Thaindian News

American recording artist Usher was the sixth in a string of celebrities to perform at the memorial service for Michael Jackson today.

Usher sang Gone Too Soon in front of a capacity audience at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles during the two-hour long performance to celebrate the life of the dead King of Pop.

The memorial service got underway some 45-minutes late, after the dead 80s King of Pop’s body was transported in a motorcade from the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, to the site of the memorial service, amidst a massive security cordon.

Jackson’s $US25,000, 14-karat gold-plated, solid bronze coffin, bedecked with a huge bouquet of red roses, was the center of attention in the stadium, with millions of people around the world joining together to watch the show.

Prior to the memorial service beginning it was estimated the world-wide viewing audience from television, streaming internet, movie theatre screenings and iPhone streams could easily top two billion.

Others to participate in the two-hour long memorial for Michael Jackson include:

* Brooke Shields
* Lionel Richie
* Magic Johnson
* Mariah Carey
* Kobe Bryant
* Berry Gordy
* Jennifer Hudson
* Shaheen Jafargholi (finalist on Britain’s Got Talent)
* Martin Luther King III
* Bernice A. King
* Stevie Wonder
* Smokey Robinson
* Rev. Al Sharpton
* Ron Boyd (family friend)
* Pastor Lucious Smith (family friend)
* Andrae Crouch Choir

At the conclusion to the memorial service Jackson’s body was returned to the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, again under tight security, for a private family funeral.

Other Hollywood personalities interred in the lushly landscaped, gently rolling hills and manicured green lawns there include Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, Telly Savalas, William Conrad, Buster Keaton, Liberace, Freddie Prinze, Andy Gibb, Jack Webb, Stan Laurel, Ricky Nelson, and more recently David Carradine.

The Forest Lawn memorial park and mortuary at Hollywood Hills is on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica Mountains range overlooking North Hollywood and Burbank in the San Fernando Valley, in a park dedicated to the preservation of American history.

Before it was a cemetery Forest Lawn was used as a filming location, with the climactic battle scenes for D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, just one of the productions to use it.

Usher, born Usher Raymond IV, rose to fame in the 90s with the multi-platinum album My Way in 1997 and 8701 in 2001.

His first album, Confessions, was released in 2004 and has sold over ten million copies in the US and been certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

He has sold more than 38 million albums worldwide and has won five Grammy Awards. In 2008 he was ranked as the 21st most successful Hot 100 Singles Artist of all-time by Billboard magazine.