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Influence
As the biggest solo star since Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson has had a notable impact on music and culture throughout the world while also tearing down social barriers and paving the way for modern pop music and the concept of the modern pop star in his own country. He has been described as an "extremely important figure in the history of popular culture," a person with "planetary influence," and is one of the most famous living humans. Michael Jackson holds the record as the most awarded recording artist in history. Throughout his four-decade career, he has received numerous honors and awards, including the World Music Award's Best-Selling Pop Male Artist of the Millennium, the American Music Award's Artist of the Century Award, and the Bambi's Pop Artist of the Millennium Award. He is a double-inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (once as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1997 and as a solo artist in 2001) and an inductee of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. At his height, he was characterized as "an unstoppable juggernaut, possessed of all the tools to dominate the charts seemingly at will: an instantly identifiable voice, eye-popping dance moves, stunning musical versatility, and loads of sheer star power". In 1990, Vanity Fair magazine named him the "Most Popular Artist in the History of Show Business". Jackson's work has influenced and spawned a whole generation of a wide variety of artists, including Mariah Carey, Usher, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Omarion, Ne-Yo, and Chris Brown, among others.

Music videos and MTV
Michael Jackson is widely regarded as being the first artist to elevate music videos to a meaningful art form, setting off new trends of story-telling, mini-movies, and choreographed dance sequences that dominate the genre to this day. The concept of the short film, epitomized by 1983's "Thriller" but also seen in other Jackson videos such as "Ghosts", "Bad", "Smooth Criminal", and "Remember the Time", would largely remain unique to him, but the group-scene dancing pioneered by "Beat It" and popularized by "Thriller" has been a staple of music videos ever since. The dance sequence from "Thriller" has captivated popular culture worldwide, being replicated everywhere from Indian movies to Western wedding ceremonies.

Central to Michael Jackson’s success with music videos was the relatively young music channel MTV, created in 1981, which put Jackson’s videos in heavy rotation throughout the 1980s. Before the fruitful relationship materialized, however, Jackson struggled against the channel just to have his videos aired. In 1983, when Jackson came out with "Billie Jean", his first video from Thriller, MTV rarely aired videos by African-American performers and promptly refused Jackson’s requests for a running. Upon hearing the news, CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff went livid, denouncing MTV and warning, "I’m pulling everything we have off the air, all our product. I’m not going to give you any more videos. And I’m going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact you don’t want to play music by a black guy". Yetnikoff's harsh stance and rhetoric worked; MTV retreated and started giving "Billie Jean" heavy coverage, laying the groundwork for a dynamic partnership with Jackson that would last for years. When the 14-minute long music video for "Thriller" came out in December 1983, it took MTV by storm, running as often as twice within an hour at its height. True to its name, the video also had the feeling of a psychological thriller, reportedly scaring viewers across the United States, especially young children. "Thriller" marked the beginning of a new era in music videos and is often cited as the greatest music video of all time.

Michael Jackson is often credited for putting MTV, initially a struggling cable channel, on the map "with pioneering videos such as "Thriller", "Billie Jean", and "Beat It"." In response to Jackson's influence, MTV shifted its musical focus as time went on, going from rock videos to more and more pop and R&B showings.

Legacy of Thriller
Released in 1982, Thriller became the most commercially successful album of all time and one of the most critically acclaimed, single-handedly transforming Jackson into his generation's Elvis or the Beatles and making him the "late 20th century's pre-eminent pop icon". It remains Jackson's most celebrated musical achievement and has acquired a prominent position in American culture. In the 1980s, it was an indelible part of American life, as described by TIME magazine, "The numbers, which are incredible, are also becoming indelible. How many Beatles were there? How many homers did Babe Ruth hit? How many Grammy Awards did Michael Jackson win on Feb. 28? How many copies of Thriller have been sold? Well, the Grammys are easy".

The second track released from the album and Jackson's highest-selling single ever, "Billie Jean", has been described as "one of the most sonically eccentric, psychologically fraught, downright bizarre things ever to land on Top 40 radio". Jackson's earlier solo work in Off the Wall had revealed a disco-funk combination, but "Billie Jean," edged onwards by a "pulsing, cat-on-the-prowl bass figure, whip-crack downbeat and eerie multi-tracked vocals ricocheting in the vast spaces between keyboards and strings", featured a new and revolutionary sound, one that made Jackson's idiosyncratic vocals a staple of pop music and established a sleek, post-soul tune "whose echoes can be heard to this day". Apart from the title track and the accompanying music video, the album's other memorable single was "Beat It", which Jackson described as "the type of rock song that I would go out and buy, but also something totally different from the rock music I was hearing on Top Forty radio". The song was a crossover hit, buoyed by a "watch-my-fingers-fly guitar solo provided by Eddie Van Halen".

