by Joseph Vogel
The impact was similar on television. Before 1983, only a handful of black artists appeared on MTV, mostly vintage clips of legends like Jimi Hendrix and Tina Turner. The network, like the radio stations, justified this as a genre-based decision, citing their target audience, which was white. “MTV was arguably the best example of cultural apartheid in the United States [in 1982],” observed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal. In 1983, David Bowie called MTV out on the air for its policy of racial exclusion. Then came “Billie Jean.” MTV at first refused to play the video, citing its policy of only playing rock music. CBS head Walter Yetnikoff, however, would not accept the denial of his record label’s biggest artist. “I said to MTV, ‘I’m pulling everything we have off the air, all our product,’ ” Yetnikoff recalled. “ ‘I’m not going to give you any more videos. And I’m going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact you don’t want to play music by a black guy.’ ”
After several days of tense discussions, MTV caved. Before long, “Billie Jean” was in heavy rotation due to audience demand. “Certain executives from MTV will deny it now,” said John Branca, “but it was absolutely the case that Walter forced that to happen.”
With that consequential decision, the racial wall at MTV came tumbling down. By the end of the ’80s, the cable network not only owed much of its success to Jackson, but it was featuring numerous other black artists from multiple genres, from rock to R&B to hip-hop.
“Michael Jackson always understood,” wrote cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson, “that black art should never be ghettoized, that black music should be as commercially ubiquitous as its artistic ambitions. Michael Jackson simply wanted to match the market with the morality of black art and talent, and thus, give it global breathing room. Like Oprah and Obama after him, Michael Jackson wanted black art to be unlimited, to remain free of artificial divisions and false restrictions.”
That art not only resonated across racial barriers, but across countries and cultures. While Jackson’s artistic and cultural significance in relation to the Beatles and other music legends continues to be debated, one fact can’t be denied: Michael Jackson’s global reach was bigger than anyone else’s. Aided by globalization and new technologies—including more transportable formats like VHS home videos and cassette tapes—his image, music, and style rapidly spread around the world. Thriller resonated in countries as diverse as Japan (where it stayed on the charts for sixty-five consecutive weeks), South Africa (where it became the then racially segregated country’s top seller), and the Soviet Union (where it was officially banned, but still “swapped and treasured” in the form of bootleg cassettes).
Jackson’s broad, borderless appeal seemed to be written into the very beats and melodies of Thriller. “The pulse of America and much of the rest of the world moves irregularly,” observed Time in 1984, “beating in time to the tough strut of ‘Billie Jean,’ the asphalt aria of ‘Beat It,’ the supremely cool chills of ‘Thriller.’ ”
THE BESTSELLING ALBUM OF ALL TIME
In its 1982 review—before the album became a phenomenon—Rolling Stone called Thriller a “watershed” in Jackson’s creative development. It introduced new sounds; it expanded his vocal canvas; it explored new thematic territory. Where Off the Wall was primarily an expression of sensuality and exuberance, Thriller offered deeper and broader themes and sounds.
Some influential critics at the time—including Greil Marcus and Dave Marsh—dismissed Thriller as a commercial album, a pop vehicle with a lot of catchy hooks and shrewdly targeted demographics. Its appeal was indeed calculated—it aimed big and wide, with the stated intention of no “filler” or “B-sides”—and seven of its nine songs were Top 10 hits. Yet its commercial ambitions don’t preclude its creative innovations. Jackson’s individuality, creativity, and talent are imprinted on every track. As music critic Jody Rosen noted, its “parts added up to the most improbable kind of art. It was a work of personal revelation that was also a mass-market masterpiece. It’s an achievement that will likely never be topped.”
Its lineup is by turns frenetic (“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ”), smooth (“Baby Be Mine”), charming (“The Girl Is Mine”), cinematic (“Thriller”), bold (“Beat It”), mysterious (“Billie Jean”), evocative (“Human Nature”), playful (“P.Y.T.”), and intimate (“The Lady in My Life”). Yet Jackson and Jones were able to make that collection still feel integrated and of a piece. In listening to the album, there was a sense—in part because of Jackson’s presence, but also because of the production and mixing—that it was all cut from the same cloth.
