MashGet

Michael Jackson spent approximately 45 percent of his life as a cherubic, preternaturally gifted, exquisitely Afro-ed kid from Gary, Indiana, and the remaining 55 percent of it as the most famous man on the planet. This probably explains everything about him: his eccentricities (real or imagined), his music, his triumphs and tribulations and, ultimately, his death. Michael Jackson was never a normal person; he never had a normal childhood (his father put him to work in the family business - the Jackson 5 - at the age of 5), and he segued from that directly into an exceedingly abnormal adulthood, one spent directly beneath the megawatt glare of the spotlight. He lived - and died - smothered by fame.