Michael Jackson

Oh, God! That boy moves in a very exceptional way.

That’s the greatest dancer of the century

(Fred Astaire)

Let's start with the numbers, and a "simple" statement of fact: "Thriller" is the best-selling album of all time. Chart researchers estimate it has sold somewhere between 65 and 70 million copies. A figure that's already literally monstrous on its own, but one that Michael Jackson's estate and Sony have seen fit to inflate even further in subsequent years, pushing it up to 110 million. An unreal and frankly inappropriate number, given how solid the verified figure already is, for an album released on November 30, 1982, which spent a staggering 37 weeks at No. 1 in the US and reached No. 8 in the UK.

A planetary success that's putting it mildly - "Thriller" broke through everywhere, even topping the charts for 4 weeks in Japan, an astonishing feat in a market that almost exclusively favors homegrown records. And Italy? At the time, the album famously stalled at number 2, only reaching number 1 for a single week in 2009, in the wake of Jackson's sudden death. What's more, "Thriller" was also the first record in history to have 7 of its 9 singles land in the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10. Two years after its release, Jackson won over the Grammy jury, taking home a staggering 8 awards. In 2008, the US Library of Congress even declared it a "National Treasure". And that's without even counting the staggering numbers tied to the tour, the videos, and, last but not least, the samples: the title track alone has been sampled in over 152 songs, some of them massively famous, like N.W.A.'s "100 Miles and Runnin'".

Beyond the numbers, which are truly beyond comparison, "Thriller" is the album with which Michael Jackson transcended the human to enter the realm of myth, becoming, in every sense, an unreachable star, the brightest in the entire firmament of world pop. According to some research centers, Michael Jackson was the most famous man in the world, and that achievement is owed, for the most part, precisely to "Thriller". An album that follows the equally seminal "Off The Wall" from 1979, another landmark of pop music as a whole, in some ways amplifying its expressive urgency. With "Thriller", Michael Jackson becomes, for everyone, "The King of Pop", but above all, the dancer par excellence. The man who defies gravity and exorcises our fears through funk arrangements lacquered in gold and stretched across mainstream planes no one had ever touched before.

The record also becomes an opportunity to widen the scope of the music business. With Michael Jackson's shows, we witness, for the first time, an all-encompassing spectacle. Every single is a postcard in motion, ready to be sent anywhere. Then again, the show he put on has no precedent. The meticulous attention to detail would put even NASA's engineers to shame, not to mention the set designers of the Paris Opéra. Michael is a force of nature and, at the same time, a perfect machine. His moves are so incredible that they wrung applause out of none other than Fred Astaire - Jackson's own supreme idol - who was left utterly stunned by one of Jacko's performances on March 25, 1983, the night of the concert celebrating Motown's legendary 25th anniversary, and the launch of the fateful moonwalk, the most famous step in Jackson's entire repertoire.

"Thriller" is, first and foremost, the first record to feature Michael Jackson as co-producer alongside Quincy Jones. It's therefore the first record on which the King of Pop is able to give full rein to his own creative drive, writing five of the album's nine songs alongside British composer Rod Temperton, not to mention having the final say on rhythm sections, mixing and all manner of studio polish. In short, "Thriller" was the first album with Jackson firmly at the helm - captain of a formidable team of session players and collaborators, chief among them the towering Eddie Van Halen, brought in for the "Beat It" sessions to deliver one of the most memorable solos of his career. A solo later performed on Jackson's world tours by Jennifer Batten, the female counterpart to the great Eddie, a standout in Michael's band and one of the musicians dearest to him. Add to these talents a certain Paul McCartney, a longtime friend of Jackson's, dueting on the sultry "The Girl Is Mine". Impossible, too, not to mention Steve Porcaro of Toto's songwriting credit on "Human Nature", as well as Greg Phillinganes's contribution to "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)". As the cherry on top, there's Vincent Price's wicked laugh in the "Thriller" video.

Contributions that, one way or another, breathe life into a record whose foundations rest entirely on a remarkable synth-funk framework. These, after all, were the years of pop sweetened by the funky cravings of pioneers (for different reasons) like Rick James and George Clinton. The years of dancefloors fueled by the drugged-up, fast-paced disco music of Studio 54. The years of gilded keyboards and syrupy melodic turns. The years of hair teased sky-high with gallons of gel, à la Ray Parker Jr.

Michael Jackson had not yet decided to upend his own image, and the chilling transformations to come were still far from his mind. His ties to Mother Africa, meanwhile, were still plainly visible, and the controversial sampling of Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa" on opening track "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is just one more confirmation of an embrace with tribal energy that proves inescapable, however well disguised beneath a sound revamped with synths and horns.

The carousel begins to spin, and the pulse of the following "Baby Be Mine" reprises, in a dimmer, more subdued light, the carefree moods of the opening track. Meanwhile, the next romantic duet ballad with the Liverpool baronet fills hearts and slowly sinks in. A syrupy, soulful outpouring, complete with a unison chorus on the second refrain. It's this knowing synergy between Jackson and McCartney that precedes the most famous howl in music history, and one of the most emblematic songs of Jackson's career. The groove of "Thriller" is among the most infectious in his entire catalogue. Jackson decides to pay tribute to horror cinema in the video that will change his life forever. The idea of fusing the song's pop soul with a danse macabre belongs to the ever-shrewd Quincy Jones. A stroke of genius, and the start of a trio of songs at the heart of the record that would forever define Jackson's career. The horror-tinged pop climax of the title track is followed by the disco-rock bomb "Beat It", featuring the aforementioned Van Halen's unforgettable solo, in what remains Jackson's most successful crossover moment.

Closing out this magic triangle is Louis Johnson's unforgettable bass, setting ablaze the eternally irresistible intro of another quintessential hit: "Billie Jean". Now, in the history of pop music, plenty of disco-indebted hits have an infectious groove, but few have the power to win everyone over, to move hips against their own will, and to stir even a sloth into motion. One could certainly point to the seductive clavinet of "Superstition", or the orgiastic "Give It To Me Baby", released the year before by the perennially underrated Rick James. But miracles on the level of "Billie Jean" - an instant classic that would define an era, the sonic emblem of a musician and dancer who was utterly unique, unmistakable, and at times almost otherworldly - can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The more relaxed, reflective vocal delivery of "Human Nature" eases the mood in turn, before yet another infectious refrain. The instrumental side of the track features every member of Toto at work: David Paich and Steve Porcaro on keyboards, Steve Lukather on guitar, and Jeff Porcaro on drums. "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" underscores the record's synth-funk DNA, before the dim, soft lighting of the album's other sentimental ballad, "The Lady In My Life", closes things out, caught between a funky bass line swaying along and Jackson's anguish over what remains an unresolved love: "Play back with me (Always the lady in my life)/ All over, all over, all over (Ooh girl let me keep you warm)/ All over, all over (You are the lady in my life)".

The success of "Thriller" would spark Jackson's astonishing rise to the very top of the global star system, and his newly claimed title of King of Pop would carry him to conquer every last corner of the planet still left unclaimed. The follow-ups "Bad" and "Dangerous" would go on to expand his fame further still, cementing his throne. And yet the scale of this landmark record remains, to this day, unmatched. The north star of the pop firmament, for every era to come.

* Thanks to Federico Romagnoli for his invaluable help with the sales figures

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02/06/2019