If you're a fan of Michael Jackson, you don't need to know anything more than what's in the music. The "whoo-hoo!" that announces his arrival on 1979's "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough." The slinky bassline prowling through "Billie Jean." The tender sigh he could put on for a ballad like "You Are Not Alone."

But somewhere underneath that collision of figures that is his career - 12 No. 1 records, 51 million copies sold of Thriller, 80 million copies of the others, 13 Grammy Awards - there's a man, and one whose achievements are far greater than mere numbers. His '80s success opened up white America to black music in a way not seen since his predecessor Little Richard banged out "Tutti Frutti" in 1956. Without Jackson there is no Prince. No Whitney Houston. No Lenny Kravitz. And the world is a lesser place.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, in Gary, Ind. His middle name was his father's. At 5 he became the vehicle for steelworker Joseph's dreams when mother Kathrine found him practicing dance steps in front of a mirror. Joseph forced Michael and his brothers to create the Jackson 5 in 1963 and they began playing local clubs.

From the get-go it was obvious Michael was the star. When Gladys Knight recommended the Jacksons to Berry Gordy and they became Motown's newest hit-making machine in the early '70s, it was Michael's precocious wail that electrified the No. 1's "I Want You Back," "ABC," and "I'll Be There." And though Randy, Tito, and Jermaine may be talented, they were never anyone's favorite Jackson.

Michael is pop's last great entertainer. He's so focused on performance and applause, he skirted a true childhood because it interfered with professionalism. The need to please made him a candidate for solo stardom, and he enjoyed his first personal No. 1 in 1972 with "Ben," the title track of a film about a boy and his rat. Noted lyricist Don Black, "He enjoys anything that crawls or flies."

When the Jacksons breached their Motown contract and leaped to Epic in 1976, Michael dutifully followed, but it's probably then that he began thinking outside the well-oiled singing unit. A move from the family camp in Encino to New York to rehearse for 1978's film version of The Wiz gave him an even stronger sense of independence. And on the set he met jazz arranger and producer Quincy Jones.

In a flash Jones was Jackson's father figure. When the singer decided to turn a handful of his own songs into his first real solo album, he went to Jones for advice. "Quincy does jazz, he does movie scores, rock 'n' roll, funk, pop - he's all colors," said Jackson. "And that's the kind of people I like to work with."

1979's Off the Wall was something new and unexpected. Baby days were finished. Here Michael sings in a commanding falsetto on the album's first No. 1, "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough," then goes marshmallow soft on the second, "Rock With You." Jones observed, "He behaves like an adolescent and, at the same time, like a wise old philosopher." For his part, the producer drilled the musicians like a Motown revue, with horns riveting down sheets of synths over microchip-precise rhythm. It was the future, and sold 10 million copies.

Heatwave's Rod Temperton was hired to write some songs, and provided Jackson with the soon-to-be-smash "Thriller." But Jackson's own songwriting was uncanny. His ear for a pop melody was sharp as hardened hit-makers (and pals) like Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney. His lyrical concerns, however, showed a startling ambition and instability. On "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough," he's "melting like hot candle wax." "Working Day and Night" is a 21-year-old already bitching of show biz's demands.

On Thriller's "Beat It," he advised his followers to turn the other cheek while moving to a groove that made "My Sharona" funky, and fled from sexual threats of a girl named "Billie Jean." On "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" he failed to protect his baby from player haters' brickbats. It was as if Jackson could admit to vulnerability only in song. Meanwhile his music shattered genres and his androgynous vocals dissolved gender.

Those victories were aural. But he also made us watch. And visually, there was no one who could touch Michael. Fred Astaire crossed generations to heave praise: "He is a wonderful mover." On the groundbreaking videos to "Beat It" and "Billie Jean," he conflated time and space with his self-designed choreography, wearing a single glove and untied shoes like there wasn't even time to dress himself properly. Video was his medium, and Jackson lived life as if it were a series of four-minute tableaus, of rushed appearances ending with the cheap compassion of "I love you all." His very presence injected a sense of event into awards shows, starting with the jaw-dropping debut of the moonwalk on Motown's 25th anniversary special.

