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— The Analog Vault // Essential Listening —

While the Jackson 5 and his solo albums on Motown Records already made Michael Jackson a superstar, it was not until Thriller that the prodigy took the throne as the “King of Pop”. It instantly topped the US Billboard charts, where it would spend a record 37 weeks at number one, before becoming the best-selling album of all-time. Coinciding with the rise of MTV, Jackson’s iconic music videos for "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller" didn’t just make him a household name worldwide, they permanently revolutionised music videos as artform.

But beyond its accolades and cultural significance, just musically, Thriller’s cohesive confluence of rock, funk, disco, soul and R&B changed pop music forever. From its seven juggernaut singles to its other two underrated tracks ("Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady in My Life"), every one of these Quincy Jones-produced songs remains a masterpiece. — The Analog Vault

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Thriller is the biggest-selling album of all time; it says so on the cover of this reissue package. What it doesn’t say is that, on a worldwide scale, it outpaces the Eagles, Pink Floyd, and Celine Dion by more than just a marginal million or so: At 100 million+ copies sold, it’s estimated to have sold more than twice its nearest rival.

For this edition Jackson called in some current big guns to provide remixes, and sadly they do provide the consistency the originals gloriously lack. Will.i.am sets the tone: He takes Macca off “The Girl Is Mine” but decides it can’t work without someone sounding like an idiot and steps manfully in himself. There’s a general reluctance to use what these guest stars are good at: will.I.am is a consistently slick, inventive pop producer but nobody wants to hear him rap, whereas on Kanye West’s “Billie Jean” a guest verse might have added dynamics to the mix’s clumsy claustrophobia. Fergie’s gift as a pop star is the way her crassness shifts into oddness—so on “Beat It” her nervous reverence is a waste of time. Only Akon comes off well, flipping the meaning of “startin’ somethin’” and turning the song into a joyful seducer’s groove, and here it’s Jackson’s own mush-mouthed new vocal that spoils things.

The biggest-selling album of all time, then, and you should probably take the “of all time” literally. His highest-clout guest stars here have shifted around one-twentieth the copies Thriller has, and in a dwindling industry it’s hard to imagine anything similar happening again. Fluke it maybe was, but as a unification move it worked—the last time, maybe, one person could incarnate almost all of pop, all the corny and all the awesome in one mind. We live now in the world of the “long tail” — Thriller was the big head. — (via Pitchfork)

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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. — (via BBC)

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- 2016 reissue on black vinyl
- Housed in gatefold sleeve
- Comes with a custom printed inner-sleeve that contains the lyrics, as well as credits

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Label: Epic
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo, Gatefold
Released: 2016
Genre: Rock, Funk / Soul, Pop
Style: Disco, Funk, Soft Rock

File under: TAV Essential Listening
File under: Funk / Soul
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