Thriller

Less than 30 years ago, a skinny guy watched the sky and ‘wished upon a star’, and said in a childlike way: “I want my album to be the top selling album of all time”. This preposterous request could not have been for any, but the only the guy was serious about it. I don’t even need to say we are speaking about Michael Jackson. Right?

The release of the “Thriller” album is a rare case. Just think about it: since when would you give an album the possibility of being a hit, with only nine tracks on it, and ‘fillers’ as “P.Y.T.”, “Baby Be Mine”, or, perhaps “The lady in my life”? What is the formula for an album of such circumstances to become the biggest selling album of all time?

Maybe it was the vision: Quincy Jones is a genius. Off course, it is undeniable the talent of the guy who has a beautiful voice and dances like no predecessor. Maybe it was the inclusion of people who was famous, like Paul McCartney, Eddie Van Halen, or even the Vincent Price himself. The rest of the staff, Porcaro, Bruce Swedien, Rod Temperton were part of it. All of them leaders on their fields. People with vision, that not only were trying to make hits but defining a trend.

Jackson said once that when the album was completed, and he heard the whole product after the mixing process, he cried like a kid (well… he always does), saying ‘that’s it, we’re not releasing the album’ be cause the mix was a crap. And again, it was inverted lots of time and money to re-do all the songs in the mix. The bass line for ‘Billie Jean’ took 2 weeks to sound like we hear it now. The product was one of the closest things to perfection the world met by then.

Just take your time and listen carefully a song like ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Something’ and feel the music texture, the blending of the different layers and the inclusion of the multiple movements into one song only. Whether you enjoy it or not, you must realize that sound is not ordinary for a production dated1982. It sounds like a recent song, now 25 years after that.

Was it the extra mile of the evolution of the concept of ‘music video’ going beyond a concert performance and creating a ‘mini movie’ or ‘short film’? What about the implementation of great choreographies, special effects, and even the unexpected fame of getting burn in the filming process of a Pepsi T.V. add? Whatever.

After the album, the entertainment was never the same. People might say that Michael Jackson named himself the ‘king of pop’. But: after ‘Thriller’… could you say he is not? Am not promoting sympathy. The pop market has never been a solid ground. He lost the ‘eye of the tiger’.

So, before puking be cause of the weird eccentric figure this pale guy is now, we find a weird application of the Jamaican proverb: “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice”. Those of us who are infected by the ‘urban reality’, who’ve heard radio and like a video or any pop song, must give tribute to a product that settled up new standards and gave us the opportunity to enjoy the entertainment into a brand new level unknown before 1982. Being today the 25th anniversary of the release, we need to conclude that Thriller couldn’t have a better name.