FEATURE:
Can’t Beat It
Michael Jackson’s Thriller at Forty
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THIS is the second and final…
feature I will write about Michael Jackson’s Thriller. As it is one of the best-selling and most popular albums ever, it is worth noting its upcoming fortieth anniversary. Released on 30th November, 1982, even though the anniversary is not for a while, there will be a lot of build-up when it comes to this historic album. Thriller became Jackson's first number-one album on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart. It spent thirty-seven non-consecutive weeks at number one. A titanic release where seven singles were released - The Girl Is Mine, Billie Jean, Beat It, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin', Human Nature, P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing), and Thriller. I do not think there will be as much reverie and celebration around Thriller as there might otherwise have been. Given allegations and controversy around Michael Jackson, there has been some tarnish applied to his catalogue. One cannot deny the important and influence of Jackson’s sixth studio album. Opening with the remarkable and hypnotic Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ and ending with The Lady in My Life, Thriller is wall-to-wall quality! Perhaps the three best-known songs on Thriller are the title track, Billie Jean, and Beat It. There is also the great duet with Paul McCartney, The Girl Is Mine. Undoubtedly one of the most influential albums ever, I am going to come to some information about the importance and sheer stature of the remarkable Thriller. Before that, in 2017, Albumism looked inside a mighty and timeless work of brilliance:
“But before all that. Before the awards and the accolades. There was simply Thriller, the follow up to Jackson’s landmark 1979 album Off the Wall. Jackson, no longer just considered the twirling Wunderkind of The Jackson 5 had proven himself as a viable solo artist with his disco-defying breakout. Now with Thriller, Jackson wanted to continue to push his creativity and was intent on creating an album that wouldn’t be restricted to the racially drawn classification of genre or radio play.
So as Jackson reconvened with producer Quincy Jones and engineer Bruce Swedien in Westlake Studios on April 14, 1982 they set about recording Thriller. Sessions would last until November 8th and would see the team whittle down a collection of thirty songs (since inflated to numbers in the hundreds by Jones) to the final nine that would make up the album.
When Thriller debuted on November 30, 1982 the echoes of Off the Wall and the more current Jacksons album Triumph (1980) fueled the expectations of the album buyer. The only hint of what was to come was the lead single, the decidedly MOR “The Girl Is Mine” duet with Paul McCartney. Dumbfounding many, “The Girl Is Mine” by itself is a pleasant enough song with Jackson and McCartney trading barbs as they try to lay claim to a mutual object of affection. But as the first salvo for a new album it confused many. Was this the direction Jackson was taking?
One thing was for certain this wasn’t the “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough Part II” many were expecting. As the first song recorded for the project, “The Girl Is Mine” might have been the sacrificial first single to get the big duet on the air and out of the way, making space for what was to come.
So as the needle dropped on Thriller, a rapid-fire triplet of hits ushered in a new era for Jackson. Any fears as to whether he was abandoning the funk were soon forgotten as the driving beat and hypnotic bass line of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” filled the air.
If ever there was a quintessential Michael Jackson song it would have to be the sonic masterpiece that is “Billie Jean.” The crispness of the opening beat is something to marvel at. Just a simple one step beat, but the way it hits has such energy and propulsion it is almost irresistible. And then the bass kicks in. A mix of strut and stalk, the bass walks its way through the track and is so fat in its sonic value, it literally hums through the speakers. For most songs, those two elements alone would be enough to make it an instant classic. But musically, Jackson brings so many little hooks to the track that it transcends it from being one of the best songs he ever recorded to being one of the best songs anyone has ever recorded, period.
From the percussive lyrical delivery, to the rich harmonies, to the countering backing vocals, to the myriad of tantalizing musical flourishes, “Billie Jean” is as close to musical perfection as you are ever likely to come across. There is something in every phrase and every note to catch the ear and keep it entertained.
It also fleshes out what would become a familiar, and somewhat telling, lyrical motif casting Jackson’s interactions with women in a femme-fatale trope. Who knew questioning paternity could be so catchy? But that is one of Jackson’s lyrical talents. To have you singing a song so catchy in its rhymes and delivery that it’s not until much later that you end up investigating the meaning behind it all.
