FEATURE:
Simple Human Nature
Thinking Ahead to Michael Jackson’s Thriller at Forty: The Greatest Album Ever?
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I’M looking ahead to the end of November…
as that is when Michael Jackson’s Thriller turns forty. It is relevant I mention it now, as there is an anniversary edition of the album coming out. I am going to get to some retrospective examination of the album, alongside two of the (many) positive reviews for Thriller. Undeniably one of the very best albums ever, I will ask whether it is the very best. Variety report how there is an anniversary treat coming for fans of Michael Jackson’s sixth studio album of 1982:
“Sony Music and the estate of Michael Jackson will observe the 40 th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s classic “Thriller,” the biggest selling album of all time (by most metrics), with the November 18 release of “Thriller 40”: a double CD set comprised of the original album and a second disc “full of surprises for fans, including never-released tracks which were worked on by Michael for the ‘Thriller’ album,” according to the announcement, which comes on the heels of 10 Tony nominations for “MJ the Musical,” which features several songs from the album.
During its 112th week on Billboard’s album chart, “Thriller” became the first title ever to be certified 20-times platinum by the RIAA (on October 30, 1984), became the first title ever to be certified more than 30-times platinum in 2015, and since has been certified at 34-times platinum.Seven tracks from the album became Top 10 singles, and three, “Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” and “Thriller,” went No. 1. “Thriller” was the first album in history to spend each of its first 80 weeks in the album chart’s Top 10, a feat only reached by one other album in the nearly four decades since.
Mastered from the original analog master tapes, Mobile Fidelity will also make available the original “Thriller” album as a One-Step 180g 33RPM LP, pressed at RTI and strictly limited to 40,000 numbered copies as well as a hybrid SACD . (An UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP set of “Thriller” will be released at a later date.)
In the U.S., Walmart will have an exclusive version of the original “Thriller” album with an alternate 40th anniversary cover, while Target will have an exclusive version of the original album with a commemorative “Thriller 40” vinyl slip mat.
Several activations are planned for the coming to honor the album, which won eight Grammys, spent more than 500 weeks on the Billboard albums chart and has sold over 100 million albums worldwide since its release on November 30, 1982. The first such activation is the first drop of new merchandise featuring the special “Thriller 40” logo, which is now available exclusively through the MichaelJackson.com webstore”.
Similar in some ways to 1979’s Off the Wall in terms of the blend of R&B, Disco, Pop and other genres together with Jackson looking confident on the front cover (though he is more serious on Thriller’s cover), Thriller is a more varied and bigger album. Although there are a couple of weaker tracks at the end of the album, Thriller houses some of Jackson’s best songs. Indeed, I do not think any album contains a stronger one-two-three than Thriller, Beat It and Billie Jean. Ending the first side and providing the second side’s first two tracks, it is a great run of wonderful songs! With the late Rod Temperton writing some of the biggest songs (the title track and Baby Be Mine) and Jackson penning some classics (Beat It, Wanna Be Starting’ Something, and Billie Jean), it possesses so much genius! Jackson’s ability and range as a songwriter and performer is realised here. Small wonder that Thriller remains of the the most-popular and biggest-selling albums ever. Before coming to some reviews and wrapping up, The Wrap looked at the legacy of Michael Jackson’s magnum opus:
“Besides those sales, breaking the MTV color barrier with the rock oriented “Beat It,” and creating the measure by which music videos are still judged with “Thriller,” Jackson had a profound effect on modern music. Jackson’s legacy is as wide and broad as Elvis and the Beatles in crossing boundaries of style, fans and even nations.
Before “Thriller,” with the exception of the short-lived multiracial Sly and the Family Stone, radio formats throughout most of the country were, like MTV, rigid — and the barriers between genres were strict. Rock didn’t mingle deeply with funk and white didn’t really dance with black.
The unprecedented transcending synthesis of R&B, funk, rock and almost -Broadway ballads that make up the songs on “Thriller” are the core of Jackson’s musical endurance.
After “Thriller,” hip-hop pioneers Run DMC would duet with rehab rockers Aerosmith; Boy George, a gay white British dance clubber who dressed like Mama Cass and sang like Aretha Franklin, found millions of fans in the UK and the USA; and a prodigy called Prince gained a mainstream following from the beat and guitar heavy “Purple Rain.”
It has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and is, at double what AC/DC’s second-place holder “Back in Black have shipped, the best-selling record of all time. “Anybody and everybody bought his stuff from DJs to people who just like pop music,” Rick Sanchez, manager at L.A.’s Amoeba Records told TheWrap on Thursday evening.
Jackson’s record, as his career begins the inevitable posthumous Elvis and Beatle resurrection and re-releases, is already growing larger just one day after his death. “His albums, from the Jackson 5 stuff to “Thriller” and his solo stuff, has always sold,” Sanchez said. “Since the news has become official today, we’re sold out of everything we have.”
Indeed, just hours after Jackson’s death was announced, his sales soared. Jackson records made up the entire Top 5 of iTunes Top Albums — with "Thriller" at #2 and the "Thriller 25th Anniversary" release at #5. On Amazon.com, the 25th anniversary realease was #1, with other of his albums making up the site’s Top 15 bestsellers.
Then again, success, for better or worse, came early to Michael Jackson. Performing since he was six years old with his brothers in the Jackson 5, Michael, who would later claim he was mentally and physically abused by his manager father, was a star at 11 with number-one hits like “I Want You Back” and “ABC.”
