Remix MJ’s songs in the way they were intended?

Hudson112

Proud Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2019
Messages
135
Points
28
When Michael’s production team was initially done with mixing Thriller, they had too much playing time for two sides of a vinyl LP, which would affect the sound quality. When the tapes were delivered for mastering, Michael and Quincy and Bruce and Rod and everybody at Epic Records gathered around to listen to the final mix and it turned out to be a disaster or “dog doo-doo” as Bruce Swedien put it. Michael was devastated. Fortunately, Epic allowed Michael’s team to go back and mix the songs again, and it became as what we hear on the album now. The album was cut to 21 minutes per side, losing 14 minutes. What was cut was a verse of “The Lady in My Life” and a longer intro to “Billie Jean”. There were similar instances like this afterwards, like how some songs on Bad had to get sped up for vinyl, or how they had to cut down HIStory to fit the CD (even though Michael couldn’t decide what to cut out). But nowadays, everything is on digital, where space doesn’t matter. What if they (as in the estate, assuming they have the master tapes) went back and remixed the songs the way Michael wanted them to sound back then, without the limitations of vinyl and CD and released them digitally? What do you guys think?
 
Last edited:
I think the only person who can mix things the way mj wanted would be be bruce swedien & i highly doubt he is the same man today he was back then so far as having that ear for it. Bruce was old then lol
 
I'm intrigued to know what other songs were edited to cut the album down 14 minutes. "The Lady in My Life" and "Billie Jean" edits would only account for maybe 3-4 minutes total.

If they got Bruce Swedien to mix the songs again, I'd be on board for this.
 
Hudson112;4269561 said:
When Michael’s production team was initially done with mixing Thriller, they had too much playing time for two sides of a vinyl LP, which would affect the sound quality. When the tapes were delivered for mastering, Michael and Quincy and Bruce and Rod and everybody at Epic Records gathered around to listen to the final mix and it turned out to be a disaster or “dog doo-doo” as Bruce Swedien put it. Michael was devastated. Fortunately, Epic allowed Michael’s team to go back and mix the songs again, and it became as what we hear on the album now. The album was cut to 21 minutes per side, losing 14 minutes. What was cut was a verse of “The Lady in My Life” and a longer intro to “Billie Jean”.

This sounds a bit mixed up.
The vinyl runtime limitation problem and the not-happy-with-mix-results-problem, are really two unrelated things.
(The longer the runtime per vinyl side, the less volume it can have, but this doesn't have anything to do with how the mixes of songs sound.)
 
Last edited:
Electro;4269569 said:
This sounds a bit mixed up.
The vinyl runtime limitation problem and the not-happy-with-mix-results-problem, are really two unrelated things.
(The longer the runtime per vinyl side, the less volume it can have, but this doesn't have anything to do with how the mixes of songs sound.)

The term “mixing” is used loosely. It’s more of how the songs had to be cut down in order to fit the vinyl. Of course, they still had to mix it in order to achieve that. They had to take out the second verse of “Lady in my Life” and cut down “Billie Jean” in the intro by mixing it so that it all flowed together nicely. That also goes for speeding songs up if I’m not mistaken. Although I was just going by how Bruce Swedien and Quincy Jones have consistently worded the situation as, that might have caused some confusion, I apologize.
 
Hudson112;4269570 said:
The term “mixing” is used loosely. It’s more of how the songs had to be cut down in order to fit the vinyl.

What you mean and what they did to make songs shorter is editing (taking out whole bars / sections from a song).

In music production "mixing" is the post-production process of fine-tuning volumes, equalizing, panning etc of all the different layers of instruments and vocals tracks. This can be quite a difficult and tiring process sometimes until it's perfect. That's what they went through, but that on it's own was a separate problem from the vinyl runtime issue (which they solved by editing the songs into shorter form.)

("Remixing" originally referred to simply redoing that mixing process. Later in the 90s, "remixing" also became the term for more or less replacing the original music and putting the vocals in completely new musical contexts / styles (see all the dance / club / urban "remixes" / "mixes").) And of course a DJ will "mix" one song into another, but that's a completely different thing.

