I'll say this: only in America can a poor black kid grow up to become a rich white guy who then dies in the whitest way possible - a heart attack at 50.

In all seriousness: when Emma told me about this first thing this morning I didn't really have an opinion. Michael Jackson was a living freakshow, not a person or an artist - when was the last time I even thought about him? Then I realised that, two days ago, I'd had a conversation at work about Eddie Van Halen playing guitar on "Beat It" because I'd been whistling it. Jackson was so ubiquitous, such a deeply interwoven part of our Western culture that I actually didn't even realise when I was thinking about his music. He was just there: a pillar of popular culture. Whatever your feelings about the man, the myth that surrounded him or the icon he became that eclipsed any previous experience any of us had about what fame really meant, there's no denying that a titan that defined us (for better or worse) has passed.

RIP.