CBS Honors Jackson: Top Moneymaker

CBS Records honored singer Michael Jackson on Tuesday as the label’s biggest moneymaker of the ‘80s, selling more than 110-million records during the last 10 years.

“I have to say now, no album sells itself,” the spectral singer said at a news conference. “It is up to the people to buy it.”

In a typically short speech, the gloved one thanked “all the children of the world,” several record industry executives and his parents.

Jackson’s limited output in the decade included the era’s two largest-selling albums, “Bad” and “Thriller.”

The 31-year-old, who launched his career in 1964 by teaming with his brothers, said the record-breaking achievement was “first a possibility and now a reality.”

Tommy Mottolo, president of CBS Records, said, “If I stood here 10 years ago and told you any artist would accomplish what Michael Jackson accomplished, you would probably have laughed me off the stage.”

“Thriller” was the first album to generate seven Top 10 singles, including “Beat It.”

There was some rain on Jackson’s parade, though.

Jackson was named in an amended lawsuit filed Tuesday in Seattle that accuses him of using illness as an excuse to get out of three concerts in the Tacoma Dome. A Seattle attorney has added the singer and the city of Tacoma to a class-action suit on behalf of Jackson fans against the Ticketmaster Corp. last spring, demanding return of the $2.50 to $4.50 service fees the agency kept when it issued refunds on the $23.50 tickets.