Gary, Indiana, to the best-selling album in history

Michael Jackson was the eighth of ten children, born in 1958 in Gary, Indiana, to a working-class family in a two-bedroom home on Jackson Street. His mother Katherine played clarinet, cello and piano and had once aspired to country-and-western stardom. His father Joe, a former boxer and crane operator at US Steel, played guitar for a local rhythm and blues group, the Falcons. There was music in the house long before there was a stage for it.

At six, Michael made his public debut as lead singer of the Jackson 5. His solo stardom took off with Off the Wall in 1979, and in 1982 came Thriller, which became the best-selling album in history. The music videos for “Thriller”, “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” redefined the medium, and his stage moves, the moonwalk, the robot and the anti-gravity lean, popularized street dance on a worldwide scale.

Bad, in 1987, was the first album to produce five number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100, among them “I Just Can't Stop Loving You” and “The Way You Make Me Feel”. Dangerous and HIStory were also successful, and Invincible, in 2001, was his final album. In 2009 he was rehearsing for This Is It, a series of comeback concerts, when he died; the news caused unprecedented surges in internet traffic and a spike in music sales.

The totals are hard to hold in the head. He has sold an estimated 500 million records as a solo artist, scored thirteen number-one singles on the Hot 100, and remains the only artist with a US top-ten single in six decades. He collected thirteen Grammy Awards and entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. Songs such as “Human Nature”, “Rock with You” and “Baby Be Mine” are a reminder that behind the spectacle sat an unusually wide catalogue, and that catalogue remains the highest-selling of any solo musician.