With his first solo album for Epic, Jackson was unstoppable. Though it was released in 1979, when the disco fad was already abating, Off the Wall managed to capture the glitter-ball moment without getting stuck in it.  

 He doubled his ambitions and multiplied his audience with Thriller. Jackson went after every pop constituency he could imagine: dancers, rockers, lovers, kids, parents. His image contributed to his rise, but especially on this album’s seven hit singles, the music stands on its own.  

 The two-CD Anthology is all anyone needs, and more, of the four solo albums Jackson made in his teens. 

 An inevitable anticlimax after Thriller, Bad offers more variations than advances. The album was full of forced poses that started with the title song. But it had lots of pleasures, such as the lighthearted “The Way You Make Me Feel” and the manipulative but effective “Man in the Mirror.” 

 Here, Jackson plunged off the deep end. He traded Quincy Jones for new jack swing producer Teddy Riley and allowed some guest rappers on a few songs. Jackson's musical categories were hardening: crisp dance tracks (“Jam”), ultrasmooth ballads (“Gone Too Soon”), anthems (“Heal the W... 

 HIStory started out as a hits collection and turned into a double album that’s an inadvertent before-and-story: the gifted, confident Jackson who made the hits and the isolated, self-pitying, maniacal Jackson living through their aftermath.  

 The tantrum continued in the five new songs on Blood on the Dance Floor, which also included eight beat-added remixes of tracks from HIStory. The songs were as raw as Jackson would ever be, even if his complaints were getting redundant. 

 Jackson regained his composure on the last album of new material released in his lifetime. Only allowing himself one anti-tabloid song, he tried to play the gentle, adoring lover and concentrated on ballads. But his old suavity was gone, and all that was left was grim calculation 

 Exactly what it says: Jackson's Number One hits collected – of course, that makes for a much more fulfilling listen than it would for most artists. 

 Thriller 25, marking the seminal album's quarter-century mark, included updated versions of the tracks by the likes of Kanye West and Fergie, which only served to demonstrate the genius of the originals. 

 Hello World - The Motown Solo Collection included early-teen Jackson emoting like a man three or four times his age.  

 Three months later came Michael Jackson: The Remix Suite, a mixed bag of hits re-imagined by contemporary producers, like Polow Da Don's "Dancing Machine" and Salaam Remi's "ABC."  

 In the wake of Jackson's sudden and untimely death on June 25, 2009, new collections were quickly assembled to cash in on the orgy of heartfelt nostalgia felt around the world. Just two weeks after the tragedy, this set featured vocal tracks from Jackson 5 hits like "I'll Be There" and ... 

 The companion album to the film, which, in documenting rehearsals for the ambitious comeback tour that never was, showed that Jackson retained his musical genius, his knack for showmanship, and a sharp tongue even in his final days.