Sorry for smart-assing, but there is much confusion about this term.
 
Last edited:
disco

("Remixing" originally referred to simply redoing that mixing process. Later in the 90s, remixing also meant to more or less replace the original music and putting the vocals in completely new musical contexts / styles (see all the dance / club / urban "remixes" / "mixes"). And of course a DJ will "mix" one song into another, but that's a completely different thing.
Remixing as in changing the music for clubs and dancing came about around 1974 or 1975, which is the beginning of disco and the 12" remix maxi single. A 12" could hold more than a 7" 45 single, so could have a better sound quality mix. The songs could also be made longer so the DJ didn't have to change the record as often and the disco mixes usually had long instrumental sections. Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer was 17 minutes of mostly moaning. To the people dancing in clubs the music & rhythm was more important than the singing. The clubs had giant speakers which were made for the remixes. Notice that disco songs often just had repeated chants or the songs might have been about dancing (Shake Shake Shake Your Booty, Shake Your Groove Thing, You Should Be Dancing, Play That Funky Music, etc). The disco single could have more bass than the 45 or even the version on an album which had to share the space with other tracks. Tom Moulton was a popular disco era remixer.
 
Re: disco

Remixing as in changing the music for clubs and dancing came about around 1974 or 1975, which is the beginning of disco and the 12" remix maxi single. A 12" could hold more than a 7" 45 single, so could have a better sound quality mix. The songs could also be made longer so the DJ didn't have to change the record as often and the disco mixes usually had long instrumental sections. Love To Love You Baby by Donna Summer was 17 minutes of mostly moaning. To the people dancing in clubs the music & rhythm was more important than the singing. The clubs had giant speakers which were made for the remixes. Notice that disco songs often just had repeated chants or the songs might have been about dancing (Shake Shake Shake Your Booty, Shake Your Groove Thing, You Should Be Dancing, Play That Funky Music, etc). The disco single could have more bass than the 45 or even the version on an album which had to share the space with other tracks. Tom Moulton was a popular disco era remixer.


Yes. Sadly this type of remixing almost disappeard since the 90s.
 
Re: disco

Yes. Sadly this type of remixing almost disappeared since the 90s.
That's probably because labels started to eliminate physical singles around that time to force people to buy the albums on CD. CDs were priced higher than the records and tapes before it. Many radio stations before the 1990s would also play longer songs. But radio kind of reverted to the 1950s, except instead of the 2 minute songs of the 50s they were generally playing nothing longer than 4 minutes. The popular music of the time started to become simpler, like music designed for ringtones. The producers weren't the traditional Quincy Jones type, but more like beatmaker producers like Timbaland. The guitar & sax solos were replaced by a rap break. It also seems that a lot people today don't go to clubs to dance like in the disco days or the 1980s, especially if its a hip hop club. Dancing is not seen as cool with some people. Which is ironic since early hip hop was used for breakdancing & locking, but you can't really break to ringtone beats and trap beats. People don't really dance to techno or rave music either, they just jump around or something or get high to it. Huge crowds go to concerts by DJs like Skrillex to basically watch him push buttons and see a light show, they don't dance to it.
 
I would love to listen to the original long versions of both. i bet it would sound even better and even more interesting then they both already are.
 
I would love to listen to the original long versions of both. i bet it would sound even better and even more interesting then they both already are.

The 12" mix of Billie Jean likely is that (or pretty near that) unedited version:



The unedited version of Lady In My Life was released on one deluxe or aniversary release of Thriller:



Billie Jean album version is about 1 and a half minute shorter, Lady In My Life got shortened about 1 minute.
If they really had to get rid of 14 minutes, this probably involved dropping some full songs.
I can't really imagine though that this came as a surprise / unexpected problem to them. They were all in the recording business since how long at that point? And still they got the playtime wrong by as much as 14 minutes?
 
