Rolling Stone

 

Michael Jackson

Thriller

 

RS Rating: ****

 

In the three years since Michael Jackson's first solo album, Off the Wall, sold 7 million copies and spawned four hit singles, black music has veered away from the danceable but ultraslick style that Off the Wall epitomized. From Prince to Marvin Gave, from rap to Rick James, black artists have incorporated increasingly mature and adventurous themes–culture, sex, politics–into grittier, gutsier music. So when Jackson's first solo single since 1979 turned out to be a wimpoid MOR ballad with the refrain "the doggone girl is mine," sung with a tame Paul McCartney, it looked like the train had left the station without him.

But the superficiality of that damnably catchy hit belies the surprising substance of Thriller. Rather than reheating Off the Wall's agreeably mindless funk, Jackson has cooked up a zesty LP whose uptempo workouts don't obscure its harrowing, dark messages. Particularly on Jackson's own compositions, Thriller's tense, nearly obsessive sound complements lyrics that delineate a world that has put the twenty-four-year-old on the defensive. "They're out to get you, better leave while you can Don't wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man." It's been a challenging time for Jackson – his parents may separate, he's been involved in a paternity claim – and he's responded to those challenges head-on. He's dropped the boyish falsetto that sparked his hits from "I Want You Back" to "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and chosen to address his tormentors in a full, adult voice with a feisty determination that is tinged by sadness. Jackson's new attitude gives Thriller a deeper, if less visceral, emotional urgency than any of his previous work, and marks another watershed in the creative development of this prodigiously talented performer.

Take "Billie Jean," a lean, insistent funk number whose message couldn't be more blunt: "She says I am the one/But the kid is not my son." The party spirit that suffused Off the Wall has landed him in trouble, and he tempers that exuberance with suspicion. "What do you mean I am the one," he quizzically asks his femme fatale, "who will dance on the floor?" It's a sad, almost mournful song, but a thumping resolve underlies his feelings: "Billie Jean is not my lover" is incessantly repeated as the song fades out.

Billie Jean is mentioned in passing in Thriller's most combative track, the hyperactive "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," wherein Jackson also takes on the press, gossips of all kinds and other grief-givers. Here the emotions are so raw that the song nearly goes out of control. "Somebody's always tryin' to start my baby crying," he laments, and that sense of quasi paranoia yields to near-bitterness in the chorus: "You're a vegetable, you're a vegetable/They'll eat off you, you're a vegetable." It's a tune that's almost as exciting as seeing Jackson motivate himself across a concert stage – and a lot more unpredictable. These lyrics won't keep Elvis Costello awake nights, but they do show that Jackson has progressed past the hey-let's-hustle sentiments that dominated Off the Wall.

The sheer vitality of the musical setting obviates any sense of self-pity. Quincy Jones' production – Jackson coproduced his own compositions–is sparer than usual, and refreshingly free of schmaltz. Then again, he's working with what might be pop music's most spectacular instrument: Michael Jackson's voice. Where lesser artists need a string section or a lusty blast from a synthesizer, Jackson need only sing to convey deep, heartfelt emotion. His raw ability and conviction make material like "Baby Be Mine" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" into first-class cuts and even salvage "The Girl Is Mine." Well, almost.

Maybe the best song here is "Beat It," a this-ain't-no-disco AOR track if ever I heard one. Jackson's voice soars all over the melody, Eddie Van Halen checks in with a blistering guitar solo, you could build a convention center on the backbeat, and the result is one nifty dance song. Programmers, take note.

Jackson's greatest failing has been a tendency to go for the glitz, and while he's curbed the urge on Thriller, he hasn't obliterated it entirely. The end of side two, especially "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)," isn't up to the spunky character of the other tracks. And the title song, which at first sounds like a metaphoric examination of the same under-siege mentality that marks the LP's best moments, instead degenerates into silly camp, with a rap by Vincent Price. (Couldn't they get Count Floyd?)

Jackson has made no secret of his affection for traditional showbiz and the glamour that goes with it. His talents, not just singing but dancing and acting, could make him a perfect mainstream performer. Perish the thought. The fiery conviction of Thriller offers hope that Michael is still a long way away from succumbing to the lures of Vegas. Thriller may not be Michael Jackson's 1999, but it's a gorgeous, snappy step in the right direction.

