King of Pop is dead but his legacy will will on ......forever.......
Tributes have been pouring in for pop singer Michael Jackson who died yesterday following a suspected cardiac arrest in his Bel-Air home.
The 13-time Grammy award winner Jackson was pronounced dead at 10.26 p.m. Irish time after arriving at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in full cardiac arrest, said Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County Coroner's office.
The cause of death is not known and an autopsy is likely to take place later today, Mr Corral said.
Jackson was taken ill at home and his personal physician tried to resuscitate him but could not, his brother Jermaine told reporters. Jackson was taken by paramedics to the hospital, where doctors worked for more than an hour to try to revive him before pronouncing him dead, the brother said.
Jackson (50) became a musical icon performing with The Jackson 5, when he was just six years of age. By the time he was 11, he’d graduated from standing at the back playing the tambourine and bongos to fronting the group’s debut Motown single I Want You Back . It went to number one and Jackson’s haul of blockbuster hits begun.
But it was 1983’s Thriller which was the singer’s tour-de-force. It sold like no other album before it, amassing 60 million sales and seeing seven of the album’s nine tracks released as singles.
The next year, he unveiled his signature “moonwalk” dance move while performing Billie Jean during an NBC special.
In recent years, controversy continued to dominate his life. A 2003 television documentary, Living with Michael Jackson , claimed that Jackson still had sleepovers with young boys and had his third child with a surrogate mother, but Jackson denied these charges.
Concerns about his health had been rampant during his 2005 trial in California on charges of child sex abuse at which he was acquitted and in 2008 when he was photographed in Las Vegas in a wheelchair for reasons that were never explained.
At the time of his death, Jackson was preparing to perform 50 concerts at London’s 02 Arena.The shows, which were due to begin on July 13, sold out within hours of going on sale. AEG Live said Jackson had passed a lengthy physical exam in early 2009, before the London concerts were announced.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him," said Quincy Jones, who collaborated with Jackson on three of his best-selling albums, Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad .
Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson II.
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