The recent, shocking passing of Michael Jackson demands a response for obvious reasons: he was the most influential, controversial, and downright successful artist in the world for the latter 20th century.

While Jackson’s various scandals, eccentricities, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death are likely to dominate the media blitzkrieg that will likely proceed for the next several months, this brief diatribe will instead address two of the more implicit topics involving the inimitable “Jacko”: his musical genius and why child stardom is such an evil.

The Music

Michael Jackson’s success, an overwhelming tidal wave of Billboard screams and record sales in the hundreds of millions, obscure the rather sensational genius behind the man’s music. Certainly, I was raised on and instantly recognize the literally dozens of classic tracks that bear Jackson’s name, but I label Jackson’s work as genius not so much as a diehard fan (I admit to never having listened to one of his albums start-to-finish in one sitting), but more as a scholar of music with an adequate background in the nuts and bolts of the art form.

The sound that Jackson and producer Quincy Jones achieved, mainly on 1979’s Off the Wall and 1982’s monumental Thriller, is not only remarkable, but revolutionary; it mixed rugged funk, smooth urban soul, and ceaseless dance in a fashion that was viciously intelligent if not shockingly seamless. Aggressive while soft and quiet while loud, Jackson’s music coupled perfectly with his high tenor singing style, a defining and instantly-recognizable vocal brand that combined joyous whoops and hollers with effortless swings through the upper-ranges. “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” are particularly exuberant examples of this craft.

He achieved all this while tackling complex topics like world poverty, urban strife, and gang violence. Jackson’s boyish charm, gravity-defying dance moves, and ingenious marketing smarts contributed aptly to his success, but the sound Jackson and Jones created deserves credit for the genre-bending, redefining, ultra-contagious-edifying, masterstroke it truly was.

The Tragedy

Jackson abused prescription drugs. He injected himself with estrogen to maintain his feathery, high voice. As early at the mid-80s, he engaged in rampant escapades of plastic surgery, to preserve the soft, cuddly features of his childhood looks. He even slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to stop the aging process.

I have not even mentioned the two charges of child molestation, the frivolous spending practices (recent reports cite Jackson’s debt at his death to exceed $400 million, with his spending the last few years a jaw-dropping $20 million a month MORE than he made), the dangling child over the balcony incident, the mysterious sperm-donor for his three children, and the dozens upon dozens of sound bites and various oddities from his infamous television special with British journalist Martin Bashir.

Yes, Michael Jackson, on the surface level of all the absurdities just listed, justly earned his nickname of “Jacko,” and some of these stories and events are, upon first glance, downright hilarious.

However, Jackson’s past, one of abuse, totalitarian control, and repressed desperation, render his adulthood weirdness as a touch of pathetic and a whole lot of tragic.

Jackson demonstrated precocious musical abilities at an early age, and his father, Joe Jackson, capitalized on his youngest son’s talents with all the vicious ambition and heartless drive of a domestic Angelo Mozilo, abusing Michael physically and psychologically while forcing him to perform on stage at the hundreds of public performances and state fairs he booked for his sons’ musical group, The Jackson 5.

When Berry Gordy of Motown Records discovered the Jackson brothers and signed them to a major record deal, the abuse escalated. To get Michael to tour with the band (in addition to stage fright, Michael had a fear of flying), Joe and other Motown executives would bribe Michael with different candy bars and sweets.

During these tours, Joe Jackson and his sons frequently brought women into their hotel rooms—rooms that they shared with Michael. As the young Michael, a boy who had not experienced puberty yet, tried to sleep, they would have sex with the women.

When recording at Motown Records in Detroit, Michael was a musical slave, coerced into grueling recording sessions and practices that, coupled with the Jackson 5’s extensive touring, eliminated any chance of a formal, public education for the boy; indeed, in one of the more heartbreaking interview moments ever recorded, Jackson recounted that during a recording session, he observed through a building window several boys playing soccer at a nearby field, frolicking, smiling, enjoying themselves. Jackson knew he would not be allowed to leave the session and play with the boys. He wept at the realization.

In the end, Michael Jackson was deprived of innocence, childhood, and a true state of being as he matured. Denied both innocence and love from the moment he sang his first notes in that beautiful, hopelessly pure voice millions came to know and love, Jackson’s very existence contained not the slightest shred of identity, and this confusion—this lost, bewildered existence—led to a crushing self-loathing, one that influenced frightening plastic surgeries, disturbing connections to both Peter Pan and other young boys, and even medical attempts to alter his own racial appearance. Michael Jackson never experienced the childhood we all take for granted, and he spent the remaining 37 years of his life attempting to capture what childhood actually felt like.

He was a musical genius, but he was also our Judy Garland, a stunningly talented, brutally manipulated human being who symbolized, in their life and death, how unhealthy our obsession with celebrity can be. In the end, we demand scenarios like that of Judy Garland, like Michael Jackson, and we wash our hands of the matter as the subject crashes, burns, and drowns in a cesspool of prescription medication, depression, and hate. Oxy-contin may have stopped Michael Jackson’s heart, but America killed his star, his essence, long before he ever appeared on the radio.