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CHRISTOPHER CONNELLY

(Posted: Jan 28, 1983)

 

 

 

 

The New York Times

 

MICHAEL JACKSON'S THRILLER': SUPERB JOB

By JOHN ROCKWELL

Published: December 19, 1982

 

Since he caught the public's fancy as a bouncing, spinning, piping, 11-year-old mini-superstar in 1970, Michael Jackson has been a fullfledged celebrity, living a celebrity's life. That's worth remembering, because it means that today, one must guard against the assumption that he is a mature, fully formed artist and human being. He is certainly a seasoned veteran: His whole life has been shaped by entertainment, and he is a practiced - sometimes too practiced - performer, recording star and film actor. But he remains a young man, and with luck he will continue to mature.

One begins a review of Mr. Jackson's new LP, ''Thriller'' (Epic QE 38112), with this curious cautionary note because it is certainly possible to point out flaws in Mr. Jackson's seeming perfection. Yes, he sometimes allows Quincy Jones to depersonalize his individuality with his superbly crafted yet slightly anonymous production. Worse, he sometimes hides his emotionality behind smoothly indistinctive pop songs and formulaic arrangements, defenses so suavely perfect that they suggest layers of impenetrable, gauzy veils.

But these are quibbles. ''Thriller'' is a wonderful pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today. But it is more than that. It is as hopeful a sign as we have had yet that the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music - and between whites and blacks - in this culture may be breached once again. Most important of all, it is another signpost on the road to Michael Jackson's own artistic fulfillment.

Even though the family group from which he emerged, formerly the Jackson Five and presently the Jacksons, still shows signs of some sort of life, Mr. Jackson has long since established himself on his own. As an actor, he accomplished that with a charming performance in the film version of ''The Wiz.'' On records, his big breakthrough as a solo artist came with his last LP, ''Off the Wall,'' in 1979. It stayed high on the charts for nine months, spun off several topselling singles and sold millions of records and cassettes.

There were solid reasons for such success. Chief among them is Mr. Jackson's ethereal tenor. His deployment of that voice, which he mixes subtly with all manner of falsetto effects, is the greatest example of this sort of erotic keening since the heyday of Smokey Robinson. Ever since the craze for the castrato in the 17th century, high male voices, with their paradoxical blend of asexuality and sensuousness, ecstasy and pain, have been the most prized of all vocal types, and Mr. Jackson epitomizes such singing for our time better than anyone, in any musical genre.

A second reason for his success is his personality. One may legitmately wonder how Mr. Jackson, locked inside a celebrity's cage since childhood, could possibly understand the everday dilemmas of life. But most such dilemmas are universal, and artistic empathy is hardly the prerogative of poor folksingers. Mr. Jackson seems, on the basis of his interviews, to have a genuinely childlike and emotionally open attitude toward life. Sometimes his fame seems to insulate him, but it also elevates him to fantasy status for his fans.

A third source of his success lies in his creative relationship with Mr. Jones, his producer. Quincy Jones's work seems curiously variable. As a hyperactive record producer, he can slip into formulas inappropriate for the artist at hand, as in his efforts on Donna Summer's last album. But with Mr. Jackson, his refined synthesis of the latest trends in soul, funk, rock and pop works very supportively.

It is that synthesis that offers a broader cultural hope. Black music lurks at the heart of nearly all American pop, but it is an old, old story that blacks tend to be slighted by white audiences, a few established older superstars partly excepted. Black performers' mass success waxes and wanes, and in recent years it has been waning. The dangers of isolation -more particularly, of whites being cut off from the roots of what they perceive as their own music - have only been reinforced by radio, with its ''demographic'' playlists that reinforce a musically insensitive and morally indefensible segregration.

Mr. Jackson's appeal is so wide, however, that white publications and radig stations that normally avoid ''black music'' seem willing to pretend he isn't black after all. On one level, that's admirable, in that color distinctions are often best avoided altogether. But Mr. Jackson is black, and while he sings a duet here with Paul McCartney, enlists Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo and observes no color exclusivity in his choice of backup musicians, he still works honorably within the context of contemporary black popular music at its fervent, eclectic best. If this album is anywhere near as successful as ''Off the Wall,'' it may remind white audiences of what they are missing elsewhere.

