by André Depienne

How many records in total Michael Jackson has sold, will never known for sure. Accor- ding to the “Guinness book of Records” it should be between 300 and 400 million. Some people even pretend it would be around 700 million. Michael Jackson was often referred to as the “King of Pop”. The music magazine “Rolling Stone” elected him number 25 of the best singers ever. Michael started his career with the “Jackson Five” founded by his dad Joseph Jackson. At the beginning there were only the brothers Jackie, Tito and Jermaine, Marlon and Michael joined only in 1966 and they changed the name from “The Jackson Brothers” into “Jackson Five”. In October 1969 they appeared for the first time in the Ame- rican charts on the top position. Two years later Michael released his first solo album called “Got to be there”. His biggest success however, was in 1982 with the album “Thril- ler” being on top of the American charts for 37 weeks. Only in the US this album was sold not less than 24 million times, worldwide the estimation of sales is around 45 million. It is the biggest selling album in music history so far.In 1987, “Bad” another remarkable album was released. Michael Jackson died on June 25th, 2009 aged only 50. The official reason for his death is an overdose of the anesthetic “Propofol”.