Together with “Beat It” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin,’” “Billie Jean” shows a growing maturity in Jackson’s songwriting both musically and lyrically, and sees his voice forming into the signature delivery he would be known (and often mimicked) for.
It’s easy to forget the power of Thriller when the majority of the songs have become standard listening through the ages. But revisiting the hauntingly seductive and intimate “Human Nature” constantly reveals its beauty. With the dreamlike introduction of trickling synths and seductive guitar, the heart of “Human Nature” lays in the mystery of the lyrics and the sweet floating vocal delivery Jackson brings.
Penned by Toto alum Steve Porcaro and lyricist John Bettis, “Human Nature” has an airy melodic quality that cushions Jackson’s vocals as they float and swirl before taking flight with those oh-so-perfect (and unscripted) extended exclamations of “Why?”
It seems counter-intuitive that a song so heavily based in electronic instrumentation with sweeping and bubbling synth runs resonates with such a rich organic warmth. This feat is thanks mostly to Jackson’s vocal delivery (especially in the often missed backing vocals) that keeps the track still feeling fresh and current, and the intoxicating melody that feels as though it has been plucked from the future.
With a spring in its step, “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” is the designated infectious party jam. There is a sweetness embedded into the track that has kept it from aging, and while not overly complex musically, nor vocally challenging, it has the ability to improve moods and place a smile on the face of any listener. It’s a moment of fun dance-pop that isn’t meant to change the world, but will undoubtedly shuffle your feet.
Dripping with old school soul, “The Lady in My Life” is another slice of perfect production. Seductive and smooth, the song slowly builds with Jackson’s sublimely pure vocals and enticing melodies, and delivers dual peaks in the shape of the amazing bridge and the extended break down just past the mid-point of the song. Originally recorded with extra verses, timing constraints on vinyl forced the song to be trimmed back. Thankfully, the verses were sacrificed to save the more than 2 minutes of Michael’s ad-libs in the extended outro that showcases the brilliance of Jackson as a vocalist.
When you’ve heard the songs on Thriller so many times as standalone tracks, it’s easy to forget how brilliantly they work as a collective whole. The production is second to none and Jackson is in his prime vocally as he gives each track life in a way that is captivating and enchanting. Whether it set out to be the album for everyone or not, Thriller ended up being just that. So powerful and popular, it obliterated the color lines of radio airplay and placed music, not race, at the center of playlists and turntables the world over. And 35 years later, the rewards of spinning this masterpiece have yet to cease”.
I will come now to a couple of reviews for Thriller. One of the most important albums ever released, we will be talking about it decades from now. In their review, this is what AllMusic observed about Michael Jackson’s adored Thriller:
“Off the Wall was a massive success, spawning four Top Ten hits (two of them number ones), but nothing could have prepared Michael Jackson for Thriller. Nobody could have prepared anybody for the success of Thriller, since the magnitude of its success was simply unimaginable -- an album that sold 40 million copies in its initial chart run, with seven of its nine tracks reaching the Top Ten (for the record, the terrific "Baby Be Mine" and the pretty good ballad "The Lady in My Life" are not like the others). This was a record that had something for everybody, building on the basic blueprint of Off the Wall by adding harder funk, hard rock, softer ballads, and smoother soul -- expanding the approach to have something for every audience. That alone would have given the album a good shot at a huge audience, but it also arrived precisely when MTV was reaching its ascendancy, and Jackson helped the network by being not just its first superstar, but first black star as much as the network helped him.
This all would have made it a success (and its success, in turn, served as a new standard for success), but it stayed on the charts, turning out singles, for nearly two years because it was really, really good. True, it wasn't as tight as Off the Wall -- and the ridiculous, late-night house-of-horrors title track is the prime culprit, arriving in the middle of the record and sucking out its momentum -- but those one or two cuts don't detract from a phenomenal set of music. It's calculated, to be sure, but the chutzpah of those calculations (before this, nobody would even have thought to bring in metal virtuoso Eddie Van Halen to play on a disco cut) is outdone by their success. This is where a song as gentle and lovely as "Human Nature" coexists comfortably with the tough, scared "Beat It," the sweet schmaltz of the Paul McCartney duet "The Girl Is Mine," and the frizzy funk of "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." And, although this is an undeniably fun record, the paranoia is already creeping in, manifesting itself in the record's two best songs: "Billie Jean," where a woman claims Michael is the father of her child, and the delirious "Wanna Be Startin' Something," the freshest funk on the album, but the most claustrophobic, scariest track Jackson ever recorded. These give the record its anchor and are part of the reason why the record is more than just a phenomenon. The other reason, of course, is that much of this is just simply great music”.