''Thriller'' follows the same rough pattern of ''Off the Wall'' in its predominantly brisk first side and a second side with a greater preponderance of ballads. There is no one show-stopping lament here on the order of ''She's Out of My Life,'' from ''Off the Wall.'' But there is a subtler mixture of fast and slow - fast songs with caressing vocals, medium-tempo songs and slow songs with a catchy undercurrent - and one or two songs in which Mr. Jackson can deploy the full sensuality of his singing.

Perhaps the most striking of those songs is called ''Human Nature,'' which occupies the same spot on the disk - third song on the second side -that was alotted to ''She's Out of My Life.'' This is a haunting, brooding ballad by Steve Porcaro and John Bettis with an irresistible chorus, and it should be an enormous hit.

But there are other hits here, too, lots of them. Best of all, with a pervasive confidence infusing the album as a whole, ''Thriller'' suggests that Mr. Jackson's evolution as an artist is far from finished. He is, after all, only 24 years old.

 

 

 

 

Village Voice

 

E.T as Mr. Entertainment

 

'Michael Jackson: intense fame, dreams of flying, and a paranoid undertow'
By Vince Aletti
Dec. 14, 1982

 

Michael Jackson, who has been "touring, singing, dancing" since the age of five told Interview recently that he had only vague memories of growing up in Gary, Indiana: "little things like the corner store or certain people in the neighborhood. The high school behind us always had a big band with trumpets and trombones and drums coming down the street--I used to love that--like a parade. That's all I remember." When Andy Warhol asked him if he ever thought he'd grow up to be a singer, Michael said, "I don't ever remember not singing, so I never dreamed of singing." Instead, Michael says in this month's Ebony, he dreamed of flying, "and I still dream about it all the time." Not flying in a plane, of course, but flying like Superman or, more to the point, like E.T., who holds Jackson in a creaturely embrace on Ebony's cover. This tantalizing dream is one of the reasons Michael agreed to narrate the E.T. "storybook album," he says--that and his feeling that E.T.'s "story is the story of my life in many ways." Not many profound ways, it turns out. But he seems to be getting at something when, at the top of his list, he puts being in a "strange place" and wanting to be "accepted."

Maybe this remark is just another bit of showbiz chat, but if Michael Jackson really sees himself as a stranger in a strange land, I suspect it's only because he's both running away from and constantly reinventing "home." His past is not Gary, Indiana, faded now to a few storybook images--the corner store, the parade--but the cool march of song titles, chart positions, and awards across the pages of his record company bio. Intensely famous since the age of 11, Michael, now 24, grew up like a forced plant in the hothouse of celebrity, at once overprotected and overexposed. He emerged with a bruised, hard-won innocence--part artifice, part armor, part dreamy escapism. No wonder he aches to fly. It's hard to tell how much of Michael's vulnerability and naiveté is genuine and how much a mask; clearly there's a savvy toughness just below this tender surface and a ferocious drive for accomplishment that is almost second nature. Still, the real person is especially elusive here. Questioned by Interview on his impulse to "act a lot in everyday life," Michael says, "It's escape. It's fun," and suggests that it's not acting when "you really believe it," it's almost a matter of faith. What he loves to do, he says, is "totally forget" and become another person. Will the real Michael Jackson please stand up? Of course, one wonders just what Interview and Michael know about "everyday life;" perhaps more than they care to. But pop society--particularly the rarefied sort that Jackson has traveled in for the past few years--provides the perfect atmosphere in which to "totally forget." Two phrases cropped up repeatedly in Michael's Interview interview: "It's magic," and "It's unreal," he kept saying. He wasn't talking about what it's like to be Michael Jackson, but he might as well have been.

He might also have been describing his new album, Thriller, as stunning and satisfying a piece of showbiz escapism as anyone has turned out in years. Don't get me wrong--this is no retreat to spunsugar sentiment and jerky romance. Michael's escapism is more aggressive and muscular, even in the ballads--he's closer to Speilberg than Disney, calculated and relentlessly refined but driven by a brilliant obsessiveness. There's something so warm, so generous about Michael's compulsion to entertain here; it's passionate, pushed to the limit, wonderfully seductive, even at its most showoffy. (This impulse is not quite so convincing on the E.T. album, where Jackson is frighteningly hammy on the narrative and a touch too tremulous on the song.) In the absence of personal revelation and soul-searching, Michael's giving-it-all intensity is the emotional core of Thriller, but it burns so brightly you never feel deprived.

