HAPPY BIRTHDAY THRILLER- 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

billyworld99

Proud Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
2,021
Points
0
"Thriller" conquered racial divides and evolving platforms at MTV, radio

100232-michael_jackson2_617_409.jpg


MJJ Productions




But "Thriller's" legacy goes far beyond its own sales and awards accomplishments. Once MTV found success with Michael Jackson, videos by other black performers quickly appeared on the playlist. This development single-handedly forced pop radio to reintroduce black music into its mix: After all, pop fans, now accustomed to seeing black artists and white artists on the same video channel, came to expect the same mix of music on pop radio. It was impossible to keep the various fragments of the audience isolated from one another any longer. Mass-appeal Top 40 radio itself made a big comeback due to this seismic shift. Beginning in early 1983 in Philadelphia, and rapidly spreading through the country, one or more FM stations in every city switched to Top 40 and many rose to the top of the ratings playing the mix of music made popular by MTV-young rock and urban hits.



In the age of "Thriller," black music made a resounding comeback on the pop charts. If 1982 was the genre's low point in terms of pop success, by 1985 more than one third of all the hits on the Billboard Hot 100 were of urban radio origin. Even Prince's "1999" single, shut out of pop radio upon its initial release in 1982, was re-launched in mid-1983 and off the back of its belated MTV exposure became a huge pop radio success the second time around. Thus, in a way few historians appreciate, the Michael Jackson/MTV team proved itself a remarkably progressive force, helping to reintegrate a fragmented popular culture at the dawn of the Reagan era. Black music was back at the center at the mainstream, and to this day it has never again been pushed from the spotlight.



As an aside, the rise of MTV conversely spelled doom for country music's fortunes in the pop world. Prior to MTV, country music had, since the early 70's, become increasingly strong at pop radio, with its popularity culminating in the summer of 1981, during the "Urban Cowboy" craze, just as MTV was being launched. That summer, there were an average of 11 country records on the Billboard Hot 100 in any given week. But MTV decided from day-one that country music would not be part of its programming and country's performance at pop radio steadily nosedived from that point onward. Soon, country records were completely shut out of the Hot 100, something that had never happened before.



For all its record-setting accomplishments, the thing which never ceases to amaze me is that Michael Jackson pulled off what is perhaps the rarest trick in any field: After more than a decade of being an absolutely huge superstar, top of his field, sure-thing Hall of Famer, etc., he somehow found an extra gear and suddenly transcended mere superstardom, redefining the very notion of how big someone in his field could be. Try imagining J.K. Rowling suddenly coming out with a series of books that were so much better and more popular than the Harry Potter books that they rendered them a mere footnote to her career and you'll get the idea of what Michael Jackson accomplished with "Thriller."



Newsweek's prediction just six month earlier that no new mass-appeal superstar would ever again emerge had proven spectacularly wrong, and for the time being, rock's doldrums had been cured. Robert Christgau proclaimed that 1984 was the greatest year for pop singles since the height of Beatlemania, crediting the revival of Top 40 radio and the integration of MTV for this development. And lest there be any doubt that "Thriller" truly did unify all corners of the pop audience, it's worth noting that it won the hipper-than-thou Village Voice critics' poll for album of the year in addition to all those Grammys.



Predictably, the death of Michael Jackson caused a lamentation about the impossibility of anyone ever doing it again. Shortly after Jackson's death The New York Times editorialized: "Fame on the the level Mr. Jackson has achieved is all but impossible for pop culture heroes today, and quite likely it will never be possible again." The similarity of these remarks to Newsweek's 1982 incorrect prediction is uncanny. The notion that never again will the conditions be right for a truly mass, sustainable musical moment is myopic, to say the least.



Despite a succession of on-line platforms that assume ever more fragmented audience niches, one would be foolish to bet against the potential for one to arise that encourages audience behavior which favors a vast coalition of sub-groups uniting behind something new and fantastic. Besides, pop music has always thrived on mass excitement; the yearning for shared cultural touchpoints seems to be hardwired into us. What "Thriller" taught us was that the right star, with the right product and the right technological environment, always has the ability to move us and to unite us all.



Happy 30th anniversary, "Thriller." No doubt the next big thing is just around the corner.



(Page 2 of 4)



History has been unkind to early MTV's exclusion of black music from its format, but this is somewhat unfair. Launched at the height of radio playlist segregation, the channel at first could not fathom the idea that its target audience--teens in the overwhelmingly white suburbs and small towns who were the first to receive MTV on their cable television systems in late 1981 -- would want to hear black records, with which they were unfamiliar. In a world without mass appeal Top 40 radio, the idea of mass appeal Top 40 video was far from obvious. But at least on the radio dial, there were choices for those who wanted to seek out black music. On television, MTV was the only game in town. And its power to steer pop tastes was quickly becoming apparent, as hits began to gather steam in the hinterlands simply due to MTV exposure, without any radio play.



MTV's true impact was not fully felt until the channel made its debut on cable systems in the New York and Los Angeles areas in September of 1982. Suddenly, that which had been a rumor wafting in from the heartland became a loud thunderclap waking up the cultural agenda setters in the nation's twin media capitals, who accurately hyped MTV as the Next Big Thing. It is no coincidence that the aforementioned nadir of black music's presence on the pop charts occurred in October, 1982 -- a moment when all of pop radio and the only music channel on television excluded it from the mix.



Enter Michael Jackson. By the time he delivered "Thriller" to CBS's Epic label in 1982, Jackson had been one of the top recording stars in the world for over a dozen years, both with and without his brothers. However, his most recent album, the mega-hit "Off The Wall," which spawned four Top 10 singles, had been released in 1979, a year when 40% of the songs that reached the Top 3 on the Hot 100 were by black artists, before the wall separating black and white music on the radio arose.





"The Girls Is Mine"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



CBS Records was well aware that there were no black records at all in the pop Top 20 the week they sent the debut single from "Thriller" to radio in October of 1982. Faced with the very real possibility that Jackson's record would fail to become exposed to a crossover radio audience, the record company took no chances. That first single, "The Girl Is Mine," was a gentle, easy-listening leaning duet with the ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, most recently Stevie Wonder's duet partner. The presence of McCartney, still very much a pop radio mainstay in the early 80's, virtually insured the song's acceptance at white radio. And, aware that MTV didn't play videos by black artists, CBS simply didn't make one for Jackson's first single from "Thriller."



"The Girl Is Mine" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 6th, 1982, the date on which, not coincidentally, the rebound of black music's presence on that chart began, after a three-year steady decline. The fluffy single was not well received by critics. "Michael's worst idea since 'Ben,'" was how Robert Christgau, writing in the Village Voice, judged it. For an album that not long after would be viewed as a masterpiece, this was an inauspicious beginning, although it did get on white radio as intended.



The "Thriller" album itself was released three weeks later, November 30th, and on the chart dated December 25th it debuted at No. 11. This was a highly respectable chart debut in those pre-Soundscan days, although unexceptional, as even back then it was not unheard of for albums to debut inside the Top 10 or even at No. 1. In January, the album inched into the Top 10, moving to No. 9 for two weeks, then No. 8, before stalling for three weeks at No. 5, which was as far as the momentum generated by "The Girl Is Mine" would take it. While the album could already be considered a hit, "Thriller's" chart performance in those early weeks gave no hint of the juggernaut it would turn out to be.



