MJ

So, the last 20 years of bizarre crap not withstanding, Michael Jackson did something very profound, more deliberately in his early 90's work with songs like Black or White, but even in his breakthrough in the 80's.

In the 1980s, MTV was NEW. the music video was NEW. And there were many bands in the 40's through 70's that wouldn't have been promoted if the music video had been around back then. Why? because they were non-whites. Racism doesn't work as well over the radio. Fitting that MTV's first music video was "Video Killed the Radio Star". For the first 2 years of it's programming, MTV didn't show a single non-white artist's music video. That was the biggest criticism they ever got, was basically as the most racist channel on cable TV.

In 1983, Thriller came out. Michael Jackson pressured MTV to put a black artist on their video rotation, and not just once in a while. The Thriller music video demanded heavy rotation. Michael Jackson was a civil rights face. He was the Jackie Robinson of Music Videos.

After Bad came out in 1987, it was all downhill, and I don't justify any of his issues or problems in the 22 years since then. Guy was a mess. but, he did something really important beyond having a bunch of hit singles.