For those who want to dig deeper, there's a decidedly paranoid undertow to three of Jackson's songs ("Beat It," "Billie Jean," and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"--all his own compositions) that gives the album an unexpected tension, a provocative hint of darkness below the glittering surface. The darkest, "Beat It," is a deliciously ominous funkrocker that features a screaming guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen and deep, echoing bass. In a series of tight, clipped verses, Michael tries to convince someone (himself?) to walk away from a fight--"just beat it"--instead of trying to be bad. "Don't wanna see no blood," Jackson sings, but the music promises mayhem and even the frantic repetition of Michael's advice seems to make the clash more inevitable, maybe secretly desired. "Billie Jean," which follows, shares some of this tension with its brittle, anxious delivery and jumpy pace. Defending himself in a paternity suit, Michael compresses anger and hurt into his singing, then fills the track with furious violin exclamations, chattering guitar, the steady whisper of a hi-hat, and a complex welter of backing voices: a gorgeous paranoid landscape.

Without totally abandoning the jittery, taut atmosphere of these songs, Jackson eases up and floods his fearful landscape with light in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," the album's steamiest dance cut. But if the track is almost celebratory in its exuberance, the lyrics--a suggestive tumble of lines that both hit and miss--bring that nagging undercurrent of anxiety to the surface again. The subject is gossip--"talkin', squealin', lyin'"--with Michael and his "baby" caught in the razor-tongued crossfire, "stuck in the middle/and the pain is thunder." Michael realizes he's a "vegetable," a whole "buffet," to be devoured at will by a voracious public, but there's little trace of bitterness in his singing here, and he bites into each line with a yelping zest. In the end, paranoia is dispelled and sent spinning in a suddenly anthemic final verse. "I know I am someone/And let the truth unfurl/No one can hurt you now," Michael sings before the song slips into an inspired non sequitur of joyous chanting copped--smart move--from "Soul Makossa:" the spirit triumphant.

The rest of Thriller feeds off and plays off the wired heat of these cuts--the creamy love songs ("Baby Be Mine," "The Lady in My Life"); a chugging soft-core funk number ("P.Y.T. [Pretty Young Thing]"); a hushed, delicately shaded gem called "Human Nature;" even the insinuating showbiz pop of "The Girl Is Mine," just-us-superstars smarminess and all. After "Beat It," "Billie Jean," and "Startin' Somethin'"--the three cuts on which Jackson shares production with Quincy Jones--these other songs are thrown into high relief, radiant, flawlessly polished, considerably more splendid by contrast. Only Rod Temperton's title cut returns to the theme of paranoia, this time seen through a funhouse mirror, exaggerated and spoofed with a chilling list of horrific images that turn out to be safely confined to a TV screen. "Thriller" provides the bridge between the album's dark and light tracks, striking a neat, witty balance. Jackson clearly enjoys this juicy entertainment, and Jones gets to toss subtlety--but not style--aside with a scattering of cliché horror sound effects in the dense, loping track and a marvelously silly Vincent Price rap at the end.

Jackson and Jones combine so easily on Thriller that the material, no matter how elaborately constructed, feels un-pressured, effortless. There's a harmony to this collaboration that blurs the distinction between producer and produced, allowing for something richer, more assured, and infinitely more relaxed than is usual in these high-powered talent meets. Here, Quincy gracefully opens the door and the real Michael Jackson steps through: Mr. Entertainment. Obviously, Michael's been honing his art along with his ambition and the result is remarkably sharp, intensely focused--not quite second nature, but getting there. On Thriller, as on the earlier Jacksons song "Heartbreak Hotel," Michael's begun to part the shimmering curtain of his innocence--(it's magic, it's unreal)--to glimpse darker, deeper things. Once that curtain is ripped down, the view could be astonishing.

