The American pop star Michael Jackson (1958-2009) born in Gary, Indiana, a suburb of Chicago, has been hailed 'The King of Pop' due to his extraordinary musical and dancing ability which resulted in a string of No.1 hits, spectacular live shows and millions of fans worldwide. His career began as a child star in 1964 performing with his brothers in The Jackson Five, a band master-minded and managed by his ambitious father Joseph Walter 'Joe' Jackson, a steel mill worker who performed with an R&B band called The Falcons. Michael Jackson began working as a solo performer in 1971 and his album Thriller became the best-selling album ever. His early rise to fame however, his troubled relationship with his father and loss of a normal childhood has often been considered to result in his obsession with his image, his love of the fictional character Peter Pan and his many adult insecurities. Surrounded by advisors but beset with financial problems, Jackson resorted to medication to help him overcome the stress of preparing for This Is It, the series of fifty extravagant concerts planned to run between 16 July 2009 and 6 March 2010 at the O2 centre.

Tickets for the concerts were sold out as soon as they were announced in March 2009. This ladies' t-shirt was one of a range of merchandise which was manufactured for sale at the O2. The final rehearsals were underway when Jackson died of cardiac arrest on 25 June 2009 at his rented home in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, having been injected with mediation. This t-shirt is a tangible link to a concert that never happened, and with one of arguably the greatest and most influential pop stars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.