In 2008, Thriller was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The same year it was also selected as one of twenty-five albums preserved by the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for being “culturally significant.” It has now sold more than thirty-three million copies in the United States, the most ever by an original studio album. In 2018, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that the Eagles’ 1976 album, Their Greatest Hits, surpassed Thriller in sales with a dramatic spike in sales—from twenty-nine million in 2006 to thirty-eight million in 2018. Why such a big jump? The RIAA explained that it was due to a new way of counting sales, which now includes streaming from YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and other digital services, as well as downloaded songs. Given this new method, when Thriller is recertified (it was last certified in 2017), it is likely to reclaim its throne.
Globally, however, Thriller remains the undisputed bestselling album in history, having sold at least sixty-eight million album copies (110 million counting singles). This does not include countries and territories that did not—or currently do not—track and report sales. For context, the next closest albums—including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, AC/DC’s Back in Black, and Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard—have sold between forty and fifty million each.
Beyond sales, though, for more than three decades now, Thriller has served as the benchmark for aspiring superstars—the holy grail of pop. “We live now in the world of the ‘long tail,’ ” wrote music critic Tom Ewing. “Thriller was the big head.”
THE SONGS
1. “WANNA BE STARTIN’ SOMETHIN’ ”
Written and composed by Michael Jackson
Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson
It doesn’t take long to hear why Thriller was such a revolutionary album. Three rapid drumbeats kick off the opening track—from there, the sounds seem to ricochet off one another like a pinball machine. “It’s a giddy and glamorous sound,” wrote Newsweek in 1983. “Hands clap, horns blare. A carnival of percussion erupts. Electric guitars chatter like a corps of African talking drums. A voice gasps and then chants a chorus. So go the first few seconds of ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,’ six minutes of musical frenzy.”
There simply wasn’t a genre for a song like this in 1982. It wasn’t disco. It wasn’t funk. It wasn’t R&B. It wasn’t new wave. It was a fusion of all of these: a song so wild and energetic it nearly bursts at the seams.
A holdout from Off the Wall, there is a clear thread connecting it to the brilliant rhythmic showcases—“Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” “Workin’ Day and Night”—Jackson wrote for that earlier album: the percussive genius, the exotic sounds, the raw energy. It also resembles those songs in its simplicity: “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” is built on just two chords. One would think that two-chord loop would become repetitive, but, as Jackson often explained, music is like tapestry. The way the song gradually introduces new instruments and sounds, building to a rousing climax, is like Ravel’s Boléro—just one theme masterfully carried through a dramatic arc.
One must listen carefully to fully appreciate the layers of hooks, rhythms, and cross-rhythms—the intersecting drum patterns, the snare, the bass, the slow-step synth pads, Jackson mimicking the percussion (“duh duh duh duh du
h”), the trumpets and saxophones. It is an expertly layered rhythmic symphony that essentially bridges African and Western musical styles.
Jackson’s vocal matches the manic nature of the song. Listen, for example, to how he sings the line “They said she had a breakdown”—the way he emphasizes the last word, high and quirky, accentuates the meaning of the lyric. The lyrics themselves are more a collage of vignettes about the madness of modern life than a coherent narrative. He sings of undiagnosed illness, of mental breakdowns, of gossip, of unplanned pregnancies leading to unfed babies. In perhaps the strangest, most cryptic section, he repeats: “You’re a vegetable / You’re a vegetable / They eat off of you.” What did it mean? Was he referring to someone in a vegetative state? Someone no longer able to function? And who was feeding off him? The media? The public? Jackson never explained.
The chorus, however, provides perhaps the best insight into his state of mind: “It’s too high to get over / Too low to get under,” he laments. “You’re stuck in the middle / And the pain is thunder.” The pain, that is, comes from feeling stuck with no way out. Lyrics like these made Thriller more compelling than Off the Wall. They were more personal, more confessional, more fraught with tension. They gave an actual sense of the human being behind the celebrity.