Last edited:
Hudson112;4269561 said:
There were similar instances like this afterwards, like how some songs on Bad had to get sped up for vinyl, or how they had to cut down HIStory to fit the CD (even though Michael couldn’t decide what to cut out).

For the ‘BAD’ album, there was also another reason.

They sped-up certain songs on that album because they wanted to make them sound more exciting, more vigorous and thus more danceable.

That idea was proposed to Michael Jackson by his team of sound engineers and he immediately agreed with that.

Electro;4269569 said:
This sounds a bit mixed up.
The vinyl runtime limitation problem and the not-happy-with-mix-results-problem, are really two unrelated things.
(The longer the runtime per vinyl side, the less volume it can have, but this doesn't have anything to do with how the mixes of songs sound.)

They are not really two unrelated things.

It is a known fact that also the better the quality of the mix itself is, the more vinyl space it occupies.

Read, for example, what Bruce Swedien has said over the years about that technical matter.

Michael Jackson was adamant about that: he always wanted the mix of the official versions of his songs to be rich and with good sound quality because this would prevent his songs from sounding distorted on low-end, cheap equipments that a lot of people use (such as, cheap cassette-players, cheap vinyl-players, cheap CD-players, etc).

For that reason, Michael Jackson himself always and very patiently used to check one by one the final mix of each of his songs on such low-end, cheap equipments.
 
Imagine if Thriller and BAD dropped today? Michael would of be able to drop all those songs on an online album store without haven't to drop them later in life.

it would of been nice to see streetwalker and carousel all dropped on the albums that during those days. just imagine.
 
Oh yeah and the original billie jean intro is hilarious. thriller,making of thriller, billie jean,michael first time moonwalking would all be release on youtube or some app etc instead of TV. :laughing:
 
They are not really two unrelated things.

As the story goes they listened to TAPES of the final MIX and that they were not happy with it.
Meaning it wasn't pressed to vinyl at that point, so that the transfer to vinyl could not have shown any unforseen effect on the overall sound.

So yes, as far as I understood, in this specific story, the mix problems and the problems with having to cut songs short because of runtime limits of vinyl, were two unrelated problems.




It is a known fact that also the better the quality of the mix itself is, the more vinyl space it occupies.


That's false. The space thing is mostly about loudness and extra bass, which alone don't make a good mix. Loudness and emphasized bass are what's giving the vinyl groove big peaks, which, if too extreme and the groove rounds are too close to each other, will make the needle skip when trying to play the record.

A good mix means less extreme, unpolished frequencies and volumes and eq'ing not being all over the place, which just is not great to listen to, and on vinyl it also can cause distortion sounds, like hissing on very sharp high frequencies etc.

I happen to know a bit about the pain with vinyl production because I run a vinyl label myself since many years. It's a science, a very elaborate production process with many steps, from the choice of instruments / sounds to the mixing to the mastering and the many steps of the actual transfer to vinyl, during which a lot of different things can go more or less wrong.


Anyway, would be good to have some direct quotes regarding this Thriller mix story and the context in which it was said. (Was it explained in detail to music production nerds or was it simplified towards a journalist that writes for a mass audience etc). Otherwise we're just guessing what was actually said and meant.
 
Last edited:
This is what Michael said about the situation:

Eventually we came under tremendous pressure from our record company to finish Thriller . When a record company rushes you, they really rush you, and they were rushing us hard on Thriller . They said it had to be ready on a certain date, do or die.
So we went through a period where we were breaking our backs to get the album done by their deadline. There were a lot of compromises made on the mixes of various tracks, and on whether certain tracks were even going to be on the record. We cut so many corners that we almost lost the whole album.
When we finally listened to the tracks we were going to hand in, Thriller sounded so crappy to me that tears came to my eyes. We had been under enormous pressure because while we were trying to finish Thriller we also had been working on The E.T. Storybook , and there had been deadline pressure on that as well. All these people were fighting back and forth with each other, and we came to realize that the sad truth was that the mixes of Thriller didn't work.
We sat there in the studio, Westlake Studio in Hollywood, and listened to the whole album. I felt devastated. All this pent-up emotion came out. I got angry and left the room. I told my people, "That's it, we're not releasing it. Call CBS and tell them they are not getting this album. We are not releasing it."
Because I knew it was wrong. If we hadn't stopped the process and examined what we were doing, the record would have been terrible. It never would have been reviewed the way it was because, as we learned, you can ruin a great album in the mix. It's like taking a great movie and ruining it in the ending. You simply have to take your time.
Some things can't be rushed.
There was a bit of yelling and screaming from the record people, but in the end they were smart and understood. They knew too; it was just that I was the first to say it. Finally I realized I had to do the whole thing - mix the entire album - all over again.
We took a couple of days off, drew a deep breath, and stepped back. Then we came to it fresh, cleaned our ears out, and began to mix two songs a week. When it was done - boom - it hit us hard. CBS could hear the difference too. Thriller was a tough project.
 
'billie jean' was still too long after it was edited. I've been trying to find a radio edit for ages. this was the closest I could find. I wonder if this edit, or similar ones, were available in other countries as well?
 
45

'billie jean' was still too long after it was edited. I've been trying to find a radio edit for ages. this was the closest I could find. I wonder if this edit, or similar ones, were available in other countries as well?
There was no radio edit in the USA. The 45 is the same as the album and radio played the album version. Some R&B stations played the 12" extended version. Wanna Be Startin Somethin' had a 45 edit.

tumblr_pxl5dmdO701rw606ko1_r4_1280.jpg


 
This is what Michael said about the situation:

Eventually we came under tremendous pressure from our record company to finish Thriller . When a record company rushes you, they really rush you, and they were rushing us hard on Thriller . They said it had to be ready on a certain date, do or die.
So we went through a period where we were breaking our backs to get the album done by their deadline. There were a lot of compromises made on the mixes of various tracks, and on whether certain tracks were even going to be on the record. We cut so many corners that we almost lost the whole album.
When we finally listened to the tracks we were going to hand in, Thriller sounded so crappy to me that tears came to my eyes. We had been under enormous pressure because while we were trying to finish Thriller we also had been working on The E.T. Storybook , and there had been deadline pressure on that as well. All these people were fighting back and forth with each other, and we came to realize that the sad truth was that the mixes of Thriller didn't work.
We sat there in the studio, Westlake Studio in Hollywood, and listened to the whole album. I felt devastated. All this pent-up emotion came out. I got angry and left the room. I told my people, "That's it, we're not releasing it. Call CBS and tell them they are not getting this album. We are not releasing it."
Because I knew it was wrong. If we hadn't stopped the process and examined what we were doing, the record would have been terrible. It never would have been reviewed the way it was because, as we learned, you can ruin a great album in the mix. It's like taking a great movie and ruining it in the ending. You simply have to take your time.
Some things can't be rushed.
There was a bit of yelling and screaming from the record people, but in the end they were smart and understood. They knew too; it was just that I was the first to say it. Finally I realized I had to do the whole thing - mix the entire album - all over again.
We took a couple of days off, drew a deep breath, and stepped back. Then we came to it fresh, cleaned our ears out, and began to mix two songs a week. When it was done - boom - it hit us hard. CBS could hear the difference too. Thriller was a tough project.


Thanks! That's from the "Moonwalk" book, right?

That's also how I remembered the story.
First the pain with deciding which songs to leave out, then the mix problems.
 
'billie jean' was still too long after it was edited. I've been trying to find a radio edit for ages. this was the closest I could find. I wonder if this edit, or similar ones, were available in other countries as well?


Discogs.com is your friend with things like this.
thumb.gif

On the dozens of different 7" singles from around the world, I found these 3 with edits:

3:59 on a UK 7" (promo):
https://www.discogs.com/Michael-Jackson-Billie-Jean/release/9251092

3:34 in New Zealand (commercial):
https://www.discogs.com/Michael-Jackson-Billie-Jean/release/3431623

3:00 in Argentina (promo):
https://www.discogs.com/Michael-Jackson-Billie-Jean/release/9195789
 
Last edited:
I like said earlier in this thread imagine if thriller and Bad dropped today? he wouldn't have to leave out songs. :D either way even if he did left out songs his albums was still great and still is to this day. it really goes to show you each decade has it's own good and bad.
 