On the strength of the No. 2 pop chart peak of "The Girl Is Mine" just after Christmas, CBS Records knew their strategy to lead at radio with the McCartney "Trojan Horse" was a success. As 1983 began, the label prepared its campaign for the album's second single, the more "urban" sounding "Billie Jean." With the table already set, pop radio immediately started to play this follow-up single, and skeptics were indeed happy to find that "Thriller" had more thrilling things to offer than the McCartney duet. "Billie Jean" was nothing short of breathtaking, the kind of single that makes you stop in your tracks and always remember where you were when you first heard it. But with MTV the rage of the music world that winter, there was no way Jackson could occupy the central spot in pop culture without its support. And MTV didn't play black records.



CBS gambled and filmed expensive videos for both "Billie Jean" and the next single, "Beat It"--videos that were a joy to behold. Jackson was a natural video star, his era's premiere song and dance man. The two videos introduced a standard of choreography previously unseen in music videos, arguably surpassing even James Brown's 1960s live work, until then the gold standard against whom all R&B dancers were judged.



As a visual art form, music video is naturally suited to choreography. Yet with the exception of Toni Basil's "Mickey" clip from the previous fall, there really hadn't been any accomplished dancing featured in videos shown on MTV. This was largely due to the fact that the music business hadn't in recent years nurtured artists who could dance-even the stars of disco music weren't consummate dancers themselves. All that would eventually change after "Thriller," with the coming of Madonna, Michael's sister Janet, and Paula Abdul, among others. But in the meantime, Michael Jackson had the MTV dance-floor to himself



Despite the obvious quality of the Jackson videos, MTV initially resisted playing them, claiming it was a rock station and Jackson didn't fit the format. There is to this day some disagreement as to what led the channel to change its policy and add "Billie Jean." At the time, a story was widely circulated that CBS chief Walter Yetnikoff resorted to threatening to pull all of his label's videos off the channel if MTV didn't play "Billie Jean," but this claim has been refuted over the years by original MTV honchos Bob Pittman and Les Garland. They concede that the channel initially assumed it would not play the video, as its thumping beat and urban production did not fit the channel's "rock" image. They contend however that in mid-February, after seeing the clip--which was possibly the best that had ever come across their desks--they began to re-think things. Coupled with the fact that even without MTV, the song had just leaped in one week from No. 23 to No. 6 on the Hot 100, the MTV execs concluded they should give it a shot.





"Billie Jean"

"Beat It"

"Thriller"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


MTV's -- and Jackson's -- timing was perfect. MTV debuted "Billie Jean," on March 1st, just four days before the song hit No. 1 on the Hot 100, making it the first uptempo urban song to accomplish that feat in over two years. Simultaneously, "Billie Jean's" momentum was the thing that finally pulled the "Thriller" album all the way up to No. 1 on the album chart in its 10th chart week. But a number one single and album turned out to be only the beginning-for both Jackson and MTV.



Featuring Jackson's videos for "Billie Jean" and two weeks later for "Beat It" widened the video-clip channel's appeal as much as airplay on MTV widened the appeal of Michael Jackson. MTV was already at the white-hot center of the pop universe, but it was only when they added Michael Jackson that they found their real star. The idea of the hottest pop star in the world being shown on TV throughout the day-between the two clips, you didn't need to sit in front of your TV for very long to catch Michael on MTV-made the network even more talked-about than before. New viewers watched MTV because they'd heard how great the Michael Jackson videos were; at the same time, MTVs core audience was blown away by videos featuring a type of music they weren't supposed to like-except it turned out they did. To use a modern term to describe what was happening back then, MTV and Michael Jackson made each other go viral.



Jackson's second MTV video, for "Beat It," was yet another master stroke, incorporating live sound effects, real L.A. street gang members and the mass choreographed dancing which would become a signature part of Jackson's videos. The "Billie Jean" video had been a revelation because it showcased the brilliance of Jackson's performance. "Beat It" did that too, but it also set a new standard of production for music video itself, and in fact it became the more popular and acclaimed video of the two, despite the fact that "Billie Jean" was a bigger hit song. "Beat It" also represented another step in Jackson's master plan to appeal across all musical boundaries, with its rock feel and Eddie van Halen guitar solo. It achieved that goal, being played on rock radio stations and earning Jackson yet another category of fans that would not otherwise have gravitated to his music (In this regard Michael Jackson was actually beaten to the punch by his older brother Jermaine, who featured the new wave band Devo on his 1982 hit "Let Me Tickle Your Fancy," which had also garnered some rock airplay) .



Then, just when it didn't seem possible that Jackson could get any bigger, he did. On May 16th, with "Beat It" at No. 1 and "Billie Jean" still in the Top 10, Michael debuted the moonwalk on the Motown 25th Anniversary TV special on NBC. Drawn by a desire to see Michael Jackson's first performance on a stage since the release of "Thriller," 47 million Americans tuned in, many of whom did not yet have cable television and thus could not see Jackson's videos on MTV. The performance Jackson gave that night hurled his career even further into the stratosphere.



A full year after "Thriller's" release, after the record-setting seven Top 10 singles and countless weeks at No. 1 on the album chart, making it the best-selling album of all time, Jackson still had one more trick up his "Thriller" sleeve: On December 2nd, he debuted his nearly 14-minute John Landis-directed video for the album's title track. It was immediately acclaimed as perhaps the greatest music video ever made and it reignited Michael-mania. A commercial videocassette featuring the short film shot to the top of the video chart and went on to become the biggest selling music video of all time. Meanwhile, the "Thriller" album, which had fallen out of the No. 1 position nearly six months earlier, now jumped back into the top spot just in time for Christmas and stayed there well into the new year. The Grammy telecast two months later, during which Jackson won eight Grammys, served as the formal coronation of Jackson as King of Pop, although now by that point the fact was obvious.



But "Thriller's" legacy goes far beyond its own sales and awards accomplishments. Once MTV found success with Michael Jackson, videos by other black performers quickly appeared on the playlist. This development single-handedly forced pop radio to reintroduce black music into its mix: After all, pop fans, now accustomed to seeing black artists and white artists on the same video channel, came to expect the same mix of music on pop radio. It was impossible to keep the various fragments of the audience isolated from one another any longer. Mass-appeal Top 40 radio itself made a big comeback due to this seismic shift. Beginning in early 1983 in Philadelphia, and rapidly spreading through the country, one or more FM stations in every city switched to Top 40 and many rose to the top of the ratings playing the mix of music made popular by MTV-young rock and urban hits.

But "Thriller's" legacy goes far beyond its own sales and awards accomplishments. Once MTV found success with Michael Jackson, videos by other black performers quickly appeared on the playlist. This development single-handedly forced pop radio to reintroduce black music into its mix: After all, pop fans, now accustomed to seeing black artists and white artists on the same video channel, came to expect the same mix of music on pop radio. It was impossible to keep the various fragments of the audience isolated from one another any longer. Mass-appeal Top 40 radio itself made a big comeback due to this seismic shift. Beginning in early 1983 in Philadelphia, and rapidly spreading through the country, one or more FM stations in every city switched to Top 40 and many rose to the top of the ratings playing the mix of music made popular by MTV-young rock and urban hits.



In the age of "Thriller," black music made a resounding comeback on the pop charts. If 1982 was the genre's low point in terms of pop success, by 1985 more than one third of all the hits on the Billboard Hot 100 were of urban radio origin. Even Prince's "1999" single, shut out of pop radio upon its initial release in 1982, was re-launched in mid-1983 and off the back of its belated MTV exposure became a huge pop radio success the second time around. Thus, in a way few historians appreciate, the Michael Jackson/MTV team proved itself a remarkably progressive force, helping to reintegrate a fragmented popular culture at the dawn of the Reagan era. Black music was back at the center at the mainstream, and to this day it has never again been pushed from the spotlight.