I first heard Thriller when I was a child. The title track and its epic and genius video (directed by John Landis) stunned me. Perhaps my favourite song from the album is Beat It. Jackson wrote that song and Billie Jean – two of the biggest songs of the 1980s. I like BBC’s 2010 review of Thriller. They make an interesting observation about the release schedule when it came to singles. It was unusual to release The Girl Is Mine as the first single when it should have been either Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, Beat It, Billie Jean, or Thriller:
“It’s hard to believe now, but when Michael Jackson’s Thriller was released in the UK in time for Christmas 1982, there was an initial sense of misfire. In choosing the album's most lacklustre track, The Girl Is Mine, as its lead single, the postcard delivered was mildly disappointing. The playful duet with Paul McCartney, chosen no doubt to emulate the success McCartney had had earlier the same year with Stevie Wonder on Ebony and Ivory, was simply not what the listeners were expecting. It reached number eight on the UK chart, and the album sold well, but certainly not in the manner that the man who’d delivered Off the Wall should have done.
By the following Christmas, Thriller had become the phenomenon it remains to this day. Singles kept dropping off the album like golden fruit from a platinum bough: the precision snap of that snare on UK number one Billie Jean; the raucous Eddie Van Halen guitar on Beat It; the groove-driven frenzy of Wanna Be Startin' Something. It became apparent that this was a remarkable, ever-yielding pop jukebox.
By 1984, the album got an extension on its lifecycle with the John Landis-directed video for Thriller, which took the album from successful pop record to cultural icon. Casting the then-clean cut, scandal-free singer as a werewolf in a 15-rated short film was a risk, but one that truly paid off. Soon enough Thriller had become a greatest hits package – seven of its nine tracks were issued as singles.
Love it or hate it, Thriller is pop's great, immovable Everest. Marketing departments realised that more and more singles could be pulled from a record to prolong its shelf life, and Michael Jackson became the King of Pop with the whole of the recording industry at his investiture.
It was, of course, never the same for Jackson after Thriller. All that followed was a long, gradual downhill slope that culminated in some forgettable records and a tragic early death. But this view from the summit remains unparalleled”.
I am going to finish off with information from Wikipedia. The legacy of Thriller is varied and huge. From its influence on other artists to the way Jackson helped break barriers for Black artists, I hope that there is a lot of celebration of Thriller on 30th November:
“Following the release of Thriller, Jackson's immediate success led to him having a standing of cultural significance that was not attained by a Black-American before him in the history of the entertainment industry. Blender described Jackson as the "late 20th century's preeminent pop icon", while The New York Times gave the opinion that he was a "musical phenomenon" and that "in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else". Richard Corliss of Time hailed Thriller as "the greatest pop album of all time". Jackson changed the way the industry functioned: both as an artistic persona and as a financial, profitable entity. His attorney John Branca observed that Jackson achieved the highest royalty rate in the music industry to that point: approximately $2 (US$5.22 in 2021 dollars) for each album sold.
As a result, Jackson earned record-breaking profits from compact disc sales and from the sale of copies of the documentary, The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller, produced by Jackson and John Landis. Funded by MTV, the film sold over 350,000 copies in its first few months. In a market then driven by singles, Thriller raised the significance of albums, yet its multiple hit singles changed preconceived notions as to the number of successful singles that could be taken from an individual album. The era saw the arrival of novelties like the Michael Jackson doll, that appeared in stores in May 1984 at a price of $12 (US$31 in 2021 dollars). Thriller retains a position in American culture; biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli explains, "At some point, Thriller stopped selling like a leisure item—like a magazine, a toy, tickets to a hit movie—and started selling like a household staple".
