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Re: Weekend News Bytes: February 1-3, 2008 (Updated for Feb 2, 2008)
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Magazine/Article.aspx?id=692694
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Magazine/Article.aspx?id=692694
Site last Updated: Feb 2 2008 11:25PM Still a ThrillerCover FeaturePublished:Feb 02, 2008
IN LIVING COLOUR: Michael Jackson hangs out with the flesh-eating dancers of the mega-hit, Thriller
DRESSED FOR SUCCESS: Jackson’s gone through many changes as has his musical style
Picture: Skyline/Rex Features
Picture: (AP Photo/EBONY Magazine
A world without Michael Jackson would be a very, very different world. And I think we should all feel very blessed that an artist of that calibre came into our lives, because he has enriched our lives
Michael Jackson’s classic album, Thriller, is 25 years old. We pay tribute to its continuing impact. By Lesley Mofokeng.
Wet perm, pleather jacket, shoulder-pads and Moonwalk. Welcome to November 1982, the month of Michael Jackson and Thriller, the album that would transform pop music and cement his place as the Elvis of the ’80s.
Thriller was Jackson’s second collaboration with the Academy Award-winning knob fiddler, Quincy Jones, and it was to be the ultimate meeting of minds.
Along with the album came the 14-minute long music video, Thriller, directed by John Landis, which broke with the three-minute conventions. In it Jackson transformed into both a werewolf and a zombie and surrounded himself with a bunch of nibble-footed, partially scabbed undead dancers who knew how to keep up with the beat.
It cost 800 000, making it the most expensive video of its time. It was also the stuff of nightmares: flesh-hungry zombies, their arms outstretched, it all made walking in the dark, let alone near graveyards, real torture for kids.
The reason Thriller towered over the ’80s? Hits. Seven of them. To make an album push 104-million units, you’ve got to have the right amount of number ones, and Thriller did: the posturing Beat It, the shimmering Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ and the lean funk of Billie Jean, which coaxed us all into lip-synching in front of the record player (because it just seemed silly not to sing along to a song like that).
It took me at least 20 years before I figured out that the chorus actually went: “Billie Jean is not my lover/ She’s just a girl who claims that I am the one/ But the kid is not my son/ She says I am the one, but the kid is not my son” (thanks for that lyrics.com).
There was also the cheerful, if somewhat glitzy The Girl Is Mine, featuring pop icon and then-friend, Paul McCartney, a duet that seemed to signify the passing of the mantle of pop royalty from The Beatles to the 25-year-old Jackson.
The music industry in the early ’80s was about excess, pushing boundaries, making artistic statements and egomaniacal changes to production — especially programming. The frantic cocaine-and-mirror-ball disco of the ’70s was dead, and it was Jackson who came along and buried it under the high sheen of Thriller.
It’s been 25 years since it impacted on the music scene, and now Sony/BMG are releasing the 25th anniversary edition, with all the original tracks as well as six bonus songs featuring today’s pop stars: Beat It 2008 with Fergie; a new, hyped-up Kanye West remix of Billie Jean; a remodelled, far more electro-funk version of Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ with Akon; will.i.am’s remixes of The Girl Is Mine and Pretty Young Thing; and For All Time — a rare, unreleased cut from the original Thriller recording sessions which was left out at the time, but now finds its place on the album, newly mixed and mastered by Jackson himself.
Still, the remixed songs are getting mixed reviews, most of them unflattering, labelling the music “unremarkable”. Goes to show how original the 49-year-old King of Pop was.
The digipack also comes with a DVD featuring Jackson’s short films and Making Of’s for Thriller, Beat It and Billie Jean — and his special TV performance at the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever first broadcast in 1983.
Sony/BMG says that the Michael Jackson Thriller 25th anniversary celebration kicked off in December 2007 and will continue throughout 2008 with the release of a new single and a multifaceted global marketing campaign featuring high-profile television, radio and online events around the world.
It’s hard talking about Thriller as just an artistic masterpiece because its commercial success is just as astounding:
80 consecutive weeks in the American Top 10, 37 of those weeks at number one;
Seven of the album’s original nine tracks became top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100;
The individual singles from Thriller reached number one chart positions in the US, the UK, France, Italy, Australia, Denmark, Belgium, South Africa, Spain, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada;
It was the top selling album two years running in 1983 and 1984 in the US, and;
In February 1984, Jackson got a record-breaking 12 Grammy nominations, winning eight.
It even did well in South Africa at a time when apartheid was at its height. Jackson was at his best then, but self-destruction, plastic surgery and molestation charges are what he’s all about now, and the re-release of Thriller to this generation’s young audience may leave them a little confused.
Who can blame them? Jackson has morphed into an asexual and racially alien being that no one quite understands.