As an aside, the rise of MTV conversely spelled doom for country music's fortunes in the pop world. Prior to MTV, country music had, since the early 70's, become increasingly strong at pop radio, with its popularity culminating in the summer of 1981, during the "Urban Cowboy" craze, just as MTV was being launched. That summer, there were an average of 11 country records on the Billboard Hot 100 in any given week. But MTV decided from day-one that country music would not be part of its programming and country's performance at pop radio steadily nosedived from that point onward. Soon, country records were completely shut out of the Hot 100, something that had never happened before.



For all its record-setting accomplishments, the thing which never ceases to amaze me is that Michael Jackson pulled off what is perhaps the rarest trick in any field: After more than a decade of being an absolutely huge superstar, top of his field, sure-thing Hall of Famer, etc., he somehow found an extra gear and suddenly transcended mere superstardom, redefining the very notion of how big someone in his field could be. Try imagining J.K. Rowling suddenly coming out with a series of books that were so much better and more popular than the Harry Potter books that they rendered them a mere footnote to her career and you'll get the idea of what Michael Jackson accomplished with "Thriller."



Newsweek's prediction just six month earlier that no new mass-appeal superstar would ever again emerge had proven spectacularly wrong, and for the time being, rock's doldrums had been cured. Robert Christgau proclaimed that 1984 was the greatest year for pop singles since the height of Beatlemania, crediting the revival of Top 40 radio and the integration of MTV for this development. And lest there be any doubt that "Thriller" truly did unify all corners of the pop audience, it's worth noting that it won the hipper-than-thou Village Voice critics' poll for album of the year in addition to all those Grammys.



Predictably, the death of Michael Jackson caused a lamentation about the impossibility of anyone ever doing it again. Shortly after Jackson's death The New York Times editorialized: "Fame on the the level Mr. Jackson has achieved is all but impossible for pop culture heroes today, and quite likely it will never be possible again." The similarity of these remarks to Newsweek's 1982 incorrect prediction is uncanny. The notion that never again will the conditions be right for a truly mass, sustainable musical moment is myopic, to say the least.



Despite a succession of on-line platforms that assume ever more fragmented audience niches, one would be foolish to bet against the potential for one to arise that encourages audience behavior which favors a vast coalition of sub-groups uniting behind something new and fantastic. Besides, pop music has always thrived on mass excitement; the yearning for shared cultural touchpoints seems to be hardwired into us. What "Thriller" taught us was that the right star, with the right product and the right technological environment, always has the ability to move us and to unite us all.



http://www.billboard.com/features/m...hriller-at-30-how-one-1008031662.story?page=4
 
Happy birthday Thriller, you will always keep your position @ No 1 spot biggest selling album:clapping:

Happy Birthday 'Thriller!': 5 Ways Michael Jackson's set changed everything
His masterpiece turns 30 on Nov. 30

BY MELINDA NEWMAN THURSDAY, NOV 29, 2012 12:59 PM

Michael Jackson

Nov. 30th marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the best selling studio album in the United States.

Not only was the album a blockbuster that forever sealed Jackson’s fate as one of the most legendary pop artists of all time, it changed the music industry in ways that are still being felt today, three decades later.

Here’s five ways that “Thriller” forever altered the pop landscape:

1. “Thriller” was the first blockbuster title to release seven songs as singles to radio. Until “Thriller,” labels usually put out three or four singles and then the artist went back into the studio to work on the next album. While seven singles is still a stretch for most artists, many superstars routinely go five or six singles deep on an album.

2. “Thriller” was the first major release to come out around the world simultaneously. Previously, release dates were often staggered to accommodate an act’s ability to be in the marketplace for promotional activities when the album came out. Now, it’s the industry standard for a star with any kind of global reach to have his or her album out worldwide at the same time. In fact, now it’s common for the U.S. release date to move from its usual Tuesday standard release date to Monday to match the release date used by much of the rest of the world. Rihanna and Taylor Swift just did it with their chart toppers.

3. “Thriller” was one of the first albums to release simultaneous singles to different radio formats. After “The Girl Is Mine” peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, Epic put out “Billie Jean” to the pop stations and while it was still climbing the charts, pushed “Beat It” to rock radio.

4. “Billie Jean” became the first video by a black superstar artist to be played on MTV. Epic’s parent, CBS, claims they had to threaten to yank all its artists off a then-18 month-old MTV if the channel didn’t play Jackson’s video. MTV says they were always going to play “Billie Jean.” Regardless of which side you believe, Jackson busted through any color barrier at MTV, altering the cable outlet’s programming for good.

5. After breaking down walls with the “Billie Jean” video, MTV and Jackson were close allies. When it came time to debut the 14-minute video for “Thriller,” which MTV paid $1 million for exclusive airing rights, the music channel aired the clip at five designated times per day. It thereby created the first “destination viewing” for a video clip.


Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/news/happy-bi...ns-set-changed-everything#vP2mpmLImjEM7hXJ.99
 
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

What a great article by Billboard! I like the fact that it highlights the album's cultural significance (and not only sales), which is IMO more important than how many copies it sold. The segregation in the music media that was the case before Thriller is probably something that is unimaginable for today's youth, but it's unimaginable exactly because of such milestones as Thriller!
 
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

Eddie Van Halen deconstructs his collaboration on 'Beat It'

(CNN) -- Eddie Van Halen sits on a sofa in his home studio, smoking an electronic cigarette and reminiscing about the 30th anniversary of Michael Jackson's masterpiece album, "Thriller."

"It seems like yesterday, doesn't it," he says softly. "It would have been fun to work with him again."

Van Halen was a surprise guest on "Beat It," the album's third single. His blazing guitar solo lasted all of 20 seconds and took half an hour to record. He did it for free, as a favor to producer Quincy Jones, while the rest of his Van Halen bandmates were out of town.

"I said to myself, 'Who is going to know that I played on this kid's record, right? Nobody's going to find out.' Wrong!" he laughs. "Big-time wrong. It ended up being Record of the Year."

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer recently revealed to CNN what went on behind-the-scenes of his iconic collaboration with the King of Pop.

CNN: When Quincy rang you up, you thought it was a crank call.

Eddie Van Halen: I went off on him. I went, "What do you want, you f-ing so-and-so!" And he goes, "Is this Eddie?" I said, "Yeah, what the hell do you want?" "This is Quincy." I'm thinking to myself, "I don't know anyone named Quincy." He goes, "Quincy Jones, man." I went, "Ohhh, sorry!" (Laughs)

I asked, "What can I do for you?" And he said, "How would you like to come down and play on Michael Jackson's new record?" And I'm thinking to myself, "OK, 'ABC, 1, 2, 3' and me. How's that going to work?"

I still wasn't 100% sure it was him. I said, "I'll tell you what. I'll meet you at your studio tomorrow." And lo and behold, when I get there, there's Quincy, there's Michael Jackson and there's engineers. They're makin' records!

CNN: Did Quincy give you any direction about what he wanted you to do?

Van Halen: Michael left to go across the hall to do some children's speaking record. I think it was "E.T." or something. So I asked Quincy, "What do you want me to do?" And he goes, "Whatever you want to do." And I go, "Be careful when you say that. If you know anything about me, be careful when you say, "Do anything you want!"
I listened to the song, and I immediately go, "Can I change some parts?" I turned to the engineer and I go, "OK, from the breakdown, chop in this part, go to this piece, pre-chorus, to the chorus, out." Took him maybe 10 minutes to put it together. And I proceeded to improvise two solos over it.

I was just finishing the second solo when Michael walked in. And you know artists are kind of crazy people. We're all a little bit strange. I didn't know how he would react to what I was doing. So I warned him before he listened. I said, "Look, I changed the middle section of your song."

