Rebecca Barry: Jackson's star shone in a parallel universe

Michael Jackson got into our heads. Often so much so we couldn't get him out.

How well did we get into his? It was our lives that flashed before our eyes when we heard the news - where we were when we first heard Billie Jean, sang along to Bad or saw him transform into a zombie in one of the best music videos of our generation.

Our brains are hardwired to his image, to feel his music, yet he was and always will be an enigma. No one predicted that the Michael Jackson at the peak of his powers - an electric performer sliding backwards across the stage half his lifetime ago - would develop into the Michael Jackson at the depths of his problems.

And no one, not even fellow child stars, could possibly understand the magnitude of his life experience. Even after the revelation of his prescription drug use, we won't really know why his heart gave up, if the extremes of his life simply became too much.

At 6, Michael Jackson was a star burdened by constant attention and an overbearing father until he went on to ambitiously explore the heights of his talent as a solo artist. His appeal crossed generations, from his cutesy days as the "fro-haired member of the Jackson Five", to his moonwalking heyday of Thriller in the 80s to his heal-the-world anthems of the 90s. It don't matter if you're black or white, R&B or rock, straight or gay, it was impossible not to admire him as an entertainer.

Put aside the virtual Noah's ark he created for himself in the Neverland ranch, how exciting, lonely and terrifying must it have been to ensure his identity - that of a pop culture deity - must continue as he aged? Did he see a man in the mirror or something more?

Even his forays into marriage and parenthood were surreal. With the world watching, just as it had since he was a boy, he performed, dressing up for court, dangling his baby out a hotel window, buying the contents of an expensive shop with the cameras rolling in his 2003 documentary with Martin Bashir, even as his humiliating legal and financial woes threatened to dethrone him as King of Pop.

And although he was training rigorously for the 50 shows of his so-called comeback tour in London, one that promised to introduce something as revolutionary and exciting as the moonwalk - the clearing of debts, perhaps - for most on this side of the world Jackson had become a piece of mental furniture, a hero when you stopped to consider his early contributions to music but mostly a fragile-looking psychological unknown who'd lost sight of his true appearance. Now he has returned to hero status.

Just as his life was a performance, so was his death. Of the hordes of fans who gathered outside the UCLA Medical Centre like anxious extended family, pacing, crying, playing his music on their iPods, there were almost as many news crews, desperate for confirmation, desperate for a good picture, save the archival images on split screens and a nondescript concrete building surrounded by orange cones. These were crowds Michael Jackson was used to. This time there were no tickets to the show.

How many texts, tweets, emails, phone calls, Facebook messages were made in those first few minutes after the story broke? It's testament to the times in which we live that a man's heart can stop beating and minutes later, the world knows. It's telling that it wasn't CNN or the BBC but entertainment website TMZ, not exactly a household name, that was first to break the news.

Conspiracy theories will no doubt spring up on blogs this week, claiming Michael Jackson has joined the other King (his ex-wife's father) and is hiding out somewhere, watching over the chaos with a sense of relief as the world mourns his death and celebrates his life.

Unlike Farrah Fawcett, whose equally sad death at the hands of cancer this last week was almost eclipsed by the sandstorm of collective shock, Michael Jackson's heart attack could not be predicted by anyone but those who knew him personally.

He'd reached the milestone age of 50. He was on the brink of a colossal return to showmanship.

He was relying on prescription drugs to get him through something none of us comprehend.

Shocking though his death is, it's hard to shake the feeling that a superstar as big as Jackson was destined to become a supernova.