Controversial singer Michael Jackson, who sold in excess of 750 million albums in his four-decade career, died of an apparent cardiac arrest on June 25, prompting outpourings of grief around the world from fellow artists and devastated fans.

LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson was a child prodigy, a musical genius and one of the most idolised artists on Earth.

The 50-year-old pop megastar was hospitalised on June 25 after suffering a cardiac arrest and the Los Angeles coroner confirmed his death shortly afterward.

For all his fame and legions of fans, Jackson lived the final years of his life as a virtual recluse after he was acquitted in 2005 on charges of child molestation and plotting to kidnap his young accuser.

Despite his acquittal, the trial dealt a body blow from which the pop music superstar never recovered.

Four years later, the 50-year-old was still worshipped by fans for revolutionising music, dance and music videos at the peak of his success.

Jackson was scheduled to launch a comeback tour, with the first of four London concerts set for July 13. The kickoff concert was pushed back from July 8 because of the “sheer magnitude” of the show, promoters and producers AEG Live said.

Jackson told fans at a brief press conference in London in March that the performances — his first major shows for more than a decade — would be his “final curtain”.

In recent years, the attention paid to Jackson, a father of three, was less flattering, focusing on apparent cosmetic surgery — which he denied — his baby dangling antics and a decade of swirling child abuse allegations.

Born on August 29, 1958, Jackson made his show business debut with four of his older brothers in the Jackson Five pop group, and went on to lead the stage clan with a piping soprano and dazzling dance moves.

By 1969, the group had signed a contract with Motown Records, becoming one of the last great acts to emerge from the legendary label.

The Jacksons produced seven platinum singles for Motown, selling over a million, and three multi-platinum albums, selling more than two million. They moved to CBS’s Epic Records in 1976.

In 1979, Quincy Jones produced Jackson’s first solo album for Epic, Off the Wall, a huge disco-oriented success that sold 10 million copies.

They teamed up again in 1982 for what would be Jackson’s breakthrough album as a composer and co-producer, Thriller, which became the top-selling US album of all time, with sales exceeding 41 million.

According to Robert Thompson, an expert in pop culture at the University of Syracuse, New York, Jackson’s later problems can be traced back to the phenomenal success of Thriller.

“He got to the point that he was so rich, so powerful and so famous, that he was allowed to kind of withdraw from any kind of reality,” Thompson told AFP.

Thriller was followed by Bad in 1987 (20 million sold) and Dangerous in 1991 (21 million sold), with videos whose auto-erotic dance contrasted with Jackson’s sweet, childlike personality offstage.

A pop culture icon with enormous wealth, Jackson in 1991 signed a deal with Sony Music described as the most lucrative contract ever for a recording artist. Although Jackson’s share was not disclosed, Sony estimated the sales potential at US$1 billion.

But in 1993, a 13-year-old boy made sex abuse allegations against his former pal Jackson, and prosecutors and police launched an investigation.

A year later, Jackson struck an out-of-court agreement with the family under which he paid out a total of $23.3 million, a deal which Jackson later said he regretted.

As Jackson’s personal life was complicated by his meteoric rise to fame, he also started undergoing a dramatic physical transformation.

Over the years, his skin became much lighter and he appeared to have had extensive plastic surgery on his face. Vanity Fair magazine reported in 2003 that the tip of his nose was actually a prosthesis.

In 1994, he stunned the public by marrying Lisa Marie Presley, the 26-year-old daughter of Elvis Presley.

The marriage lasted less than two years and was a hot topic for the tabloids. Howev-er, the renewed interest in Jackson’s love life did not spa-rk interest in his music.