I'm going to disagree with you about his music, even though I'm not a huge Michael Jackson fan, because he had a killer groove. But Jackson was never a musician first and foremost. He was a dancer. He was the best dancer of this last half century, bar none. He was the dancer that inspired enormous movements in dance. When he performed for Motown, none other than Fred Astaire, king of the old dancers, called him to congratulate him. I'm not a big fan of dance, but watching Michael in action was like watching a man defy physics. The way he moved inspired me to start working out and treating my body properly; because of him I want to learn to dance. I'll never dance like him, but he showed me that my body was an instrument as much as anything manmade can be.

To his death, he still had those moves. Just because he became the center of a freakish media circus doesn't mean he'd lost all talent. In fact, he's one of the few celebrities who never seemed to like his celebrity. He didn't get coked up or destroy things. The controversies surrounding him are all ones he wished would go away. He remained famous first and foremost for his incredible talent.