Now in my mind, he's either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he's going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, "Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo, but to actually care about the song, and make it better."

He was this musical genius with this childlike innocence. He was such a professional, and such a sweetheart.

CNN: That collaboration surprised a lot of people.

Van Halen: I'll never forget when Tower Records was still open over here in Sherman Oaks. I was buying something, and "Beat It" was playing over the store sound system. The solo comes on, and I hear these kids in front of me going, "Listen to this guy trying to sound like Eddie Van Halen." I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "That IS me!" That was hilarious.

CNN: How did you explain to the guys in Van Halen what had happened?

Van Halen: I just said, "You know. (Shrugs) Busted!" "Dave, you were out of the country!" "Al, you weren't around!" I couldn't call anyone and ask for permission.

Unfortunately, "Thriller" kept our album, "1984," from going to No. 1. Our album was just about ready to go No. 1 when he burned his hair in that Pepsi commercial, if you remember that. And boom, he went straight to No. 1 again!
CNN: Is there an album since then that has shaken things up in the same way?

Van Halen: Wow, I don't know.

CNN: Some people cite Nirvana's "Nevermind" has one that caused a musical shift.

Van Halen: But still not like that. Not that crossed over to such a mass audience. Nirvana was huge, but it didn't appeal to everyone.

I have a lot of respect for Michael. He's going to be sorely missed. I'd be curious as to what he'd be doing right now.
CNN: I believe Quincy has said he paid you in two six packs of beer.

Van Halen: Yeah, something like that. Actually, I brought my own, if I remember right.

I don't even think I'm credited on the record. It just says, "Guitar solo: Question Mark" or "Guitar solo: Frankenstein" (the name of his guitar).

CNN: Did you ever hear from Quincy again?

Van Halen: At the very end, Quincy wrote me a letter thanking me. It was signed, "The F-ing Blah Blah Blah," which I still have. It's very funny.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/30/showbiz/music/van-halen-jackson-thriller/
 
More praise to Michael and well deserved:clapping:


Michael Jackson: Time to remember such a talented musician
As Thriller turns 30 and Bad turns 25, Catherine Gee pays tribute to the two record-breaking albums by Michael Jackson.

By Catherine Gee2:36PM GMT 30 Nov 2012

On Saturday night, Bad 25, Spike Lee’s brilliantly detailed, two-hour documentary on the making on Michael Jackson’s Bad celebrates the album’s 25th anniversary. But Bad is not the only Jackson record with an anniversary to celebrate.
On this date, 30 years ago, Jackson released Thriller, and with it, changed the landscape of contemporary pop music. Before Thriller, established rock guitarists did not collaborate with soul, R’n’B and disco singers. Before Thriller, black artists were very rarely featured on MTV.

The album came three years after Jackson’s first non-Motown solo record, Off the Wall – itself a smash hit which had sold more than eight million copies. Released when Jackson was 20, Off the Wall had been seen as a departure from his brothers and his childhood stardom. Many were sceptical that he could survive without Motown but Off the Wall had proved them wrong and it was assumed that Jackson had reached his peak. Jackson, on the other hand, knew that he was only just getting started. Off the Wall had been a decent disco record, but Thriller was set to span genres and break both boundaries and records.

Jackson and his producer Quincy Jones approached the project with enormous ambition. They wanted to make an album that would appeal to fans of all genres and prove so important that the press that would normally give a black man little coverage would be forced to pay attention to him. To give the record true rock credibility, Jackson and Jones drafted in Eddie Van Halen to play a solo on Beat It.
To add to the sheer scope of the record, Paul McCartney sang a duet with Jackson on The Girl is Mine, horror film actor Vincent Price provided the creepy vocals at the start and end of the song Thriller; and sound effects of footsteps, opening doors and howling wind were added. It played across the genres: Billie Jean and Wanna Be Startin’ Something are funk tracks, Human Nature and Lady of My Life are ballads, Beat It is a rock song, PYT and Baby Be Mine fall into the realm of R’n’B and disco. Never had a pop record incorporated so much and done it so well. It went on to win a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards and became the best-selling album of all time but Thriller’s legacy did not end there.

In the early Eighties, MTV showed only rock videos with black artists barely getting a look in. It’s debateable whether their refusal to play Jackson’s previous hits was based on his race or his genre, but with Thriller, Jackson made songs – and videos – that MTV simply could not ignore. His use of Eddie Van Halen on Beat It made it undoubtedly a rock song and its gangland, West Side Story-influenced video set a new standard – costing an unheard-of $150,000 to make.

The 14-minute horror film pastiche that was the accompaniment to the song Thriller, directed by American Werewolf in London’s John Landis, was something else entirely. Its budget was $500,000 and the production was on the scale of a major movie. The television premiere was a well-hyped event, and it was shown on Channel 4 late at night due to its scary contents. Fans stayed up late to watch, fingers poised over the VCR record button.

His performance of Billie Jean at the Motown 25 celebration went down in history simply for being brilliant
It was five years before Jackson completed another album, again with Quincy Jones at his side. They left his disco roots behind and produced an album of pop, rock, funk and R’n’B. The result was more adult, with darker themes and even more polished.

More event videos followed; this time Martin Scorsese made the video for Bad (which starred Welsey Snipes), Moonwalker - which included the video for Smooth Criminal - became a project even more ambitious than Thriller, and Liberian Girl starred possibly the largest number of celebrities ever featured in a music video.
Compared to the enormous success of Thriller, Bad did not sell as well and only won two Grammies. With time it has found its place in history. Both Bad and Thriller can easily be named as Jackson’s finest album, depending on who you ask. That said, it could be argued that Bad is the stronger album simply because it doesn’t contain the utterly dire Paul McCartney duet, The Girl is Mine.

The legacy of both albums, along with Jackson's individual dancing style, voice, and inclusive approach to different genres is well-documented. Love them or hate them, even brand new artists such as Justin Bieber cite him as an influence. With the countless bizarre stories now associated with the artist, it's easy to forget just how innovative, talented and groundbreaking the work of Michael Jackson was, and still is today.
Bad 25 is on BBC Two, Saturday 1 December, at 9.45pm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...ime-to-remember-such-a-talented-musician.html
 
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

Thanks for this! Great reads!
 
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

Thanks for these great reads! Happy BIG 30 "Thriller"!!! :birthday:
No one will ever achieve what Michael did with that album, doesn't matter what the 1st article says about pop music. Michael is THE best and biggest, most influential musician of his generation and he proved it, beginning with this musical gem that will live forever just as his spirit and art. :clap: :bow:
 
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

That Billboard article is really very good. It's worth clicking on the link and read the FULL article (this is only a part of it) as it gives the whole historical context for Thriller.
 
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

Wonderful article. Thriller also shares my birthday :D!!
 
Michael Jackson: 'Magic is easy if you put your heart into it' – a classic interview from the vaults
Thriller is 30 years old this month – and here's an insight into the world of Michael Jackson as his career exploded, from Creem magazine, courtesy of Rock's Backpages, the world's leading archive of vintage music journalism


Sylvie Simmons
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 November 2012 12.40 GMT

Michael-Jackson-in-1983-001.jpg


'Labels are like racism' … Michael Jackson in 1983. Photograph: Eugene Adebari/Rex Features

Downtown, between the Pacific American Fish Co and the Hotel St Agnes Hospitality Kitchen, there's an alley. Cars block each end, no escape. And silhouetted in the car headlights, two rival LA gangs are swaggering towards each other. A couple of people pop their heads out of the hotel window, mutter something incomprehensible and go back to sleep. Down below in the smoke, the gangs are getting closer.

