years, The Beatles produced what critics consider some of their finest material including the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), widely regarded as a masterpiece. Four decades after their break-up, The Beatles' music continues to be popular. The Beatles have had more number one albums on the UK charts, and held down the top spot longer, than any other musical act. According to RIAA certifications, they have sold more albums in the United States than any other artist.In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the all-time top-selling Hot 100 artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with The Beatles at number one.They have been honoured with 7 Grammy Awards,and they have received 15 Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. The Beatles were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people.
Formation and early years (1957–1962)
Aged sixteen, singer and guitarist John Lennon formed the skiffle group The Quarrymen with some Liverpool schoolfriends in March 1957.Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a guitarist after he and Lennon met that July.When McCartney in turn invited George Harrison to watch the group the following February, the fourteen-year-old joined as lead guitarist.By 1960, Lennon's schoolfriends had left the group, he had begun studies at the Liverpool College of Art and the three guitarists were playing rock and roll whenever they could get a drummer.Joining on bass in January, Lennon's fellow student Stuart Sutcliffe suggested changing the band name to "The Beetles" as a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets, and they became "The Beatals" for the first few months of the year.After trying other names including "Johnny and the Moondogs", "Long John and The Beetles" and "The Silver Beatles", the band finally became "The Beatles" in August. The lack of a permanent drummer posed a problem when the group's unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged a resident band booking for them in Hamburg, Germany.Before the end of August they auditioned and hired drummer Pete Best, and the five-piece band left for Hamburg four days later, contracted to fairground showman Bruno Koschmider for a 48-night residency. "Hamburg in those days did not have rock 'n' roll music clubs. It had strip clubs", says biographer Philip Norman.
Bruno had the idea of bringing in rock groups to play in various clubs. They had this formula. It was a huge nonstop show, hour after hour, with a lot of people lurching in and the other lot lurching out. And the bands would play all the time to catch the passing traffic. In an American red-light district, they would call it nonstop striptease.
Many of the bands that played in Hamburg were from Liverpool...It was an accident. Bruno went to London to look for bands. But he happened to meet a Liverpool entrepreneur in Soho, who was down in London by pure chance. And he arranged to send some bands over.
Harrison, only 17 years old in August 1960, obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age. Initially placing The Beatles at the Indra Club, Koschmider moved them to the Kaiserkeller in October after the Indra was closed down due to noise complaints.When they violated their contract by performing at the rival Top Ten Club, Koschmider reported the underage Harrison to the authorities, leading to his deportation in November.McCartney and Best were arrested for arson a week later when they set fire to a condom nailed to a wall in their room; they too were deported.Lennon returned to Liverpool in mid-December, while Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg with his new German fiancée, Astrid Kirchherr, for another month. Kirchherr took the first professional photos of the group and cut Sutcliffe's hair in the German "exi" (existentialist) style of the time, a look later adopted by the other Beatles.
During the next two years, the group were resident for further periods in Hamburg. They used Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances.Sutcliffe decided to leave the band in early 1961 and resume his art studies in Germany, so McCartney took up bass. German producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece to act as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings. Credited to "Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June and released four months later, reached number 32 in the Musikmarkt chart.The Beatles were also becoming more popular back home in Liverpool. During one of the band's frequent appearances there at The Cavern Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record store owner and music columnist.When the band appointed Epstein manager in January 1962, Kaempfert agreed to release them from the German record contract. After Decca Records rejected the band with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein", George Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label. News of a tragedy greeted them on their return to Hamburg in April. Meeting them at the airport, a stricken Kirchherr told them of Sutcliffe's death from a brain haemorrhage.
In Liverpool, the Merseybeat movement was gathering force. The band had its first recording session under Martin's direction at EMI Studios in London in June 1962. Martin complained to Epstein about Best's drumming and suggested the band use a session drummer in the studio. Instead, Best was replaced by Ringo Starr. Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join The Beatles, had already performed with them in Best's occasional absence. Martin still hired session drummer Andy White for one session. White played on the single "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You". Released in October, "Love Me Do" was a top twenty UK hit, peaking at number seventeen on the chart.After a November studio session that yielded what would be their second single, "Please Please Me", they made their TV debut with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places. The band concluded their last Hamburg stint in December 1962.By now it had become the pattern that all four members contributed vocals, although Starr's restricted range meant he sang lead only rarely.Lennon and McCartney had established a songwriting partnership; as the band's success grew, their celebrated collaboration limited Harrison's opportunities as lead vocalist. Epstein, sensing The Beatles' commercial potential, encouraged the group to adopt a professional attitude to performing. Lennon recalled the manager saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change—stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking."Lennon said, "We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality ... it was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage."
The album's first single, "Womanizer", was an international hit, reaching the top of the charts in over twenty countries worldwide, including the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. The second single, "Circus", debuted at number three in the USA. The single "If U Seek Amy" managed to reach top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. Spears promoted the album with a series of live performances, including her first world tour in five years, The Circus Starring Britney Spears. The first single, "Womanizer", also received a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Recording. According to TPI Magazine, as of August 2009, the album has sold 7 million copies worldwide. [7] The all digital tracks singles and album from the album in the U.S. have sold a combined total of 10,721,000 units as of July, 2010.
