Michael Jackson Dies: King of Pop Gone at 50

Conrad Murray injected propofol into Michael Jackson’s bloodstream in a bedroom, using a drug designed exclusively for hospital operating rooms, and the greatest entertainer of his generation never woke up. Jackson died on June 25, 2009, at age 50 in his rented Holmby Hills mansion in Los Angeles, just weeks before a planned 50-concert comeback residency at London’s O2 Arena that had sold out in hours. Jackson’s influence on popular music and culture was unmatched in the second half of the twentieth century. "Thriller," released in 1982, remains the best-selling album in history, with estimated sales exceeding 70 million copies worldwide. He invented the modern music video as an art form, pioneered dance moves that became part of the global vocabulary, and broke racial barriers at MTV when the network resisted playing Black artists. His 1983 performance of the moonwalk on the Motown 25 television special is one of the most replayed moments in entertainment history. His final years were defined by financial distress, legal battles, and physical deterioration. Jackson’s 2005 acquittal on child molestation charges left him emotionally shattered and deeply in debt. He relocated to Bahrain, then Ireland, before returning to the United States for the "This Is It" concert series. Rehearsal footage showed flashes of his old brilliance, but behind the scenes, he was dependent on a cocktail of prescription drugs to manage chronic pain and insomnia. Murray, his personal physician, had been administering propofol nightly as a sleep aid for weeks. Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011 and served two years in prison. Jackson’s estate, burdened with hundreds of millions in debt at the time of his death, has since earned billions through music sales, licensing deals, and a Cirque du Soleil show, making him more commercially successful dead than almost any artist alive.