Then out of the corner of your eye you spot a lot of people standing around with cameras. What's this? Have they started putting the Pacific American Fish Co on those maps they give Japanese tourists? You know, Disneyland, Marineland, Gangland? Then you notice the movie cameras half hidden in the smoke. Ah, I've got it. A sequence for That's Incredible, right? "OK, Skip, you're going to tell us about real people who beat the shit out of each other EVERY DAY!" I can see them now, micing up the bodies, tapping them with rubber sticks for the soundcheck – "Hey Joe, a little more middle on the ribs please! we're getting awful feedback on those kneebones …"

I wouldn't want to mess with this bunch. Those gangs look mean. Those Crips, the ones with the blue bandanas, look really mean, slapping their fists in their hands and scowling and getting closer and – "CUT! OK, back to your places. Excuse me? EXCUSE ME? Thugs on the left? You sir, a teeeeeensy bit more knuckle-cracking. Perfect. ACTION!" – someone switches on a tape machine and a bit of Beat It blares out into the night. A woman bawls something rude off a balcony. The man with the Jordache look and a can of instant atmosphere ignores it and puffs some more into the alley. The gangs start swaggering towards each other once again.

"Magic," says Michael Jackson, who talks a lot about magic, "is easy if you put your heart into it."

There can't be that many things much more magic than standing around in downtown LA in the middle of the night watching marauding hordes stand to attention when someone with a fruity English accent gives the command.
This particular bit of sorcery will, by the time you read this, be the video for Michael Jackson's new single. You know, the one with the Eddie Van Halen guitar on it. The follow-up to the one about paternity suits. This one's about machismo; so's the video. Michael wakes up in some sleazy downtown bedroom in a cold sweat; he's had a dream about the upcoming punch-up and has to go stop it. He leaps out of bed, seriously endangering the lives of a whole family of cockroaches, and heads downtown to the Empty Food Warehouse for the grand finale.

Which is where we're heading now: the film crew, the Japanese tourists, the Fruity English accents, the Rival Gangs and the Stars. Everyone's there; even the cockroaches. Someone's escorting us through the cardboard boxes and the cartons and explaining how Michael's going to meet up with the gangs right here for some killer choreography – "It's difficult to look at cartons and be creative" – and it looked great in rehearsal. Apocalypse Now between the liquid shortening and stuffed Spanish olives.

But first they've got to shoot the gangs leaping out from behind the boxes looking mean. They do this several million times, the gangs (favoured fashion for punch-ups: black shades, tennis shoes, bandannas, woolly hats) looking meaner by the take. Just as they're getting it right, they have to stop filming while a freight train comes through. Time for a tea break. They've got tables filled with food outside (favoured gangland food: fruit salad, soft drinks – after all, the video's being done by the people who did the Dr Pepper commercials) and beverages. Gives a whole new meaning to "coffee mug". The gangs queue up in neat little lines and chat over the buffet. Nice civilised folks; one of them told me he was only a temporary member; he really wants to be an actor; another one swore they were the real thing, showed me scars and reckoned they were paid more tonight as extras than in a good night's street crime.
Back in the warehouse they're doing the choreographed fight sequence. The real gang members stand on the edges while a dozen or so imitation gang members – professional dancers – dance and wave knives. It looks perfect first time, but they make them do it again and again.

All this time, a thin, long-fingered man in a brown leather jacket too big for him is sipping orange juice, gazing wide-eyed and curious at the dancers and the monitors, nodding his head soberly in time to the music, his foot on automatic tap. Michael Jackson looks fascinated by the whole thing. It's three in the morning before he gets his go. He's to come in, break up the fight and lead them dancing out of a warehouse. Pied Piper meets Peter Pan.

Dawn was breaking by the time they finished; Michael Jackson wasn't. He's brilliant. Where the man gets his energy from no one knows. It's certainly not drugs – he doesn't touch them and rarely drinks. It's certainly not raw meat – Michael's a strict vegetarian and wouldn't eat at all, given an alternative; he fasts and dances every Sunday and manages to live to start another week.

Whatever, Michael Jackson manages to do more in a week than most manage in a decade. In the time it took Supertramp to get the right piano sound, Michael sang harmonies with Donna Summer, backing vocals with Joe "King" Carrasco (happened to be on the next studio at the time and was happy to oblige, once he translated it from Texan), wrote and produced Muscles for Diana Ross, wrote and sang The Girl Is Mine with Paul McCartney, and did a song for a narrated ET album, gathered together everyone from Vincent Price to Eddie Van Halen ("Eddie was a great choice, because he's brilliant") to help out with his solo album, and still had time for his pet llama, snake and parrots.

Just back from England (a couple more tunes with Macca, whom he met at a Hollywood cocktail party at silent comedian Harold Lloyd's place and swapped phone numbers: "I love Paul, Linda and family very much."), he's already planning projects with Gladys Knight, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Katherine Hepburn, and – let's stick with the girls! – Freddie Mercury of Queen, his old pal. Not to mention working on a film with Steven Spielberg ("a futuristic fantasy with music") and an album with the Jacksons. Remember the Jacksons? Michael's been their singer and choreographer ever since his dad Joe – one-time head of a Chuck Berry cover band in Indiana, the Falcons – noticed the five-year-old's nifty James Brown impersonations. I mean, Michael was 11 years old when he had his first No 1 single!

It's a mystery to Michael, too. "Magic." The songs, ideas, energy come from God, he reckons – the man's a devoted Jehovah's Witness, He'll just wake up in the night and there they are. Several more million sellers. His first solo album, Off the Wall, sold seven million copies. Thriller's not exactly ready for the cutout bins yet. The first act in history, no less, to top the pop and R&B singles and albums charts all at the same time.

We didn't get to talk at the video. The Man at Epic threatened me with all sorts of violence if I approached Jackson during the shooting, and with those Crips backing him up, who's arguing? Seems during an earlier take a pressperson said something to Michael that gave him a fit of giggles (Oh No! Not the Freddie Mercury jokes, please!) and gave the film crew a very expensive break. But he did say he'd pass on a questionnaire to the man at an opportune moment.

And we did get to talk last year, in a three-storey condo in the San Fernando Valley – where Michael was and still is, staying while they rebuild his family house five miles down the road – filled with books, plants, art-work, animals, organic juices and various nephews and cousins and siblings of the Jackson family. La Toya was there in a cowboy hat. Little sister Janet was there to parrot my questions to Michael in a simpatico accent. Oh, I forgot, and there was a record collection ranging from Smokey Robinson (the first record Michael ever bought was Mickey's Monkey) to Macca, with stops at funk, new wave, classical and just about anything else. Hmm. The Jackson influences, eh?

"James Brown, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Berry and Little Richard – I think they had strong influences on a lot of people, because these were the guys who really got rock'n'roll going. I like to start with the origin of things, because once it gets along it changes. It's so interesting to see how it really was in the beginning."

Michael's got a tiny, otherworldly voice. You've heard him described as childlike and angelic. You will again. He's painfully shy, stares at his hands, his shoes, his sister, anywhere where he can forget there's an interviewer around.
He goes on: "I like to do that with art also. I love art. Whenever we go to Paris I rush to the Louvre. I just never get enough of it! I go to all the museums around the world. I love art. I love it too much, because I end up buying everything and you become addicted. You see a piece you like and you say, 'Oh God, I've got to have this …'

"I love classical music. I've got so many different compositions. I guess when I was real small in kindergarten and hearing Peter And The Wolf and stuff – I still listen to that stuff, it's great, and Boston Pops and Debussy, Mozart, I buy all that stuff. I'm a big classical fan. We've been influenced by all kinds of different music – classical, R&B, folk, funk – and I guess all those ingredients combine to create what we have now.