At about the 4:27 mark, however, Jackson—and, by extension, the listener—experiences a breakthrough. Trapped to this point inside the angst and confusion of the song, there is a sudden cathartic release. “Jackson seemingly summons the gods,” observed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal, “delivering a sermonic spectacle worthy of the greatest black preachers (‘Lift your head up high and scream out to the world / I know I am someone and let the truth unfurl / No one can hurt you now, because you know what’s true / Yes I believe in me, so you believe in you’). The song soars when Jackson yelps (literally, out of breath) ‘help me sing it’ at which point the legendary backing group the Waters (Julia, Maxine, and Oren) chime in rhythmically ‘ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa….’ Jackson ad-libs behind the Waters when suddenly the bottom drops out, and listeners are left with Jackson (damn near orgasmic), the still-frenzied Waters, the punctuating lines of the horn section (including veteran studio trumpeter Jerry Hey), and a shout-clap rhythm worthy of the Ring Shout tradition.”
It is a truly remarkable moment. For all the anxiety and apprehension (both internal and external), the music offers a kind of salvation. “Help me sing it,” he calls out to the choir, before leading a communal chant. The African chant is adapted from a refrain in Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango’s 1972 song “Soul Makossa.” Jackson may have been exposed to it on one of his trips to Africa. The artist remembers his first visit to the continent with the Jackson 5 as a revelatory experience. As he and his brothers stepped off the plane in Dakar, Senegal, they were greeted by African dancers and drumming. “Their drums and sounds filled the air with rhythm,” he recalled. “I was going crazy, I was screaming, ‘All right! They got the rhythm….This is it. This is where I come from. The origin.’ ” The Jacksons returned to Senegal in 1979 on the Destiny Tour. That year, in an interview with Jet, Jackson again emphasized his love and connection to Africa. “I don’t want the Blacks to ever forget that this is where we come from and where our music comes from. And if we forget, it would really get lost. I want us to remember.”
“Soul Makossa” also became popular in the underground disco scene in New York City in the late ’70s. There are many elements that give “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” an exotic, international feel, but the “ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa” bridge was like his shout-out to the world. Listen to the breakdown at the 5:08 mark, where the drum programming drops out and the chant is isolated with Brazilian percussionist Paulinho da Costa’s conga drumming as Jackson soars over the top. For an album often dismissed as calculated, commercial, studio pop, this is some pretty raw, funky, instinctual stuff.
Listeners have long wondered about the meaning of the chant, but while it may originate in the Cameroonian language Duala, there is no direct translation. The chant, at least in the context of the song, is simply a celebration of life—and a nod to Jackson’s (and music’s) roots. “These are the brilliant moments…that most casual listeners of Jackson’s music continue to miss,” wrote Mark Anthony Neal. “For those who read Jackson’s ever devolving facial features as some evidence of racial self-hatred, ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ’ is Jackson’s unspoken retort, as he summoned the Orishas in a way never before experienced in American pop music.”
By turns a timeless dance hit, a psychological confession, a social critique, a black pride anthem, a cosmopolitan carnival, and a spiritual breakthrough, it is one of the most distinctive and compelling songs in Jackson’s entire catalog.
2. “BABY BE MINE”
Written and composed by Rod Temperton
Produced by Quincy Jones
Like Off the Wall, Thriller slows the pace after the high-energy opener, easing the listener into its smooth soulfulness. If “Baby Be Mine” sounds like a direct descendant of “Rock with You,” that’s because it is. Not only do both mid-tempo jams appear in the same spot on the album; both are written by Rod Temperton and both feature nearly identical drumroll intros. While “Rock with You” was a #1 hit, however, “Baby Be Mine” is probably the most overlooked track on Thriller, one of only two songs on the album not released as a single.
