Michael Jackson Accomplishments

I have been enjoying the songwriting class so far, as I have got exposure to many songwriters’ interviews as well as their great hits. For the purpose of the final project, I will pick Michael Jackson and discuss his life and career. Instead of talking about the fact that he was well-known as an amazing performer, , I will talk about his major influence as a songwriter. Michael Jackson has been well recognized as a successful songwriter, singer, and performer. As a successful songwriter, Michael Jackson had written over 200 songs, including the well-known “Black and White”, “Someone Put Your Hand Out”, and “This Is It”. Among all the songs he originally wrote and co-wrote, 20 of them reached multi-million performance status on the radio and

Together with his older brothers, Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon, and Tito, Michael Jackson made his very first professional debut and landed a record deal with Motown. In 1971, Michael Jackson left the group and officially began his solo career. In the early 1980s, Michael Jackson became prominent, and achieved great accomplishments on his solo career. Followed up his successful album “Off the Wall”, his 1982 album “Thriller” was definitely one of the world’s best selling albums in the music history. With the sales of 66 million copies, the “Thriller” received an unprecedented number of eight Grammy Awards in 1984. While the album was produced by Quincy Jones, the producer who had a long and productive cooperation with Michael Jackson, Michael, as a prominent songwriter, wrote four of the nine songs in the album. It is noticeable that the album utilized different music genres, such as pop, rock, as well as funk. In addition to the great success on the album in terms of sales, the album was well recognized as the one that broke the racial barrier in the pop music industry. The album was also a breakthrough in the music production industry, as it introduced the idea of music videos which later became a impactful promotion tool. The videos for the songs

One of the songs in the “Thriller” album, “Billie Jean”, was a number 1 hit single in many countries. As a typical song in the album, “Billie Jean” contains funk and disco elements in the song. As the songwriter of the “Billie Jean”, Michael Jackson wrote this song based on his real life experience. During the era when Michael Jackson was so influential, he continuously received letter from his female fans. One of the female fans wrote Michael Jackson a letter, stating that he was the father of one of her twins. She was hoping that Michael Jackson could live with her and raise the kid together. There was no doubt that she is one of the crazy fans and Michael Jackson has never met her. Being bothered by this kind of letter continuously, he suffered from nightware. At the same time, this was where his inspiration came. Keeping in mind the story from this female fan, he wrote the song “Billie Jean” to reflect his real life experience. According to Michael Jackson, “A musician knows hit material. Everything has to feel in place. It fulfills you and it makes you feel good. That's how I felt about 'Billie Jean'. I knew it was going to be big when I was writing