"I wouldn't be happy doing just one kind of music or label ourselves. I like doing something for everybody... I don't like our music to be labeled. Labels are like … racism."

A good enough reason for swinging from Streisand to Freddie Mercury, not wanting to become the figurehead of just one group of people. How does he choose who he works with? Anybody who asks?

"I choose by feeling and instinct," is Michael's questionnaire answer. What does he get out of them? "I feel it would be … magic." Then again, you've got to keep in mind the man lives for his work.

"My career is mainly what I think about … There's been so many other things, they come in all the time. It's just hard to juggle your responsibilities around – my music here, my solo career, my movies there, TV and everything else."

Is that what makes you happy, just working?

"Yes. That's what I'm here for, really. It's like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci." His voice trails off; he looks torn between sounding immodest and telling the truth, which, as he sees it, is that talent comes from God anyway, so don't go patting him on the back. "Still, today, we can see their work and be inspired by it."

So as long as there's stereos, Michael Jackson lives, then?

"Yes. I'd like to just keep going and inspire people and try new things that haven't been done."

To what extent has his belief in divinity influenced his life?

"I believe in God. We all do. We like to be straight, don't go crazy or anything. Not to the point of losing our perspective on life, of what you are and who you are. A lot of entertainers, they make money and they spend the rest of their life celebrating that one goal they reached, and with that celebration comes the drugs and the liquor and the alcohol. And then they try to straighten up and they say, 'Who am I? Where am I? What happened?' And they lost themselves, and they're broken. You have to be careful and have some kind of discipline."

Is he a very self-disciplined person?

"I'm not an angel, I know. I'm not like a Mormon or an Osmond or something where everything's straight. That can be silly sometimes. It goes too far."

It must be hard being an angel when you're acknowledged as one of the sexiest performers around, have girls camping in your backyard and the like.
"I wouldn't say I was sexy! But I guess that's fine if that's what they say. I like that in concert. That's neat."

What isn't neat is: "Like, you run into a bunch of girls, which I do all the time, you'll drive outside and there'll be all these girls standing on the corner and they'll start bursting into screaming and jumping up and down and I'll just sink into my seat. That happens all the time … Everyone knew where we lived before, because it was on the 'Map To The Stars' Homes', and they'd come round with cameras and sleeping bags and jump the fence and sleep in the yard and come in the house – we found people everywhere. It gets crazy. Even with 24-hour guards they find a way to slip in. One day my brother woke up and saw this girl standing over him in his bedroom. This one lady, who's 30 and she's crazy, and she said Jesus sent her there, and she's got to me … People hitch-hike and come to the house and say they want to sleep with us, stay with us, and it usually ends up that one of the neighbors takes them in. We don't let them stay. We don't know them."

More tales of crazy fans. One girl who tried to blow them up; another who screams at him in supermarkets. Must get a bit tough knowing who's your friend, sometimes.

"It does become difficult certain times. It's hard to tell, and sometimes I get it wrong. Just the force of feeling, or if a person's just nice without knowing who you are."

Lonely at the top?

"We know lots and lots of people because we have such a big family. But [I've got] maybe two, three good friends."

Things weren't much different though when he was growing up in Gary, Indiana. He remembers "a huge baseball pitch at the back of where I lived, and children playing and eating popcorn and everything," and not being allowed to join in, but still reckons "I didn't really feel left out. We got a lot in exchange for not playing baseball in the summer. My father was always very protective of us, taking care of business and everything.

"We went to school, but I guess we were even different then, because everyone in the neighborhood knew about us. We'd win every talent show and our house was loaded with trophies. We always had money and we could always buy things the other kids couldn't, like extra candy and extra bubblegum – our pockets were always loaded and we'd be passing out candy. That made us popular! But most of our life we had private schooling. I only went to one public school in my life. I tried to go to another one here, but it didn't work, because we'd be in our class and a bunch of fans would break into the classroom, or we'd come out of school and there'd be a bunch of kids waiting to take pictures and stuff like that. We stayed at that school a week. One week! That was all we could take. The rest was private school with other entertainment kids or stars' kids, where you wouldn't have to be hassled."

But spending your life almost exclusively with your brothers and sisters – don't you get on each other's nerves? Doesn't it get claustrophobic?

"Honestly, it doesn't, and I'm not just saying that to be polite. Thank God it doesn't."

Not even when they're out on the road together?

"No. We're so silly when we're on the road, and we just get sillier. We play games, we throw things at each other, we do all kinds of silly things. It seems like when you're under pressure you find some kind of escapism to make up for that – because the road is a lot of tensions: work, interviews, fans grabbing you, everybody wants a piece of you, you're always busy, the phones ringing all night with fans calling you, so you put the phone under the mattress, then the fans knock at the door screaming, you can't even get out of the room without them following you. You feel that all around you. It's like you're in a goldfish bowl and they're always watching you."

How do you get away from the madness?

"I go to museums and learn and study. I don't do sports – it's dangerous. There's a lot of money being counted on, and we don't want to risk anything. My brother hurt his leg in a basketball game and we had to cancel the concert, and just because of him having an hour of fun, thousands of people missed the show, and we were being sued left and right because of a game. I don't think it's worth it … I try to be real careful."

Even about talking to the press. Another reason he hates interviews is a fear of being misquoted. Magazines, he reckons, "can be so stupid sometimes that I want to choke them! Like I say things and they turn it all around. I could kill them sometimes. Once I made a quote – I care about starvation and I love children and I want to do something about the future. And I said, 'One day I'd love to go to India and see the starving children and really see what it feels like.' And they wrote that Michael Jackson gets a kick out of seeing children starve, so you can see what kind of person he is!

"Ryan O'Neal sent her a tarantula spider one time," he grins of the author. "That was good!"

It's probably the nearest thing to a mean statement the man's made. You wonder how someone so sweet and shy and childlike gets to be such a demon onstage.

"I just do it, really. The sex thing is kind of spontaneous. It really creates itself, I think."

So you don't practice being sexy in front of the mirror?

"No! Once the music plays, it creates me. The instruments move me, through me, they control me. Sometimes I'm uncontrollable and it just happens – boom, boom, boom! – once it gets inside you."

That doesn't mean that outside forces get the blame if anything goes wrong. Michael has complete control over every aspect of his career. And he criticises his own efforts more than anyone else's.

"I'm never satisfied with what I do. I always think I can do it a lot better. I think," he considers, "it's good to be like that."

Anyway, as we told you already he's going to be working on a film with Steven Spielberg.

"I love Steven," says Michael in the questionnaire "Just 10 minutes before writing this, Steven called me. He bought me a present! I can't really tell you anything about the project. I will say Steven is my favorite director, and that he's looked long and hard for the right property."

I just heard that Francis Ford Coppola wants to do Peter Pan with him as the lead. And we at Creem haven't seen such a blatant bit of typecasting since Sly Stone made his fortune playing mindless beefcake.

At 24, doesn't it get on his nerves being referred to as a "child"?

"I don't mind. I feel I'm Peter Pan as well as Methuselah, and a child. I love children so much. Thank God for children. They save me every time!"

But how about a film of his own life, then? Will we ever get to see a film of Michael Jackson's magical life?

"No. I'd hate to play my own life story," he grimaces. "I haven't lived it yet! I'll let someone else do it."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/20/michael-jackson-classic-interview
 
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

I can't believe it's been 30 years.

I am kind of surprised it's being remembered for the anniversary. It's nice and appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Re: Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at 30: How One Album Changed the World

Hats off to the author of the billboard piece. This could have been written, eons ago while MJ was alive.
 