Apart from establishing Jackson's iconic status and a new pop sound, Thriller revolutionized the music industry, which was watching in anticipation as the juggernaut comfortably and steadily broke record after record. Gil Friesen, President of A&M Records, stated that "the whole industry has a stake in this success". At its height, Thriller was an industry in and of itself, with the Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller, a videotape describing the secrets behind the new music video that was released in the Christmas of 1983, going on to sell 350,000 copies by March 1984.

The main influence Thriller had on the industry involved raising the importance of the album as a means of musical distribution. After Thriller, which, by posting seven top ten Hot 100 hits, had shattered traditional notions of how many singles an album could release before falling in popularity, record companies took an interest in following Michael Jackson's approach of releasing high-profile albums once every few years. Although the importance of singles relative to albums had started to wane before the 1980s, Thriller firmly established the album as the dominant force in the music industry, a status it retains to this day.

TIME magazine summed up the impact of Thriller as follows: "For a record industry stuck on the border between the ruins of punk and the chic regions of synthesizer pop, Thriller was a thorough restoration of confidence, a rejuvenation. Its effect on listeners, especially younger ones, was nearer to a revelation". Additionally, Thriller marked the return of black music to commercial radio for the first time in years, leading Quincy Jones to the following characterization of the doors opened by Michael Jackson: "No doubt about it, he's taken us right up there where we belong. Black music had to play second fiddle for a long time, but its spirit is the whole motor of pop. Michael has connected with every soul in the world". By overcoming what some have called the "apartheid of pop", Jackson paved the way for the success of future acts, most immediately and notably Prince, who had been confined to low levels of airplay before Thriller opened the floodgates.

Style and performance
Among the most celebrated aspects of Michael Jackson's career have been his dance, fashion, and vocal styles, which have given rise to impersonators all over the world. In 1984, TIME magazine wrote the following on the singer's notable style: "His high-flying tenor makes him sound like the lead in some funked-up boys choir, even as the sexual dynamism irradiating from the arch of his dancing body challenges Government standards for a nuclear meltdown. His lithe frame, five-fathom eyes, long lashes might be threatening if Jackson gave, even for a second, the impression that he is obtainable".

Jackson's dancing abilities were always an important part of his life, and ones that he honed through constant training and dedication, manifested, according to TIME, by "[shutting] himself up at the house in a room that has no mirrors—"Mirrors make you pose," he has said—and [cutting] loose to his own music or to the Isley Brothers' Showdown, practicing what Dancer Hinton Battle calls "moves that kill. It's the combinations that really distinguish him as an artist. Spin, stop, pull up leg, pull jacket open, turn, freeze. And the glide, where he steps forward while pushing back. Spinning three times and popping up on his toes. That's a trademark, and a move a lot of professionals wouldn't try. If you go up wrong, you can really hurt yourself". Jackson has been described as an "avant-garde dancer" that allowed his techniques to acquire meaning through the "theatrical context" surrounding them. His dancing abilities, sometimes compared to past greats like Fred Astaire and Rudolf Nureyev, have contributed strongly to his perceived status as one of the greatest performers of all time.

Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" outing at Motown 25 on May 16, 1983 is widely regarded as one of the greatest performances of all time, despite the fact that Jackson lip-synched the song. More than 50 million viewers tuned in to see the special and Jackson perform his most popular song at the time. It marked a new height in his popularity, pushed forward by the publicly-dubbed "moonwalk," an illusory move designed to create the impression that the dancer is walking backwards. The moonwalk became Jackson's signature dance move and he would replicate it in all future performances of "Billie Jean." Jackson did not invent the move, but he was responsible for perfecting it, making it a household name, and enshrining it into the psyche of American culture, which witnessed kids and people of all age groups trying to do the move after the Motown special as well as earning a fitting peroration from the New York Times: "The moonwalk that he made famous is an apt metaphor for his dance style. How does he do it? As a technician, he is a great illusionist, a genuine mime. His ability to keep one leg straight as he glides while the other bends and seems to walk requires perfect timing".

Michael Jackson's outfits, everything from the sequined white glove, which has led to some dubbing him as "The Gloved One", to the jacket in the "Thriller" music video, have been essential components of his image and performance. The "Jheri-curled hair and single-gloved, zippered-jacket look" became a favorite for many people across the United States in the 1980s. Jackson has also made the fedora hat something of a trademark in his exhibitions, and many modern artists pay tribute to the look.