But most fans have long since learned not to sleep on this one. “Imagine if this weren’t the better of the two non-singles from a monster album but a one-shot single by an unknown artist,” wrote music critic Michaelangelo Matos. “The sweet midtempo glide of ‘Baby Be Mine’ would have likely bubbled into the R&B Top 20 and gotten lots of roller-skate play, been included on recent mix CDs by cutting-edge European DJs and been remade as a slow jam at least three times. We’d have wondered at the bionic singer, the effervescent synth arrangements, the popping groove. In short, it would sound like the hidden classic it remains, even in plain sight.” It is a testament to the overall quality of the album that a gem like this is considered “filler.”
“Baby Be Mine” was one of the first Temperton tracks Jackson recorded for Thriller. The artist really had to stretch to sing it in his natural tenor voice—it’s not an easy song to sing, especially in that key. After several attempts, however, Jackson figured it out and makes it sound effortless on the final cut. Listen to his pleading in the bridge (“Lady can’t you see that heaven’s just begun”)—there’s a kind of youthful fervor to it. Throughout the song, his voice pushes right to the breaking point, making you feel every ounce of his yearning.
Quincy Jones described the melody as similar to a “John Coltrane–style progressive jazz line” that unwittingly introduced a whole new generation of listeners to the complex rhythms of bebop. That melody is complemented by a beautiful harmonic counterline (“Show me how it should be”) that runs throughout the song. The production, meanwhile, contains traces of the disco era with its twitchy rhythm guitar and prominent horns, but updates it with more contemporary sounds. The synth work on the track alone is worth the price of admission, from Greg Phillinganes’s deep, bouncy Minimoog bass line to the incandescent sparkling at the 2:16 mark to the way the synths stretch out, like gusts of warm wind, in the verses.
The silver lining of being overlooked on the bestselling album of all time is that it hasn’t been oversaturated; it still sounds fresh. Hip-hop artist Nas calls it “proof that Michael Jackson is the Greatest Musician Ever. Just Listen [to] Baby Be Mine. Period.”
3. “THE GIRL IS MINE”
Written and composed by Michael Jackson
Produced by Quincy Jones; Coproduced by Michael Jackson
There was a sense among some of Jackson’s collaborators that he could only write grooves, not melodies. Most of his self-composed songs up to this point—“Shake Your Body,” “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get En
ough,” “Workin’ Day and Night”—were rhythm-oriented. With “The Girl Is Mine,” Jackson sought to dispel that notion.
“The Girl Is Mine” was actually Jackson’s fourth official collaboration with Paul McCartney. McCartney gave Jackson “Girlfriend” for Off the Wall. Then in 1981, as McCartney remembers it, he got a call out of the blue one day from America. It was Michael Jackson, saying he wanted to write some hit songs together. McCartney agreed and invited the young artist to come to visit his Tudor estate in England.
McCartney wasn’t sure how the chemistry would work, but it turned out that he and Jackson got along great, joking around, watching cartoons, and talking about music and the entertainment industry into the wee hours. Jackson saw it as an opportunity to pick the brain of a legend, and McCartney was happy to share what he’d learned along the way.
It was on this trip that McCartney infamously recommended that Jackson get into music publishing. McCartney had acquired the rights to several catalogs, including songs by Buddy Holly. “[Paul] handed me a little book with MPL [the holding company for McCartney’s business interests] printed on the cover,” recalled Jackson. “He smiled as I opened it because he knew I was going to find the contents exciting. It contained a list of all the songs Paul owns and he’d been buying the rights to songs for a long time.” Jackson was fascinated, and joked that someday he might buy the Beatles’ songs (more on that in chapter 3).
The pair’s chemistry extended into the studio, where Jackson was somewhat surprised to discover that he was able not only to hold his own, but often to drive the creative process. “We worked together as equals and enjoyed ourselves,” he reflected in his autobiography. “Paul never had to carry me in that studio.” Legendary Beatles producer George Martin, who oversaw the sessions, came away impressed with the young artist. “He actually does radiate an aura when he comes into the studio, there’s no question about it. He’s not a musician in the sense that Paul is, but he does know what he wants in music and he has very firm ideas.”