The King of Pop

I remember hearing it on breakfast TV that morning, the anchor mentioning it casually, and not really taking it in at first. Michael Jackson had died. Cardiac arrest. His body just stopped.

The internet exploded. Twitter crashed under the weight of people trying to process it all at once. Everyone’s feeds flooded with the same news, the same shock, the same I can’t believe it. But that digital chaos felt distant to me. I was still just standing there with coffee, trying to make it real.

Whatever he’d become in his final years, whatever the tabloids had done to him or he’d done to himself, he was still the King of Pop. Still the voice on records millions of people grew up with. Thriller. Bad. Billie Jean. The moonwalk. The whole world had watched him change from a kid in the Jackson 5 to something else entirely, something untouchable and strange.

What got me wasn’t the news cycles or the internet mourning. It was thinking about all the people who’d grown up with him, who’d learned dance moves from his videos, who’d felt something shift in pop culture because of him. That was permanent. That doesn’t get undone.

I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Just quiet about it.