Jolene: I think some people do fine with being celebrities, it’s just that his particular level of celebrityhood would be difficult for any well-adjusted person to bear, let alone someone who never had a childhood or a chance at a normal life, had an extraordinarily awful father, had a particularly disfiguring skin disorder…the more I think about it, the more I figure he actually defied the odds by living till 50.

Edith: I worry about his kids too. His mother does seem the most appropriate guardian for them since it would at least give them some continuity in their lives, but generally, the more you find out about the Jackson family, the more you understand why Michael had problems.

James: I’m not sure if Invincible is overcooked so much as simply uninspired. It felt to me like he was consciously trying to go back to a very mainstream sound rather than a lot of the experimentation he was doing with HIStory and the new songs on Blood On The Dancefloor, whether or not that was actually what he was interested in. Someone on a forum said what they were saddest about was that they’d never get to hear the spare, stripped down R&B album he was surely going to do at 65. I like that.

Kelly: TELL ME ABOUT IT! The hotness…the hotness…

It’s funny. Someone said in an interview the other day that everyone has a different Michael they fell in love with, because he changed so much physically over the years. So the older generation may have seen Michael as that 12 year old kid from the Jackson 5, and someone younger would say it was Thriller MJ. But to me, I think this is the Michael I began to fall for.

Wow. I totally forgot about this performance. It’s pretty damn amazing. The dance at the end! I forgot about that in Will You Be There!

Aw shit. I miss him.

This. Is very much what the public reaction to his death has been making me feel. It’s very sad that you can be so revered and so adored, and yet all this worship can – apparently – do you so little good. It seems to me to reveal how hollow the promises of celebrity culture and the media’s entertainment machines are, a hollowness that may seem obvious to some but which clearly isn’t generally recognised given how many people still chase that dream so desperately. He had so many resources available to him and yet things appear to have been so very screwed up in his life. It’s an overused word but he’s a figure I find truly tragic.

I’m living in Australia now and the TV channels have been pouring out tribute shows nightly since his death. It didn’t strike me till last night, when I watched an ITV special, that this man is indeed a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. His songs bring back great memories of growing up; the beats still make me groove.

You must read Lisa Marie Presley’s MySpace blog entry; I suppose one must take any Michael news now with some degree of disbelief, but I would like to believe that she wrote it with touching honesty.

What saddens me most is that he was robbed of his voice all his life: in childhood he was drowned by the search for fame; as an adult, greater expectations and incriminations fed his loneliness to his grave.

I still cannot comprehend how someone so great can be reduced to such a tragedy. I can only hope that this was the best way for him to finally be free.