Even those songs, with their infectious Motown charm, showed a different approach to standard pop that was indicative of Jackson. There were bouncy funk melodies, sure — but overtop, young Michael’s vocal was noticeably gritty. The skinny boy sounded like an old soul or saloon singer.
The progression in tone and talent continued on Jackson’s fifth solo album, 1979’s “Off the Wall,” where he successfully stepped into adult contemporary R&B and late night dance clubs. At that point, it was a career less-ambitious artists would have gladly settled for — but not Michael Jackson. The singer, whose voice remarkably smoothed out the older he became didn’t just want to crossover with white and black audiences — he wanted to create the sounds that would overwhelm the world.
Similar to the Beatles cheering up an America depressed by the death of JFK, Jackson’s timing was perfect. The Reagan Era had just begun, a new age of celebrity celebration, after the casual ‘60s and ‘70s, was in and Pop was back.
Working with songwriter Rod Temperton, Jackson would later say his goal with “Thriller” had been to create an album where every song was a Top 10 single. He succeeded. “Thriller,” with “Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” “Human Nature,” “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” and the title track, among others, spun out one hit after another”.
Thriller is wonderfully balanced. Although the album does sort of end with a little bit of a whimper, there is a nice assortment in terms of the bigger songs. Quincy Jones’ production is astonishing throughout. Already considered one of the best albums ever, I think the anniversary edition in November will cement that, in addition to providing a greater insight into Michael Jackson’s songwriting and productivity at the time, it is almost peerless in terms of quality and importance. A near-perfect album, this was the King of Pop at the top of his game. This is what AllMusic had to say in their review:
“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”.
Another review that I wanted to highlight is from SLANT. They noted how it is not overstating things to say that Thriller is the biggest album of all-time:
“No album, movie, or book should ever have to live up to the expectations attached to the label “biggest selling of all time.” Luckily for Michael Jackson’s Thriller, that moment has passed and it’s just a matter of time before the same is true for James Cameron’s Titanic (the Bible, however, will have to deal with its popularity on its own terms). It seems that moving over 40 million units of an album (that also won a then-record number of Grammies) has had a stifling effect on Jackson’s career. It’s difficult to separate Jackson’s 1983 coronation as the new “King” (or his inevitable descent from that throne) from the music on Thriller. On the other hand, it’s possible these things give a sense of character to what was, like most Quincy Jones productions, just another Epic pop monolith. In fact, perhaps a comparison to one of Q’s other early-‘80s productions is key to grasping the extent to which Jacko’s star persona impacts a Thriller spin.
Take Donna Summer’s self-titled 1982 album, which is comprised of almost the very same ingredients as Thriller. Both are built on a foundation of smooth, L.A. dance-R&B, an uncharacteristic dalliance with the rock idiom (“Protection” for Summer, “Beat It” for Jackson), and a side-one-closing expansive (no, make that cinematic) blockbuster. And of course, both albums are filled with what can be best described as flawless, melodic pop. The lush disco paradise of Jackson’s “Baby Be Mine” and “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” both hint that the “death to disco” proclamations were sure to be temporary. The growling stomp-lite of “Thriller” and “Billie Jean,” both marked by Q’s fuzzy synthesized basslines, weaned millions of unsuspecting children onto low-end funk even as Prince was experimenting with bass-deficient funk. The buttery harmonies of “Human Nature” (probably the best musical composition on the album and surely one of the only A/C ballads of its era worth remembering) were so powerful that no less a legend than Miles Davis recorded a studio jazz cover of the song. Summer’s eponymous album is about Donna as much as it is about carrots and lettuce and the mystery of love. But Thriller does more than just announce Michael’s arrival as a pop superstar (he was already there)—it’s about his arrival in the same way his sister’s Control was about the arrival of Janet, period.
With three quick rimshots, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” is like the court fanfare. What is a seemingly silly fight song is actually a complicated tapestry of colliding hooks and pop references. Jackson starts with his own collection of non-sequiters (“You’re a vegetable,” “My baby’s slowly dying”) and puts them in the context of other borrowed quips. (“Too high to get over, too low to get under” is almost an exact copy of Funkadelic’s opening salvo for “One Nation Under a Groove,” and anyone who loved Manu Dibango’s underground disco hit “Soul Makossa” knows where the holy-rolling “Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah” came from.) By combining the hooks of earlier black pop benchmarks with his own, it’s as if Jackson was suggesting that everything in pop history was setting the stage for his arrival. One wonders if Jackson’s statement in a recent TV Guide interview that he is no longer satisfied with the way “Wanna Be” turned out is less a comment on the quality of the song than it is about the unsatisfactory implications it has for a man whose career afterglow seems scarcely worth a “coo-sah.” Think Norma Desmond watching her own youthful glory in isolation. Thriller is still big, and Jackson’s getting small only serves to highlight its pop (musical and cultural) achievements”.
Whilst one cannot easily argue against the assumption that Thriller is the biggest album ever, maybe calling it the ‘greatest’ album, ever is a harder sell. It is not my favourite album ever, but I think that its sheer quality and depth puts it right near the top of the pile. Maybe The Beatles’ Revolver pips it, though I feel Thriller will continue to grow in reputation. An album that sounds like it could have come from the 1970s, it is timeless and ever-fascinating document from one of Pop music’s true greats. The controversy that has surrounded Jackson for the last few years – and through most of his career to be fair – means that his albums are not being explored and shared how they might have been in the 1980s and 1990s. Prior to the fortieth anniversary release of Thriller, go and listen to the original in a single sitting and acquaint yourself with a remarkable album. Many people consider Thriller to be the best album ever. It is a statement that is…
HARD to argue against.