His follow-up album, Bad, produced by Quincy Jones in 1987 was accompanied by a solo world tour. Bad sold six million copies in the US. This time 'Only' six of its seven singles hit the Top Ten, but five in a row hit #1. The tour became the highest-grossing tour of all time.

Michael Jackson was unquestionably the biggest pop star of the '80s, and certainly one of the most popular recording artists of all time.

In late 1991, Michael returned with 'Dangerous', which, by mid-1992, had sold four million copies and spawned the hits "Black and White," "Remember the Time," "In the Closet," and "Jam." Michael's second world tour, launched in Europe in June 1992, continued into 1993.

Even at this early stage, wild rumours about Jackson's private life were swirling. His shyness and reluctance to grant interviews (ironically, due in part to his concerns about being misrepresented) only encouraged more speculation. Some pointed to his soft-spoken, still girlish voice as evidence that he'd undergone hormone treatments to preserve the high, flexible range of his youth; stories were told about Jackson sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber to slow the aging process, and purchasing the skeleton of John Merrick, the Elephant Man (Jackson did view the bones in the London Hospital, but did not buy them). One of the rumours that was definitely true was that Jackson owned the rights to the Beatles' catalog; in 1985, he acquired ATV Publishing, the firm that controlled all the Lennon-McCartney copyrights (among others), which wound up costing him his friendship with McCartney.

Discography