A life's soundtrack
Posted: Saturday, June 27, 2009 3:59 PM by Ian Sager
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Lester Holt
By Lester Holt, NBC News anchor

I've covered plenty of celebrity deaths – some of them were people I truly admired, and whose deaths filled me with sadness.
The death of Michael Jackson however, has somehow felt more personal. I never met him, and for all the accounts of his kindness and gentleness that friends and associates have spoken of, like many of you, I could never ignore some of the more troubling aspects of his life.
What I cannot ignore, however, is that I grew up with the entertainer Michael Jackson. We are seven months apart in age. The first 45 record I ever owned was the Jackson's Five's "I Want You Back." I remember the night in 1969 when my family and I watched the Jackson Five's debut on the Ed Sullivan show. I danced around the house to his music – I knew the lyrics, and like a lot of ten-year-old boys at the time, I wanted a little of what he had.
My life moved on, and while I remained a fan, over the years I didn't think a lot about Michael Jackson, but his music was always there. When his songs came on the car radio my hand would instinctively reach to turn up the volume. And 40 years later, his music was still on my iPod on the day he died. Music connects us all in ways often hard to define. Michael Jackson's music became a series of mile posts in my own life, and it's sad to know those markers can only now be viewed in the rear view mirror.
Our coverage of Michael Jackson, and the day's other top stories, continues tonight on NBC Nightly News. I hope you'll join me.