 

 

 

 

Robert Christgau

 

MICHAEL JACKSON: Thriller (Epic)

 

This is virtually a hits-plus-filler job, but at such a high level it's almost classic anyway, with the three Michael-composed songs on top. "Beat It," in which Eddie Van Halen wends his night in the service of antimacho, is the triumph and the thriller. But while I'm for anything that will get interracial love on the radio, playing buddies with Paul McCartney is Michael's worst idea since "Ben," and I expect to bear more of "Wanna Be Startin' Something" and "Thriller" on the dancefloor than in my living room. A- [Later: A]

 

 

 

 

BBC Online

 

A still-magnificent view from pop’s summit.

 

Daryl Easlea 2010

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Billboard Magazine

 

Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' At 30: Classic Track-By-Track Review

 

By Daniel Durchholz | November 30, 2012 10:45 AM EST

 

 

Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was an album born of outsized ambitions. Having come into his own with the multiplatinum-selling "Off the Wall," Jackson wanted to make a record that would turn him into the biggest star in the world. That's not asking for too much, is it? But here's the incredible part: That's exactly what happened. And it began with the album's release on November 30, 1982 -- 30 years ago.

Helmed by producer Quincy Jones, Thriller was an album built for across-the-board acceptance. The tracks appealed variously to nearly every radio format - pop, R&B, adult-contemporary, and even rock. More importantly, its remarkable video clips - for "Billie Jean," "Beat It" and "Thriller" - helped break down racial and genre-based barriers at MTV, transforming the channel into a juggernaut of not just music video, but of fashion and marketing; and transforming the music industry as well.

The album's sales figures and performance on the Billboard charts are staggering.

"Thriller" is the best-selling studio album in U.S. history with 29 million sold, according to the RIAA. It is locked in a tie with the Eagles' collection "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 for the overall domestic title. [Worldwide, estimates range as high as 110 million albums sold.] On the Billboard charts, the album became the first to generate seven Hot 100 top 10s -- with "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" going to No. 1. The album spent the most weeks (37) atop the Billboard 200 of any album by a single artist.

At the Grammys in 1984, the album won seven awards, including album and record of the year ("Beat It"). Jackson and Jones actually won an eighth award, best recording for children, for "E.T. the Extra Terrestrial."

And the superlatives go on and on.

Sadly, the stunning success of "Thriller" may have laid the groundwork for Jackson's own long and very public undoing. Having topped everyone else's accomplishments, Jackson -- who was driven in ways unlike almost any other artist -- was unable to top his own, though he never really stopped trying. A psychological examination of Jackson is not the agenda for today, however. We're just here to revel in the amazing sights and sounds of the pop era's most truly popular work: "Thriller."

"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"

"Thriller" may lean less on dance anthems than does its predecessor, 1979's "Off the Wall," but you'd never know it from the album's opening salvo, which is led by relentless, machine-driven rhythms, an elastic bassline and Jackson's insistent, almost angry, vocal performance. His self-penned lyrics about harmful gossip reveal a paranoid streak that would resurface on future albums, but here include the unique if bizarre self-assessment, "You're a vegetable/You're a buffet/They'll eat off you." The song's genius move, though, is the closing chant of "Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah," borrowed directly from Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" (for which the parties later settled out of court). "Thriller"'s fourth single, "Wanna Be Startin' Somthin'" made it to No. 5 on the Hot 100.

"Baby Be Mine"

The album's second track is only one of two songs that was not released as a single. Written by Rod Temperton, it's a pleasant enough pop/R&B come-on, promising everlasting, magical love; but what's more at issue is getting the girl to whom it's addressed to "stay with me until the morning sun." Who hasn't heard that one before? Musically, "Baby Be Mine" is upbeat, danceable and punctuated by twittering keyboards and punchy horn fills.

"The Girl Is Mine"

The record's first single, "The Girl Is Mine" climbed to No. 2 on the Hot 100. Even though the song found Jackson squaring off lyrically with fellow pop titan Paul McCartney - the two were previously paired on "Say, Say, Say" and "The Man" (recorded before, but released after "Thriller," on Macca's "Pipes of Peace" album), their battle over the "doggone girl" is saccharine. No way these two buds are gonna let a babe get between them. Now, music publishing. . . that's another story.