I like said earlier in this thread imagine if thriller and Bad dropped today? he wouldn't have to leave out songs. :D either way even if he did left out songs his albums was still great and still is to this day. it really goes to show you each decade has it's own good and bad.
He didn't have to leave off or shorten the songs then either. Just make it a 2 record set, like Prince's 1999 album which only has 11 songs but most are 6-10 minutes long. The Jacksons Live was a 2 record set too. But double albums generally didn't sell as well because they cost more than a regular album.
 
Being forced to go with the limited vinyl runtime (of one disc) also added to the "quality control" though. Imagine all the Thriller outtake songs we already know, if they had been included, the overall quality of the Thriller album would have been watered down.

This effect began to show from Dangerous on, when the market had shifted from Vinyl records to CDs, which pretty much doubled the possible playtime per abum to ~80 minutes. Not saying that anything bad got on to the Dangerous album, but there are hits and "album songs" because there was no reason to abandon those for the final selection.

I think much of the Thriller LPs legendary status also comes from that it was almost like a hit compilation without a single filler. Same with the Bad album.
 
Last edited:
Electro;4269622 said:
As the story goes they listened to TAPES of the final MIX and that they were not happy with it.
Meaning it wasn't pressed to vinyl at that point, so that the transfer to vinyl could not have shown any unforseen effect on the overall sound.

So yes, as far as I understood, in this specific story, the mix problems and the problems with having to cut songs short because of runtime limits of vinyl, were two unrelated problems.

That's false. The space thing is mostly about loudness and extra bass, which alone don't make a good mix. Loudness and emphasized bass are what's giving the vinyl groove big peaks, which, if too extreme and the groove rounds are too close to each other, will make the needle skip when trying to play the record.

A good mix means less extreme, unpolished frequencies and volumes and eq'ing not being all over the place, which just is not great to listen to, and on vinyl it also can cause distortion sounds, like hissing on very sharp high frequencies etc.

I happen to know a bit about the pain with vinyl production because I run a vinyl label myself since many years. It's a science, a very elaborate production process with many steps, from the choice of instruments / sounds to the mixing to the mastering and the many steps of the actual transfer to vinyl, during which a lot of different things can go more or less wrong.

Anyway, would be good to have some direct quotes regarding this Thriller mix story and the context in which it was said. (Was it explained in detail to music production nerds or was it simplified towards a journalist that writes for a mass audience etc). Otherwise we're just guessing what was actually said and meant.

Here is one video with Bruce Swedien talking about that issue regarding the mixing of the ‘Thriller’ album.

According to him, if the playing time on each vinyl side is long, then this leads to several problems.

At first, when they finished the mixing of the 'Thriller' album, the playing time on each vinyl side was long, which led to several problems and one of the problems was that the songs did not sound good.

So, one of the things they had to do was to mix again the songs (improving here their quality), which meant cutting minutes of playing time on each vinyl side.

There is also another man who speaks on that video and he actually confirms what Bruce Swedien says.

That man states that if you have more music (measured in minutes) on each vinyl side, then this leads to less sonic quality.

[video=youtube;e-H1mCEAoiA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-H1mCEAoiA[/video]
 
Discogs.com is your friend with things like this.
thumb.gif

On the dozens of different 7" singles from around the world, I found these 3 with edits:

3:59 on a UK 7" (promo):
https://www.discogs.com/Michael-Jackson-Billie-Jean/release/9251092

3:34 in New Zealand (commercial):
https://www.discogs.com/Michael-Jackson-Billie-Jean/release/3431623