Thriller was released at around the peak of the album era, which had positioned full-length records ahead of singles as the dominant form of recorded-music consumption and artistic expression in the industry. The success of Thriller's singles, however, marked a brief resurgence in the sales of the format. At the time of the album's release, a press statement from Gil Friesen, the then President of A&M Records, read that, "The whole industry has a stake in this success". Time magazine speculated that "the fallout from Thriller has given the [music] business its best years since the heady days of 1978, when it had an estimated total domestic revenue of $4.1 billion". Time summed up Thriller's impact as a "restoration of confidence" for an industry bordering on "the ruins of punk and the chic regions of synthesizer pop". The publication described Jackson's influence at that point as, "Star of records, radio, rock video. A one-man rescue team for the music business. A songwriter who sets the beat for a decade. A dancer with the fanciest feet on the street. A singer who cuts across all boundaries of taste and style and color too".
The '80s were when stars replaced artists as bearers of significance... When art is intellectual property, image and aura subsume aesthetic substance, whatever exactly that is. When art is capital, sales interface with aesthetic quality—Thriller's numbers are part of its experience.
—Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990
When Thriller and "Billie Jean" were searching to reach their market demographic, MTV and cable TV had a smaller market share than the much larger reach of broadcast television stations in the United States. A national broadcast TV audience on ABC, NBC and CBS affiliate stations, as well as major independent TV stations, was desired by CBS/Epic Records to promote Thriller. The national broadcast TV premiere of the Thriller album's first video, "Billie Jean", was during the week of Halloween in October 1984 and was the idea of Video Concert Hall executive producers Charles Henderson and Jerry Crowe. Video Concert Hall, the first nationwide music video TV network, taped the one-hour special in Hollywood and Atlanta, where the TV studios of Video Concert Hall were located. The Thriller TV special was hosted by Thriller video co-star Vincent Price, distributed by Henderson-Crowe Syndications, Inc. and aired in the top 20 TV markets and much of the United States, including TV stations WNEW (New York), WFLD (Chicago), KTTV (Los Angeles), WPLG (Miami), WQTV (Boston) and WXIA (Atlanta), for a total of 150 TV stations.
Thriller had a pioneering impact on black-music genres and crossover. According to ethnomusicologist Miles White, the album completely defined the "sound of post-disco contemporary R&B" and "updated the crossover aesthetic that had been the holy grail of black popular music since Louis Jordan in the 1940s". Noting its unprecedented dominance of mainstream pop music by an African-American artist, White goes on to write that "the record's song selection and sound aesthetics played to soul and pop sensibilities alike, appealing to a broad audience and selling across lines of race, gender, class and generation", while demonstrating Jackson's emergence from Motown as "the king of pop-soul crossover". Entertainment Weekly writer Simon Vozick-Levinson has considered it "the greatest pop-soul album", Included in their list of The 40 Most Groundbreaking Albums of All Time, Rolling Stone wrote, "It's hard to imagine the present-day musical landscape without Thriller, which changed the game both sonically and marketwise. The album's nervy, outsized blend of pop, rock and soul would send seismic waves throughout radio, inviting both marquee crossovers (like Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo on "Beat It") and sneakier attempts at genre-meshing. The album's splashy, cinematic videos — from the John Landis-directed short film that promoted "Thriller" to the West Side Story homage accompanying "Beat It" — legitimized the still-nascent form and forced MTV to incorporate black artists into its playlists. Its promotional strategy, which led to seven of its nine tracks being released as singles, raised the bar for what, exactly, constituted a "hit-laden" LP. Beyond breaking ground, it broke records, showing just how far pop could reach: the biggest selling album of all time, the first album to win eight Grammys in a single night and the first album to stay in the Top 10 charts for a year".
An immense album that many think is the peak of Michael Jackson’s career – though some would argue 1979’s Off the Wall or 1987’s Bad are better -, we are going to be discussing Thriller’s music for generations. Such is its cultural impact, I don’t think you can say a bad word about Thriller. Maybe Michael Jackson’s reputation and the allegations against him for sexual abuse means some will distance themselves from his work. I wanted to concentrate on the album itself and not conflate it with accusations surrounding Jackson. As an album, it is almost unparalleled. People around the world will be playing the awesome Thriller…
FOR the rest of time.