"Thriller"

Even before it became music video's defining moment, the audio track for "Thriller" was already a classic horror flick that played between your ears. A vivid monster-mash-up penned by Rod Temperton, the song features gruesome (but fun) lyrics, sound effects of creepy footsteps, wolf howls and slamming doors, plus actor Vincent Price's indelible recitation. (Hearing him say "the funk of 40,000 years" is by itself worth the price of admission.) "Thriller" peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100, but its real legacy lies in its groundbreaking 14-minute mini-movie, directed by John Landis. It showed the scope of what music videos could be, inspiring a host of musical artists, directors and choreographers to blow their budgets sky-high - to say nothing of, years later, inspiring a prison yard full of Filipino jailbirds to dance like the zombie apocalypse had arrived.

"Beat It"

What brings murderous rival gangs together more than dancing? Nothing, if we're to believe the famed video for "Thriller"'s third single (and second No. 1 on the Hot 100.) "Beat It" is notable not just for its attempt at Crip vs. Blood detente (real gang members appeared in the video), but for following "Billie Jean" into the breach and further breaking down MTV's near-total lack of African-American artists. Unlike "Billie Jean," "Beat It" spoke MTV's language. It boasted a rock vibe and featured Eddie Van Halen's dazzling guitar solo (reportedly performed gratis, much to the regret of EVH's accountant). Such compelling fusions of R&B to rock and music to video were not just good news (and good business) for Jackson and for MTV, but also for clothing designer J. Parks, who sold one of those red, multi-zippered leather jackets to every Jackson wannabe on the planet.

"Billie Jean"

Quick: name another song by one of pop music's iconic artists that insists he/she is NOT getting laid. You can't. Theories abound about the origins of the Jackson-penned lyric: Either it's about a crazed fan whose delusion that Jackson was the father of her child went so deep she eventually threatened to harm herself and the baby, or it was at the very least a cautionary tale about groupies in general. The track itself is a sonic marvel, with its stark, driving snare and hi-hat figure, throbbing bass, sparse keyboards and Jackson's extraordinary vocal hiccups and wordless exclamations. The song's video is every bit as stunning, but supposedly required threats by CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff before MTV would play it. "Billie Jean" was Thriller's second single, but its first Hot 100 No. 1, and the song that drove the album to the top of the charts as well.

"Human Nature"

"Human Nature," which peaked at No. 7 on the Hot 100, is one of Jackson's best ballads, and one of the few songs to capture the wide-eyed, childlike wonder that is part and parcel of his personality. He didn't write it - Steve Porcaro of Toto and John Bettis did - but Jackson's breathy vocals and the gossamer harmonies perfectly capture the mood and spirit of the song. In retrospect, it can be viewed as a sad song, however: The anticipation that Jackson sings about with such relish - of breaking out, hitting the streets, connecting with strangers - was a pleasure that was denied him for at least the last quarter century of his life, in large degree because of the unprecedented fame and fanfare generated by the success of "Thriller."

"P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"

Having already scored its major points, "Thriller" begins to wind down with "P.Y.T.," an bit of pop that reflects the superficial aspects of Jackson's artistry from years past. Compelling enough to make it to No. 10 on the Hot 100, the song - a co-write from Jackson and James Ingram - is lighthearted stuff, evidenced by the chipmunk-style vocals tacked on near the end. Fun fact: Jackson's sisters Janet and LaToya sing backup on the track, portraying the pretty young things instructed to "repeat after me" and sing "na na na." Which is exactly what they do.

"The Lady In My Life"

The other Thriller track (besides "Baby Be Mine") that was not released as a single, "The Lady in My Life" is an quiet album closer, considering everything that preceded it. Written by Rod Temperton and Quincy Jones, it's a serviceable R&B seduction ballad, but not the sort of song that is likely to shake the echoes of "Thriller," Beat It" and "Billie Jean" out of your head.

 

 

 

 

The Telegraph (UK)

 

Michael Jackson's Thriller: pioneering album that broke down racial barriers in music industry

Thriller, Michael Jackson's sixth studio album, cemented his title as the "King of Pop" when it became the best-selling record of all time.

 

With Thriller, Jackson also broke down long-standing racial barriers in the music industry, spanning traditional divides between pop, rock and dance music, and establishing himself as a black star who appealed to audiences of all backgrounds and paving the way for future African-American stars. The ascending King of Pop was pictured at the time in his signature sunglasses and military-style jacket with President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, on a visit to the White House.