It’s all-too-easy to bemoan his fish-belly white skin, teepee nose and little girl whisper, but that doesn’t take away the significance of the former Jackson 5er who went on to set world records.
The fact is that Jackson deserves all the accolades heaped on him, notably:
The Guinness Book of Records naming Thriller the Best Selling Album of All Time — an achievement unsurpassed to this day;
Being named World Music’s best-selling pop male artist of the millennium;
Presented with the American Music Awards’ Artist of the Century Award;
Being inducted into the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame twice: in 1997 as a member of the Jackson 5 and as a solo artist in 2001.
Awards aside, Jackson’s Thriller remains one of the greatest of our time. US record company LaFace’s executive Antonio “LA” Reid couldn’t have put it better when he noted: “Before him there were The Beatles and Elvis and Frank Sinatra; Michael Jackson takes his place right alongside those greats.
“A world without Michael Jackson would be a very, very different world. And I think we should all feel very blessed that an artist of that calibre came into our lives, because he has enriched our lives.”
But even the King of Pop has been having a rough time for a while sales-wise — due in part to the music industry meltdown, along with Britney and Rihanna being his hot young music rivals. He’s even threatened to dump Sony, his long-time record label.
Their relations have been strained since the dismal sales of 2001’s Invincible, which only moved a measly two million — a failure by his standards.
To the younger music consumers who count Britney, Usher and Justin Timberlake as pop icons, Jackson is a distant memory. To some, he belongs to an era that has no place in a market that’s constantly evolving and in an industry in a state of flux — having to fight off piracy and other technological advances threatening the way music is made, distributed and sold.
It’s virtually impossible to repeat the success of Thriller during the ’80s. The record company won’t be raking in astronomical sales like the original did; in fact, they will be lucky to clutch a fraction of those sales.
A quarter of a century on, even though Thriller paved the way and changed it all, the re-release may not be able to grab hold commercially. This doesn’t mean that it will lose its influence.
If anything, Thriller 25 years later may be pop music’s saving grace — a throwback that could get today’s artists re-looking their originality and daring.
A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine tacked Billie Jean at number 58 on its list of 500 Greatest Songs of all Time, which proves the genius that is Jackson. But with all the bad press over the last few years, it would take some kind of miracle to put him back in favour with the world.
However, Thriller’s longevity still proves that he has a place up there with the King and those lads from Liverpool.
Thriller and me
Thriller didn’t just change Joe Average. We chatted to some famous fans of the album about its influence
Andile Ncube, TV presenter
It was a little before my time, but I recently bought the remastered version to experience the greatness of Thriller, which is undoubtedly the greatest album ever released. It was a milestone for music in general, the only album where he released a single for each and every song. For me that was amazing. It will never be bettered.
Tamara Dey, performer
It’s the music video and the song that I knew well. I remember as a young girl how I used to be scared of the video because it was spooky. Musically, Thriller is an incredible pop song. I still listen to it . The choreography was a specific style, that you can’t find anywhere. Jackson is a theatrical performer and I like that .
Randall Abrahams, Idols judge and music writer
It was an important album. Thriller helped the music industry sales- wise and it’s a phenomenon I don’t think will be repeated. The video made him the first black musician to be played on MTV.
Yvonne Chaka Chaka, veteran musician and businesswoman
All I can think of is the dance. I was young enough to go to parties during the day; in fact, it was my matric year. I remember how everybody wanted the Michael Jackson jackets, the red, black and white ones. Wet perm for the boys was the look to have. If you were seen with a boy like that, then you were cool. I used to be a fan , everybody was a Michael Jackson fan.
Without Thriller we wouldn’t have...
The syncopated choreography of fancy footwork used by Usher, Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Ne-Yo and Chris Brown.
The programmed looping bass line now very evident in drum ’n bass and electro-hip-hop, popularised by artists such as Goldie and Roni Size, Timbaland, Missy Elliott; and vocally, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Jay-Z. The danceable bass line hook can be likened to a sound of an old locomotive steam train.
Rihanna’s 2007 Bad Girl Gone Bad album and the single Don’t Stop the Music, which uses a generous sample of the famous “mama-se, mama-sa, ma-ma-koo-sa”, which was Jackson’s invention in Thriller.
The orchestra-pop so obvious in English crossover artist Sarah Brightman’s work. And to think that it all began with the marriage of symphony and pop in Jackson’s Billie Jean.
A Thriller in Manila — Filipino prisoners have taken to dancing to the hit song during their one-hour exercise session (http://tinylink.co.za/17a0d3).
The pleather jacket, which was created by New York-born film and theatre costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis. It spurred countless knock-offs and its influence can still be found. Even the Beat It jacket is still being imitated. US R&B singer Ray J wore a vintage one in a recent music video.
Overpriced music videos that tell egomaniacal stories of excess and a self-love € la Gun n’ Roses’ November Rain and Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters.
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