Twenty-Six Years On, MJ's 'Thriller' Still Going Strong
The Nation (Nairobi)
NEWS
29 March 2008
Posted to the web 31 March 2008
By Philip Mwaniki
Nairobi
Before he became ***** *****, American musician Michael Jackson was aptly known as the Prince of Pop. And for a good reason; he churned out albums that pitched tent on the Top 10 charts worldwide.
As a young man in November 1981, the "musical phenomenon" released his sixth solo album, Thriller, and with it he set a record that stands to date. Thriller was a monster hit, and thrilled it has such that last November, the music world celebrated the album's 26 years since it was released.
It had seven hit singles, including The Girl is Mine (with Paul McCartney), Beat It and Billie Jean, had classic music videos and became the best-selling studio album in music history with sales varying between 50 million and 100 million.
According to the BBC, the Guinness Book of World Records has it as 65 million copies sold as of 2007. Thriller still sells an estimated 130,000 copies a year in the US.
It is one of only three albums to remain in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 for a full year, spending 80 consecutive weeks there.
Some 37 of those days were spent at the No. 1 spot and it was the first of three albums to have seven Billboard Hot 100 top-10 singles and the only one to date to be the best-seller for two years (1983-1984) in the US.
Whether you were around when the album was released or not, listening to it today will convince you that Jackson really pushed himself to the limit and succeeded. It was genius from the beginning to the end; indeed, the most complete album ever.
But with bad public relations over the past few years, what with child molestation cases and bankruptcy, the king of pop is looking to re-establish himself as the greatest artiste ever. And to do that, he has decided to appeal to the new generation who are dominating the music industry and who were not there when Thriller was released.
Now, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, the album has been given a slight makeover with new and previously unreleased bonus tracks, and is known as Thriller 25.
Although Thriller 25 was a flop when it was launched, it still created a lot of buzz and the master of ceremony was even offered as much $1 million (Sh70 million) per show in London, but he turned it down.
In 2007, NARM/The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ranked Thriller third on their "Definitive 200" albums list.
Recorded between April and November 1982, with several members of Toto, it was the second of Jackson albums Quincy Jones produced.
Showing growing creativity, Jackson wrote four of the Thriller songs. Following the hit, The Girl is Mine, a pop duet with then friend Paul McCartney, single Billie Jean made Thriller a chart-topper.
Success expanded with crossover rock hit Beat It, featuring guitarist Eddie van Halen.
Jackson was nominated for 12 Grammy Awards in 1984, winning a record-breaking eight in a year.
Seven were for Thriller's album of the year and the other for the ET storybook track, Someone in the Dark.
That same year, Jackson also won eight American Music awards, the Special Award of Merit and three MTV Video Music awards.
At 25, the New York Times called Jackson a "musical phenomenon", saying that "in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else."
Time magazine explained that "the fallout from Thriller has given the (music) business its best years since the heady days of 1978, when it had an estimated total domestic revenue of $4.1 billion (Sh287 million)." Thriller also helped to bring African-American music into the mainstream radio for the first time since the mid 1970s.
And it did not stop there, Thriller even revolutionalised music videos. It is often claimed that Jackson was the first person to make music videos an art, with influential story-telling and choreography styles.
Short films like Thriller largely remained unique to Jackson, but the group dance sequence in Beat It has been frequently imitated and that in Thriller become part of a global pop culture, replicated everywhere from Bollywood to the American prisons.
Central to Jackson's success with music videos was new channel MTV, which put his videos in heavy rotation throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Before then, he struggled to get MTV airing because he was black.
To change this, it is reported that CBS Records President Walter Yetnikoff denounced MTV, saying: "I'm pulling everything we have off the air" and "I'm not going to give you any more videos. And I'm going to go public and tell them about the fact you don't want to play music by a black guy".
This harsh stance worked; MTV started showing Billie Jean, forming a lengthy partnership with Jackson and helping other black music artistes. When the 14-minute-long Thriller video aired in December 1983, MTV ran it up to twice an hour to meet demand. It scared viewers, but marked an increase in sale for music videos and is often called the best-ever music video.
A number of highly published events throughout 1984 and 1985 have been attributed to increasing the album's sales. On March 25, 1983, Jackson performed Billie Jean live on the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever show.
After reuniting with the Jackson five, he remained on stage, dressed in trademark high-cuffed trousers to show his white socks and a single sequined glove. Jackson grabbed his crotch, donned a black fedora and danced, debuting his signature move - the moonwalk. The moonwalk, the tornado spin and toe balancing became a famous combination.
Greatest dancers
Despite having lip-synced the vocals, the performance was popular and over 47 million viewers watched the first televised airing, often being compared to Elvis and The Beatles appearing on The Ed Sullivan show, and helped many view Jackson as one of the greatest dancers of all time.
On January 27, 1984 Jackson began filming two Pepsi Cola commercials at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in front of a simulated live audience. As he descended a podium fireworks set hair alight and he fell to the floor. The incident was heavily publicised, with Jackson receiving sympathy from the public, celebrities and even the president.
When the actual recording of events was aired, Thriller sales were up by 150,000 copies from the previous week. The album influenced numerous artistes, crossing genres, and Gil Friesen, the president of A&M Records, said that "the whole industry has a stake in this success." The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller sold over 350,000 copies in a few months.
Thriller raised the importance of albums, but multiple hits also changed notions about the number of singles to release. Although singles had already fallen in importance, Thriller's release firmly established albums as the dominant force in the industry.
Jackson was rarely referred to as a "black singer" and his success was unusual for a black artiste in the 1980s, being one of the first on a Rolling Stone cover and one of the first to have a replica doll. Time summed up Thriller's impact as a "restoration of confidence" for an industry bordering "the ruins of punk and the chic regions of synthesiser pop".
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