On the night of 24 June 2009, Michael Jackson stood on a stage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and performed for a room that held no audience — just his band, his dancers, and his crew, running through the show he was about to take to London. He died the following afternoon. And the last song Michael Jackson ever sang was “Earth Song.”
MJ had thirteen number one singles. He could have gone out on “Billie Jean,” or “Beat It,” or “Thriller,” or any of the records that made him the most famous entertainer who has ever lived. Instead, the final thing he sang was a six-minute plea about the destruction of the natural world.
Michael Jackson – Earth Song (This Is It June 24, 2009) Last Rehearsal
“Earth Song” was never a conventional pop record. It is about forests, animals, war, poverty, and children caught in the middle of it all. He had written it years earlier, and it became one of the biggest hits of his career outside America — number one in Britain for six weeks. He treated it as the most important thing in his catalog, and the staging that final night reflected it: a huge video sequence showing a forest being destroyed, with Jackson lifted above the stage on a crane in the middle of it.
He was not marking it out, either. Crew members and executives who were in that building have all said the same thing: he was energetic, focused, joking, and completely committed. One AEG executive said afterward: “He had great energy. He really looked good, and he was very upbeat.”
Michael Jackson – Earth Song (Official Video)
There is one more thing he did before he went home that night. He gathered the entire crew together and thanked them — talked about the London shows and what he hoped they would be — and then said three words to the room. “God bless you.”
That was it. He drove home. He had roughly eighteen hours left.
None of that footage was ever meant to be seen. The cameras were rolling for the production team to review the staging. Director Kenny Ortega has been clear that none of it was intended for release. But after Jackson died, it was released as a film and took in over $260 million — at one point, the highest-grossing concert film ever made.
Which means the world got to watch the King of Pop’s final performance almost by accident. And what it caught was a 50-year-old man, in the last hours of his life, singing about saving the world.
He had spent decades doing exactly that in ways people forget. Guinness recognizes him as having supported 39 charities, more than any other pop star in history. He gave away the profits from an entire world tour. He founded the Heal the World Foundation. The song he was singing that night was not a departure from who he was. It was the most accurate summary of him available.
His last artistic act on this earth was a prayer for it.