3:00 in Argentina (promo):
https://www.discogs.com/Michael-Jackson-Billie-Jean/release/9195789

thanks for the link! didn't know these versions existed. are the 'thriller' singles available on cassette? i've been looking for years for them
 
are the 'thriller' singles available on cassette? i've been looking for years for them
Not likely, cassette singles didn't exist until around 1987. After that, there were CD singles. The Thriller album was released on 8-track & reel to reel. They were still somewhat popular in 1982, but on the way out with the mainstream because of the Walkman & boomboxes. Some albums continued to be released on 8-track until around 1990. If any Thriller singles are on cassette, they are a probably a reissue and didn't come out at the time of release. Cassettes, reel to reel, & 8 tracks didn't have the same time limitations as records, a double album could be put on 1 tape. In some cases, the cassette version (& occasionally 8 tracks too) had extra songs or different mixes than the vinyl.

tumblr_pxl5dmdO701rw606ko1_r5_1280.jpg

tumblr_pxl5dmdO701rw606ko2_r2_1280.jpg

tumblr_py6wwcTsM51rw606ko1_1280.jpg
 


Ok, now the story makes more sense.

So they say they were unhappy when they had played the first vinyl test pressing (more likely meaning a test cut (acetate), not pressing), not a tape with the master of the (at that point) final mix.

That's an important detail because it shows that the problem was actually not that the mix itself was sonically bad pre-vinyl because of time pressure (as one could think from what Michael wrote in Moonwalk), but that indeed the runtime was too long for vinyl and they had to adjust things to work against the decrease of sound quality that naturally comes from vinyl. (There is always a bit of decrease compared to tape or digital, just with runtime that is that much too long (14 min?) it becomes very obvious.) It baffles me though that they didn't have this in mind from the start, and still attempted to put way too much runtime per side. Thriller was surely not the first album they had worked on, and back then vinyl was still the main release format.


That man states that if you have more music (measured in minutes) on each vinyl side, then this leads to less sonic quality.

That's correct. But you can't turn that logic around and say "the better the mix, the more space it needs".
The quality of the mix itself before vinyl and the state of sonic quality after vinyl are two things.
A sonically bad mix won't become better the more space is has on vinyl. It's just that the vinyl won't worsen the sound additionally.


So, one of the things they had to do was to mix again the songs (improving here their quality), which meant cutting minutes of playing time on each vinyl side.

The devil is in the detail again with this wording.

Cutting minutes out is editing, not mixing. "we're gonna edit them down", Bruce quotes Quincy in the video. That's the part that refers to making things shorter. Back then things were recorded on large multi-track tapes. To shorten things, these tapes were physically cut and glued back together, just like film was edited. You can't shorten songs by changing the mix.

Changing the mix can only be an additional thing. Vinyl (and especially with too long runtime) always also decreases things like the stereo panning. So depending on how exactly things were not sounding right on the test pressing / cut, they possibly also tried to adjust those things to have them come out better on vinyl.

Anyway, the info given is still very simplified, and so it's hard to really see what went on in detail. It's all a very long complecated process so there's still much room for speculation. For example the mastering also always plays an important role when preparing things for vinyl. Even the cutting engineer that prepares the master for the transfer to vinyl has room to worsen things by adding / not adding the wrong / right filters and limiters etc.
 
Last edited:
The 12" mix of Billie Jean likely is that (or pretty near that) unedited version:



The unedited version of Lady In My Life was released on one deluxe or aniversary release of Thriller:



Billie Jean album version is about 1 and a half minute shorter, Lady In My Life got shortened about 1 minute.
If they really had to get rid of 14 minutes, this probably involved dropping some full songs.
I can't really imagine though that this came as a surprise / unexpected problem to them. They were all in the recording business since how long at that point? And still they got the playtime wrong by as much as 14 minutes?

I love both of them. they both sounds better and had me dancing in my chair. :laughing: Billie Jean sounds way better then the one they always plays. it's does sounds familiar, liked i heard this version before but where i can't remember. thriller came out the end of the disco years. that's why some Michael songs were longer. during the disco years songs were longer because they use play them at dance clubs and parties.

Both of them both sound better longer though. not saying the short versions of them not good either.
 
Back
Top