Blurb Black or white: The tragic life of Michael Jackson For 40 years, the King of Pop thrilled fans with a career of superlatives - the legendary album Thriller from 1982, with which he celebrated his worldwide breakthrough as a solo artist, is still the world's most successful pop album of all time with 67 million records sold. On stage, Jackson was a giant, privately countless catastrophes followed one another. Drug addiction, financial problems, surgeries, the scandals surrounding his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe's surrogacy, but above all the allegations of child abuse tarnished his reputation.