Michael Jackson - Thriller

From “Starlight” to “Thriller”: forty years on from the release of the best-selling album of all time, the arcane forces still offer up an even bigger smile, and there's nothing left to do but thank that genius Quincy Jones. His foresight, pursued through nicknames, favours and pats on the back, proved decisive for Rob Temperton, adrift just hours before the album's launch like a buoy lost at sea that had slipped its mooring, at the mercy of finding the perfect title that would echo forever like one of Michael's dance steps. Before landing on “Thriller”, good old Rob was in fact still missing the definitive something that would let him toss the early sloppy attempts in the bin - all of them out of step with the album's greatness, its feeling, its very “skin”. Starting with “Midnight Man”, which sounded even worse than “Starlight”, which, incidentally, still seemed to have walked straight out of a Studio 54 dressing room and ended up giving Jones's attentive ears the distinct sense of a cheap compromise. “I woke up the next morning with this word in my head,” Temperton said, “and I pictured everything: from the Billboard charts to the merchandising.”

There's no shortage of this and other curiosities in the story of the genesis of “Thriller”, celebrated for the occasion with a deluxe edition that of course includes the usual B-sides. And it couldn't be otherwise: miracles almost never happen by chance. But “Thriller” towers above mere wonder, overtaking the divine on the inside lane with a moonwalk taken at a moderate pace and a tilted fedora. “Thriller” is an alien object in the sky that keeps shining with its own light, slipping free of the laws of physics and of something else besides. Because Vincent Price's ghostly cackle still hangs over every Halloween night. And the mystique of Van Halen is still there, suspended on the electric strings of time. While the embraces shared with Paul, Steve and Greg shine on forever from the frames hanging on the walls of Studio A at Westlake Audio on Beverly Boulevard in Hollywood. Genuine embraces that, with Manu Dibango, turn into music and reach back to the ancestral through a sample of “Soul Makossa”, stamped like a postcard to be sent to the next two thousand generations in “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'”. And one could go on like this for hours and hours, getting endlessly worked up, say, over Louis Johnson's bassline, which projects us straight onto the shop windows of the '80s.

Forty years on, the millions have turned into billions. Numbers that, however virtual, would frighten quite a few ghosts - certainly not Jackson's, though, which, between one cameo and another, keeps marching on and racking up over a billion views on YouTube with “Billie Jean” alone.

For all the world's technology, albums, needless to say, are certainly not unwrapped with a click. And going into a record shop, however increasingly rare that may be, is not exactly the same as scrolling. There's a physiological proportion looming on the horizon, one that stands out all along the line - that clogs up the view, the hearing, the other senses, until it forms a wave. The one made by “Thriller”, moreover, is the biggest of any ocean coastline, of any sea in the world; it breaks everywhere, splitting in turn into another hundred and fifty-two smaller waves, like the samples used by a host of musicians over the years. Another forty-eight samples and it would reach two hundred, the same number as the demos Jackson laid out in Quincy's living room before picking up the sieve.

In short, forty years on, pretty much everything has already been said. About Jacko and about the numbers behind the masterpiece. About the man and his talent. About his life and his music. Meanwhile the legend keeps trying to resurface somewhere between good and evil, between one exposé documentary and one made by the family. As for heirs - musical ones, that is - there's not even a shadow of one. Whether at the Super Bowl or in any given arena, no one has yet had the nerve to step on stage wearing both the clothes of Fred Astaire and those of James Brown. Forty years on, “Thriller” therefore remains the album beyond albums. The unquestionable work. No phenomenon, in short, can keep pace with it. No digital or streaming-era comeback can dent its weight. Change falls silent and turns on its heel: “Thriller” is perfection. “The super-slick show” stamped forever into the hearts of billions of people, to borrow the answer Jennifer Batten gave me to a question of mine. The very same Jennifer who was, and will remain, in the minds of so many fans, Michael's guitar-shaped extension on stage during his world tours, as he himself loved to call her.

“Thriller” dodges boomer-ism, mocks anyone who watches the clock hands with their gaze fixed on the wall, anyone who still has the nerve to stand still when the King of Pop makes his entrance. More than an album, “Thriller” is the advent of an immanent dimension, where anything is possible. Even convincing fear to cut it out and dance forever. Out and about, with the zombies, while the world howls along with Michael. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

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