Wow, how time flies! I was in high school when Thriller dropped and my sister Phyllis surprised me by giving it to me for a late B-day/early Christmas present. I still have it, too. Sadly both my sister and Michael are no longer with us, but the memories and the music live on.
 
I wish we could do more celebrating and a lot less of the other


H A P P Y * B I R T H D A Y * T H R I L L E R :birthday:


Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album turns 30
- CNN


Michael Jackson - Thriller Megamix (HQ)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFDe7w9F4nA


Remixed video to the Jason Nevins' megamix of the album 'Thriller'
 
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/1...jacksons-billie-jean-is-still-a-beauty-queen/

Dave Bidini: At 30, Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is still a beauty queen


1. Wikipedia tells us that Quincy Jones didn’t like it, at least not at first. Too obvious, maybe. Too unprogressively pop, and not nearly as epic or “artistic” in scope compared to PYT or Beat It, or Wanna Be Startin’ Something, with its indefatigable land-sea outro; an album side on its own. Eventually, Michael won the argument. Maybe it was the bass line or maybe it was the vocal take or or maybe it was the idea for the video: “You see, I do this thing with my feet and torso.” Either way, there was something about how the song impacted whomever happened to be sitting in the mixing room, the recording chamber, the studio A desk at Westlake, or the massive live floor, 800 square feet of it. “Michael Jackson stood where? Here? Right here??” A neck bob. A leg fly. A belly shimmy. All at once. Damned, man, you can’t fake the charge. You can’t. It was on the proposed album sequence, culled from over 60 compositions. First song, side two. Alright. Maybe. “You sure, Smelly?” No, Quincy wasn’t sure. He called Michael “Smelly.” So did everybody else, after “Smelly Jelly,” Michael’s shorthand for groove. It was a good name, a funny name. It stuck.

2. Michael was told to speak with a high voice; a trill; a warble. It protects the throat chamber. It keeps the larynx and the voice box from rising. You don’t want that. You don’t want to put too much pressure there. You want the voice to float; to sit right so there’s room for the notes, the noises, the whoops, the ohhhhs, the oooooas, the ahhhhhhhs, the shhhzhshhs, the zrrrrrrrs; room for them to pass through swiftly and neatly. He was told to do this in interviews. At dinner. With your publicist or when you’re arguing over album tracks. Problem was, Michael was a natural baritone. A low voice like his dad, Joe. True. Dude was down here. Here. Arguing with Quincy was tough that way. Could Peter Pan hold the day? No one knew. “Spin it again. Again. Let’s see how it feels now. OK? One more time.”


3. Listen to the bass drum: Leon Chancler’s. Right there. A sonic pastry. Not like the beginning of Highway to Hell, which was more of a leather boot to the flank hollow of a passenger door; and not like the beginning of The Ocean, which was more of a heavy weight lowered into a deep pool; and not like Ian Hunter’s Just Another Night, which was a pint glass slammed on a wet oak bar. Instead, let’s say we shadow it in sneaky digital reverb? There’s lots of drum pedal in there. A single bounce on the trampoline. Get the listener up; only not so high. Leave some headroom; some space to travel into. “There. OK?” Now, the snare. Smaller than the kick drum. The hi-hat is your neck. The snare is your soul. But your ass is the bass drum. Someone said that. Someone in the room. Everyone believed him. Smelly. He laughed low, too.

4. From mixer Bruce Swedien, who wore a swooshing white moustache and window-pane shirts with silver buttons. Quincy called him “Svensk.” White dude. Totally white. It didn’t matter. Not there. Not with Michael at the helm. Svensk told the internet: “Quincy gave me the nickname. It meant “Swedish Man” in Swedish, and when Q gives you a nickname, you are truly honoured. I recorded the drums with as tight and powerful a drum sound as I could come up with. I put the drum set on my plywood drum platform. Also at this time, I had a special kick drum cover made that covers the whole front of the kick drum. There’s a slot with a zipper in it that the mic fits through. When the kick drum mic is in my drum cover, I zip the opening tightly shut around the mic. And then I record it.”

5. OK, time for the Bass Man: Louis Johnson, one of the Brothers’ Johnson, who played tipped forwards on a stool. Cool in the pocket, but lively. Less Robbie Shakespeare; more James Jamerson. Beard and moustache, playing with his thumb, its crown as tough as burlap, thumping his Music Man Stingray, a guitar that Leo Fender made especially to support his distinctive pop and slap. It was a pure walking line, but not in the conventional sense. Instead, if the bass drum rooted you like cement, the bass pulled you up and carried you forward, still heavy at the heels. The low sloopy line was the goo inside the pastry. Blueberry, maybe. Spilling over the lips and down the chin. Sweet, not saccharine. Pick it up on your way home after a bad day. “This one’s for me, baby.” It came on the radio. Air bass in the front seat at rush hour, which, let’s face it, kids, almost never happens.

6. “You sure you wanna write about this? You don’t have to, you know? People will talk. They’ll talk about this song and no one will listen to it like they ain’t thinking.” In the end, it didn’t matter. Michael tried to sell Quincy on it, but the producer wanted every step to be right, and that included measuring a lyrical component that saw Peter Pan victimized — or not victimized — by a sweet young thing, and white, too, if her name suggested anything. Still, some songs curve past all of this (history shows that everyone wondered what the song was about, but no one cared). After a moment, the synth started on the off-beat; the song’s first cross-rhythm. “She was more like a beauty queen on a movie screen.” And then: “Would we dance on the floor in the round?” With this sticky vocal hook, the drums jumped the beat on a snare hit that sounded like a kid taking the last few steps of the staircase at once, surprised to find the floor. From there, the listener in his or her stocking’ed feet slid to meet the pre-chorus: “People always told me…” You could tell that something good was coming next.

7. More Bruce Swedien, hands tented on the mixing desk holding court with his audience: “Quincy says that the lyric that Michael wrote is highly personal. I’m sure that’s true. Michael told us it was about a girl, that climbed over the wall at his house, and was lounging out there by the swimming pool. She was laying out there, near the pool; lounging; hangin’ out with shades on; her bathing suit on. One morning she just showed up! Kind of like a stalker, almost. She had accused Michael of being the father of ONE of her twins. Is that possible? I don’t think so.”

8. In a recent documentary by Spike Lee about the making of Bad, Michael Jackson’s keyboard player talks about how the singer had the most percussive fingersnaps, and if you listen to that record as well as Thriller, they constantly pepper the mix. On Billie Jean, they come early in the chorus along with the snare’s pah-dap shot on the down beat, a West African drumming motif on a record that has many. The snaps are barely there, but you miss them when the song returns to the verse. The mix is a mastery of small changing shades: an “eeeeeehhhh” here; a handclap there; a quick highhat figure that disappears as soon as it arrives. The song is like a short verdant drive. The primary colours are the same, but every now and then: a bird, a signpost, a child’s voice; the scenery morphing in small ways to make what is good even better. “The kid is not my son.” Or “the chid is not my son.”

What the hell’s a “chid?”