Circus takes influence from a variety of pop genres, such as electropop and dance[31] and has been called a sequel to Spears' previous album, Blackout.[32] She described the album as more lighter than its predecessor, which was more urban sounding.[18] The songs of the album have been compared to the styles of many artists, such as Madonna,[33] Janet Jackson,[34] Eurythmics,[31] New Order[35] and the songwriting of Prince,[31] Leiber & Stoller and Phil Spector.[35] To a lesser degree, the album draws elements from other genres, such as a 1960s go-go rock guitar in "Mmm Papi".[36][37] Circus focuses on different themes and Spears "does double duty as a dance diva and brokenhearted balladeer".[38] Lyrically, it has been compared to Blackout, due to the fact that they are "fiery" and "confrontational".[39] In songs such as "Circus" and "Kill the Lights", the lyrics discuss fame, a theme she has previously acknowledged in "Lucky" and "Piece of Me".[32][38] The album's opening track, "Womanizer" as well as "Shattered Glass" are songs that talk about a womanizing man. The third track, "Out from Under", chronicles the end of her relationship with Kevin Federline.[40] "My Baby" shows her love for her two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James.
Track listing
No. Title Writer(s) Producer(s) Length
1. "Womanizer" Nikesha Briscoe, Rafael Akinyemi K. Briscoe, The Outsyders 3:43
2. "Circus" Lukasz Gottwald, Claude Kelly, Benjamin Levin Dr. Luke, Benny Blanco 3:12
3. "Out from Under" Shelly Peiken, Arnthor Birgisson, Wayne Hector Guy Sigsworth 3:54
4. "Kill the Lights" Nathaniel Hills, James Washington, Luke Boyd, Marcella Araica Danja 3:59
5. "Shattered Glass" Gottwald, Kelly, Levin Dr. Luke, Benny Blanco 2:53
6. "If U Seek Amy" Max Martin, Shellback, Savan Kotecha, Alexander Kronlund Max Martin 3:37
7. "Unusual You" Christian Karlsson, Pontus Winnberg, Henrik Jonback, Kasia Livingston Bloodshy & Avant 4:23
8. "Blur" Hills, Stacy Barthe, Araica Danja 3:09
9. "Mmm Papi" Britney Spears, Henry Walter, Adrien Gough, Peter-John Kerr, Nicole Morier Let's Go To War 3:22
10. "Mannequin" Spears, Harvey Mason, Jr., Rob Knox, James Fauntleroy II Harvey Mason, Jr., Rob Knox 4:06
11. "Lace and Leather" Gottwald, Levin, Frankie Storm, Ronnie Jackson Dr. Luke 2:48
12. "My Baby" Spears, Sigsworth Guy Sigsworth 3:20
One of the most anticipated album releases of 2009, Relapse debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 608,000 copies in its first week. It produced three singles that attained chart success and has been certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album received generally mixed reviews from most music critics, who were mostly divided in their responses towards Eminem's lyrics. It earned him two Grammy Awards and has sold over two million copies in the United States.
In the initial recording stages of Relapse, record producer and long-time Detroit collaborator Jeff Bass of the Bass Brothers worked with Eminem on 25 tracks, for two years after the rapper had received treatment for his sleeping pill addiction in 2005.[4][16] Depressed by Proof's death, Eminem fell into a period of "writer's block", where he felt everything he wrote was not worth recording.[6] To compensate for this, Bass chose to follow a production style that would allow the artist to rap "off the top of his head, as opposed to writing a story."[16] Eminem would then freestyle or record vocals one line at a time before interrupting and then recording another line.[6] At the same time, according to Eminem's song rights supervisor Joel Martin, the rapper began collecting additional songs without noticing it, as he would often record or produce material initially intended for the musical projects of other artists, but end up with tracks he really liked.[16] "Beautiful", produced by Eminem, was the only song on Relapse that was recorded in these years while he was not sober.
Track listing
All songs were written by Eminem.[65]
No. Title Producer(s) Length
1. "Dr. West" (skit) Dr. Dre, Eminem 1:29
2. "3 a.m." Dr. Dre 5:19
3. "My Mom" Dr. Dre 5:19
4. "Insane" Dr. Dre 3:01
5. "Bagpipes from Baghdad" Dr. Dre, T. Lawrence 4:43
6. "Hello" Dr. Dre, M. Batson 4:08
7. "Tonya" (skit) Dr. Dre, Eminem 0:42
8. "Same Song & Dance" Dr. Dre, D. Parker 4:06
9. "We Made You" Dr. Dre, Eminem, Doc Ish 4:29
10. "Medicine Ball" Dr. Dre, M. Batson 3:57
11. "Paul" (skit) Dr. Dre 0:19
12. "Stay Wide Awake" Dr. Dre 5:19
13. "Old Time's Sake" (featuring Dr. Dre) Dr. Dre, M. Batson 4:38
14. "Must Be the Ganja" Dr. Dre, M. Batson 4:02
15. "Mr. Mathers" (skit) Dr. Dre, Eminem 0:42
16. "Déjà Vu" Dr. Dre 4:43
17. "Beautiful" Eminem 6:32
18. "Crack a Bottle" (featuring Dr. Dre & 50 Cent) Dr. Dre 4:57
19. "Steve Berman" (skit) Dr. Dre 1:29
20. "Underground" Dr. Dre 6:11
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