The record, released in November 1982, has sold as many as 100 million copies worldwide, and it produced seven hit singles: The Girl Is Mine (#2) Billie Jean (#1), Beat It (#1), Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' (#5), Human Nature (#7), P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) (#10) and the title track, Thriller (#4).

Assisted by his producer, Quincy Jones, Jackson wrote four of the album's nine tracks, which he recorded with a budget of $750,000 between April-November 1982.

Before the album's release, Jackson had struggled to have his songs aired on the year-old music video network MTV. But as his album climbed in the charts, the title track, along with Billie Jean and Beat It were regularly played. At the height of its popularity, MTV ran the 14-minute Thriller video twice an hour to meet demand.

At the time, a New York Times review hailed him as "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 colour too".

Jackson debuted the video and his signature Moonwalk dance at the Motown 25th Anniversary Special in May, 1983.

Against advice from his managers and label at the time, Jackson allowed the video's director, John Landis, to turn him into a zombie and a werecat in a dark departure from his earlier, lighter-hearted music with the Jackson Five.

The group zombie dance that forms the centrepiece of the film has replicated by school groups, prisoners in the Philippines, and in films from Hollywood to Bollywood.

 

 

 

 

AllMusic

 

Michael Jackson

Thriller

 

AllMusic Rating *****

 

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Slant Magazine

 

Michael Jackson

Thriller

 

*****

 

By Eric Henderson ON October 18, 2003

 

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.

Label: Epic Release date: October 18, 1982

 

 

 

 

Pitchfork

 

Michael Jackson

Thriller: 25th Anniversary Edition

Epic; 2008

 

By Tom Ewing; February 15, 2008

 

Rating: 7.2/10

 

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.

And so people try to concoct explanations. The album was focus-grouped for broader appeal-- but then why haven't focus groups worked so well since? Jackson made the racial crossover breakthrough on MTV-- but once that door was opened, why didn't the sales crossover work for others? Jackson's stunning dancing and videos exploded pop's visual formatting-- but the Thriller album, until DVD-era reissues like this one, wasn't a visual experience.

When Thriller opens, those 100 million sales feel just. "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is pure confused, shocked teenage rush. So there's another theory: Thriller is the best-selling record ever because it's the best record ever. That one holds up for six minutes and two seconds, during which Jackson and Quincy Jones mix the tension of rock'n'roll with the rapture of disco and hit perfection. But then you get "Baby Be Mine"-- one of the original tracks that wasn't a single-- and the momentum fades: On the heels of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", it should maintain the temperature; instead, it goes nowhere, starts nothing.

Thriller is inconsistent in style, which gives it something to appeal to everyone, but it's oddly tough to listen to even the great bits sequentially-- its peaks are from different mountain ranges. "Thriller"'s joke-shop horror segues well into Eddie Van Halen's headbanging guitar on "Beat It". But to follow that into the paranoid celebrity funk of "Billie Jean", the meltingly tender "Human Nature", and the smooth R&B of "P.Y.T."? These are all brilliant singles, though; Thriller's greatness lies in its great songs not in it "working like an album."

For this edition Jackson's 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 remixes aren't a missed opportunity-- they're an imaginative way to wring bonus material from sessions overseen by a notorious perfectionist. It could be a lot worse. The last time Thriller got reissued it included "Someone in the Dark", a horror from the E.T. soundtrack showcasing Jackson's most saccharine side. We're spared that, and the token MJ rarity here is "For All Time", recorded during the Thriller sessions (and then later rejected for Dangerous). A glistening, slightly overdressed piano ballad, it might have made a nicely sappy album closer-- if we didn't already have the subtler, understated, and underrated "The Lady in My Life", possibly Jackson's most soulful solo performance on the record.

The DVD footage, with all the videos you'd expect, is much better. Watching the famous Motown 25th Anniversary performance of "Billie Jean" in particular I'm struck by how angular Jackson's dancing is, how tense: Knees and elbows spiking out, body freezing into indecipherable alphabets. And then how beautiful, the way he simply flows out of each position, the release that made his music so joyful given kinetic form.

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.