9. Maybe Quincy Jones didn’t like the fact that the last 2:05 of a 4:53 song is simply the chorus out; recycled until it fades with the band purring hard. Structurally, the song is half a song. There’s no bridge and there’s hardly a solo save for the repeated Freddie Stewart guitar figure played close to the neck to get that whippy funky sound, cast in barely enough digital delay to make it circa now, not circa then. There’s a descending string run — violins, mostly — that quotes TSOP and Philly Soul, Hot Chocolate and Thelma Houston, coming after the last chord in the chorus’s sequence. In the chorus-out, a galaxy of singing fills the space, every part of the sonic tableau coloured with Michael doing this and Michael doing this, a trick that he — and everyone else— learned from Marvin Gaye. There are lots of “no, no, nos” and “uhhhs” and “you know you said it’s!” and a myriad of “breathless stutters,” which is how they said Stevie Wonder used to sing. Five minutes flies across the earbuds. One person calls it “gently funky,” another calls it “sweetly poppish,” and another calls it “fast-footed and sleek.” It’s lightweight and soul and bubblegum with a tinge of Afro-beat and a shade of Sing A Simple Song. You can hate Michael Jackson, sure. But even the devil moves to this song when no one is looking.

10. They mixed Billie Jean 91 times. At least that’s the legend. They poured over it and poured over it maybe to the point where Quincy Jones got to say, “There. It’s unmixable.” Or, more likely, he wanted to find a way to make it work. One more thought from Svensk. He also told the Internet: “I called MJ, Quincy and Rod [Templeton] into the control room and played mix two for them. They loved it! They were all dancing and carrying on like crazy. Then Michael slipped out of the control room, turned around and motioned to me to follow him. There, he whispered, ‘Please Bruce, it’s perfect, but turn the bass up just a tiny bit, and do one more mix.’ I said to him, ‘OK, Smelly, no problem.’ I went back into the control room to add Michael’s tiny bit of bass to my mix. Quincy pulled me into the corner and said ‘Please Svensk, add a little garlic salt to the snare and the kick. Just a squirt.’ So I went back into the control room and did that. Just a little squirt. Before I knew it, I was up to mix 20 on the song.”

“This went on for about a week. Before I knew it, I was on to mix 91. My half-inch tapes were stacked almost to the ceiling. I’d do a few mixes, we’d listen and then I’d do a few more. Finally, we thought we had a really ‘hot’ mix. I played mix 91 and everybody smiled. But Quincy had one of those funny looks on his face. He said ‘Just for the fun of it, can we listen to one of your earlier mixes?’ My heart jumped because I knew that my earlier mixes were dynamite. Then Quincy said, ‘Let’s hear mix number 2.’ Of course, IT WAS SLAMMIN’! EVERYONE IN THE STUDIO WAS GROOVIN’ AND DANCIN’ and HAPPY, and actin’ IGNORANT! And that’s the real story of how ‘Billie Jean’ was made.”
 
Beautifully written post

I Know I'm Late, But Here Are a Few Words About Thriller

Thriller turned 30 a few days ago.

I'll be 30 in August.

Michael Jackson's birthday was on August 29th.

My birthday is on August 30th.

The first album I ever owned was Bad. On compact disc. It came in one of those long cardboard cases that early CDs used to come packaged in. I vaguely remember, after having played that CD over and over and over again, my mom explaining to me that this musical god had produced another album that I wasn't even aware of. So I went out and got myself a copy of Thriller.

I'm sitting in a conference room at The Huffington Post right now, listening to Thriller. It made sense to me to listen to the album while writing about the album. "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is the opening track on the album. THE album. The greatest selling album in the history of recorded music. It belongs to everybody. But the experience I'm having, and have had thousands of times before this, belongs to me.

"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is my favorite track on Thriller. Now it is, but not always. I go through different favorite songs on Thriller as time goes by. One year it might be "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." One year the title track. Right now it's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." The euphoria of this piece of music. The mania. The frantic percussion. The guitar at 3:25 is from another universe. I am getting a special feeling of love, joy and excitement in my heart just hearing this. The synthetic keyboards and the blaring horns. Michael's passionate vocals. What a mind-blowing opening song. This album may have come out in 1982, but as far as I'm concerned, when the needle first dropped on Thriller, the 80s began. Something got started, alright.

"Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah."

I used to watch the "Making Michael Jackson's Thriller" VHS tape obsessively. It's the legendary John Landis-directed music video plus a making-of documentary. The video terrified me, and I loved it. During the documentary, there's Michael, on the Motown 25 special, dancing to "Billie Jean." It's the first time he performed the moonwalk on stage. An absolutely incredible performance. I can't think of a better example of the essence and genius of Michael Jackson than this performance. Please watch it if you haven't already, and if you have seen it, you might as well watch it again. Witness pure art and hypnotic entertainment.

As a kid, I mimicked his "Billie Jean" performance, by myself, in front of the television (minus the key move, the moonwalk. I never did get that part). It wasn't mimicking exactly. Really just an extraordinarily rough approximation of the moves of an artist who was so in touch with his music and his soul that the dancing was effortless and mesmerizing.

My parents didn't know where I had learned this dance when they watched me perform it in the 3rd grade Countryside Elementary School Talent Show. They'd never seen me do it. Then I performed it on Good Company, a local daytime TV show. They were having a karaoke contest, so my mom entered my name into the competition, knowing I'd relish the opportunity. I auditioned, and then a few days later, we got the phone call to let us know that I'd be on the show.

I sang the song as best as I could, and I danced with as much stagecraft as I could muster. This all happened at the Mall of America. Under the Camp Snoopy roller coaster. One of the judges was blind, so my dancing fell flat with 1/3 of the panel. I lost the contest. But that song. It's still with me. It's always going to be with me. A 4th-grade white kid from suburban Minnesota dancing to a song written by perhaps the most famous black entertainer in American history. A song about false paternity claims. I had no idea. What difference did it make? That kick drum. That bass line. It activates something in your soul. It's funky, it's menacing, it's even a little painful. And it's from Michael's heart. From his heart and soul to my ears. From his heart and soul to the world's ears.

I've owned Thriller on cassette tape, on compact disc (multiple copies), and on vinyl. Now I'm listening to it on Spotify.

This album is what religious people would call a "blessing." I'm not a religious man, but if there is a God, Michael's music was a gift from that Entity.

This album is beyond compare. It's not pop music. It's Michael's music. This album doesn't pander, it brings joy. Pure and simple.

I'm not going to stop listening to Thriller. Or Bad. Or Off The Wall. They're part of who I am.

Ultimately, we're all connected in this gigantic mysterious universe. Nowadays I have trouble remembering that. I feel disconnected. There's so much media stimulation. There are too many choices available on demand. It's too easy. But do yourself a favor after reading this. Hit play on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." Listen to it uninterrupted, from start to finish, and focus just on the music. Forget the chart-busting statistics. Forget the impact this album had on the music business. Forget everything you associate with this album. Just listen. And feel connected to the millions that came before you. Feel the music. Feel the joy. Feel the rhythm.

Let this musical document free you.

Rest In Peace, Michael Joseph Jackson. Thank you for your music.

P.S.
I'm sorry this post is a few days late (the album's 30th anniversary was on November 30, 2012), but better late than never. And it's worth noting some of the other geniuses who were instrumental in making this album what it was. Notably producer Quincy Jones and recording engineer/mixer Bruce Swedien. There are countless others who contributed to this masterpiece, so please forgive me for neglecting to include all of their names.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-goldberg/michael-jackson-thriller-a-few-words_b_2245434.html
 
^^ Thanks bubs for posting that very nice story from Adam Golberg. He usually writes about political and world events. He is a front page writer for Huffington and has quite a following, so its nice to see him be sentimental with his childhood memories and show some love for Thriller.
 
It's crazy how time flies. This album could drop today and still be a hit and relevant. Absolutely amazing!
 
A couple of weeks ago I read somewhere that Thriller has sold over 30 million copies in the US now. It's still certified at 29x though. I know certifications have to be requested (and paid for) by the record labels. Just a thought: it would have been nice from Sony/the Estate to get it certified 30x for the album's 30th anniversary. It would have been fitting.
 
Back
Top