1983 was his year. "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" climbed to No. 1. The 15-minute "Thriller" video hit movie theaters. Michael was everywhere, but only long enough to be a tantalizing vision in sunglasses and rhinestone drill uniform: appearing on magazine covers, singing with his brothers on the ill-fated Victory tour, writing "We Are the World" with Lionel Richie, being in public on the arm of Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Ross. When did this Icarus hit his zenith? Maybe it was when 5,000 radio stations played "We Are the World" at once on April 5, 1985.

In the years that followed there were plans for movies, visits to sick children, and the purchase of the Neverland Ranch in Santa Ynez Valley, Calif., which Jackson fitted out into a theme park. Behind the scenes, he wrote more than 60 songs for the Thriller follow-up, while Quincy Jones convened songwriters at his home as well, explaining, "I just want hits, that's all I want." In Jackson's own autobiographical de profundis, Moonwalker he turns combative about Bad's gestation: "Why did it take so long to make Bad? The answer is that Quincy and I decided that this album should be as close to perfect as is humanly possible."

Maybe too perfect. Like Thriller before it, 1987's Bad, with its five consecutive No. 1's, was pillaged by the urban acts that followed in Jackson's wake for its sound, but although Jackson was as brutal with himself as he had ever been on the driving title cut and frightened like Kafka on the misogynistic "Dirty Diana," he was no Public Enemy. Bad was released just as the street began to edge away from him.

Jackson was still the most famous person on the planet. He just appeared to have left it. He was blanching on the cover of Bad. There were pictures of him sleeping in an oxygen tent (a donation, he insists, to the Los Angeles hospital where he was treated for burns). His pet chimp Bubbles attended the Bad sessions. He even tried to buy the Elephant Man's remains for $50,000. No sale.

Looking harder at Jackson, the more bizarre he became and the music now took second place. Bad was supported by one of the largest-grossing tours of all time, but with the '90s, America went from an age in which we wanted to buy everything to one in which we wanted to know everything, from the state of O.J.'s soul to our president's inside leg measurement. In 1993, we thought we finally had Jackson pinned, as a teenage member of his infantile entourage accused him of a sleepover molestation.

There was talk of photographing the star's genitalia as Exhibit A, while Jackson himself declared his innocence in a satellite broadcast from another world. He would hide himself in a wig, fake moustache, and false teeth to go out. He had become pale. Drawn. Old. His music's vulnerability became more obvious, wiping away any traces of his race and sex, leaving eyes without a face. A settlement finally ended the allegations. Appropriately, Jackson's two marriages - first a royal one to Lisa Marie Presley, then to his beloved dermatologist's assistant - were more fantastic than anything directed by John Landis.

It didn't help that the music now ran alongside the competition. He parted ways with Jones, weary of his protege's perfectionism, and after 1991's horrid Dangerous, released the grandiose HIStory: Past, Present and Future - Book 1. Think you know Michael? Then welcome to his world. Much of it sounded like a suicide note in Xanadu, railing against what tried to destroy him. Then, in typical fashion, he claimed he wanted to save it all on the barmy "Earth Song."

He's laid low for the past few years. There's talk of a new album, but mostly by those who want us to know they aren't working on it. That might be why he's exciting again. Thriller was nearly two decades ago, but the images from that time are as vibrant as his be-jeweled glove. He's an all-singing, all-dancing Adam of a species that's all but extinct - an enigmatic magician who only wants you to be delighted.

The new album got released, it is called Invicable, thou it never reached the standards of his other albums, many people think Michael won't beable to reach the standards he once had. Many things have changed. His phisical apperance, his songs, and the music world has changed. And maybe, just maybe, the music world has left no room for the one and only King Of Pop, but is he still the true King Of Pop? Many people say yes, but many people say no. He has tried to change from the 80s and 90s star to the star of today. If he is still the King Of Pop? Well that's up to you to decide.