Themes and genres
Michael Jackson's musical palette has covered everything from disco and pop to rock and R&B. Jackson's musical themes have been equally varied, featuring material on typical pop subjects like love and joy as well as more mature works on social justice and his convoluted relationship with the media. Jackson's solo career with Motown in the 1970s was largely unimaginative, dominated as it was by label-backed songwriters and producers intent on giving the young performer typical ballads and other similarly-styled melodious tracks. In his two-decade career with Epic, however, Jackson displayed extensive creativity, gradually evolving from compositions with mild, non-controversial messages to songs dealing with increasingly solemn and darker themes, a reflection of his personal struggles and his status as an international icon.

Off the Wall and Thriller showcased a Michael Jackson primarily focused on making dance hits and ballads with catchy tunes and rhythms. While this preoccupation would continue in his future work, it would also be colored by various shifts and improvisations. Even in this early material, however, Jackson displayed notable paradoxes, mixing the melodious and comfortable sounds of "Lady in My Life" with the haunting and terrorized environments of "Billie Jean" and "Beat It", where women accused him of fathering their children and the outside world seemed strange and hostile. Bad was accused by some of not delivering the exciting lyrics evident in Thriller, being more intent on consolidating a traditional pop sound and defeating the records of Jackson's previous releases. The album left clues for future projects, however, mentioning in the tense intro to "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" that "A lot of people misunderstand me....because they don't know me at all". Bad included Jackson's first major inspirational song, "Man in the Mirror", which was praised for its message and captivating sound and also criticized as, among other things, "pure pabulum."

Jackson's work in the 1990s was characterized by more introspective material. Some have argued that the Dangerous album represented Jackson at a "near peak" in terms of musical quality and creativity and received more critical acclaim than his previous Bad album. Several things remained the same, with the title track to Dangerous ensuring another song about a "predatory lover". More and more of Jackson's music in the decade, like "Black or White", "Heal the World", "They Don't Care About Us", and "Earth Song", started addressing sociopolitical issues around the world. The music in Dangerous, described as a "a sonic machine world" with "synthetic basslines, swooshing scratched records, [and] clanking metallic noises", reflected old influences while absorbing new trends, made all the more pressing by Jackson's habit of releasing albums once every four or so years, time periods that allowed for significant development in the sound of pop music.

HIStory, arguably Jackson's most conflictive album, revealed a "furious" pop icon worn by years of superstardom, with Jon Pareles of the New York Times writing that "It has been a long time since Michael Jackson was simply a performer. He's the main asset of his own corporation, which is a profitable subsidiary of Sony". The album featured Jackson using profanity and other controversial lyrics, which forced him to modify some of the words to "They Don't Care About Us". Edged onwards by a quasi-messianic flair, he also railed against the media in "Tabloid Junkie", singing, "With your pen you torture me/You'd crucify the Lord" and that "Just because you read it in a magazine/ Or see it on a TV screen/ Don't make it factual". HIStory mostly encompassed reflective compositions, presenting only one conventional love song, "You Are Not Alone".

Connection with Slash
Jackson formed a long term musical bond with world famous guitarist Slash. Indeed, Slash is Michael Jackson's only long term musical partner outside of The Jacksons. Slash came to fame as lead guitarist for Guns N' Roses from 1985 to 1996, and remained prolific recently in Velvet Revolver. Despite Slash being a punky L.A. rocker, his style provided a contrasting foil to Jackson's own. Slash first joined Jackson in 1991 for the Dangerous album. He wrote and performed the introduction to "Black or White", and played three solos on "Give in to Me". During the Dangerous World Tour, Slash appeared on stage for a few performances of "Black or White" and at music award ceremonies. . Slash also featured in the video for "Give in to Me", performing the song (in its entirety, not just his solo) on stage with Jackson in a pseudo live performance featuring Guns N' Roses then-rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke. With "Beat It" on Thriller, "Dirty Diana" on Bad and "Black or White" on Dangerous, Jackson had made a pop rock song on each of his albums a staple, each with a famous guest guitarist. After Slash's work on Dangerous however, he became a regular guest on Jackson's albums. On HIStory, he performed an extended solo for the song "D.S." and on Invincible he did a solo during "Privacy". To confirm the guitarist's identity (now with positive connotations towards his work with Jackson), Jackson shouted "Slash!" before these solos. Slash has appeared with Jackson a few times since. He appeared on stage for the MTV Music Video Awards 1995 during the introduction to "Black or White", played a solo, then remained on stage to play along to the opening of "Billie Jean". In 2001, on Jackson's 30th Anniversary Special Slash appeared to perform "Black or White" and "Beat It" (including the trademark Eddie Van Halen solo). Despite appearing on his last three albums, there is no word as of November 2007 on Jackson's new studio album regarding Slash.