THRILLER: MICHAEL JACKSON'S SURPRISING SUCCESS
The album that would become the most successful record in music history went unnoticed by the magazine Time when it was first released 35 years ago, on November 30, 1982. But it didn't take too long for that to change, as the album sat atop the charts for weeks and revolutionized the entire record industry and the music-video culture. About a year after its release, Thriller was still selling 200,000 copies a week. By the time Michael Jackson appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1984, the album had become the best-selling album ever (and it still claims that title).
But, while it could be said that a success of that magnitude is always a surprise in some way, Time's music critic Jay Cocks also suggests a deeper reason why the editors at Time may have overlooked the album when it was first released:
For the record industry, Thriller was a restoration of confidence, a rejuvenation. Its effect on listeners, especially younger ones, was nearer to a revelation. Thriller brought Black music back to mainstream radio, from which it had been banished in the mid-'70s. "No doubt about it," says composer-arranger Quincy Jones, who produced the albums Off the Wall and Thriller with Jackson. "He took us right up there where we belong. Black music had to play second fiddle for a long time, but its spirit is the whole motor of pop. Michael connected with every soul in the world."
Thriller does not have the mean, challenging immediacy of rap, but it is consummate contemporary rhythm and blues. Jane Fonda, one of Jackson's pals, put it as nicely as any music critic: "Michael had a fresh, original sound. The music is energetic, and it's sensual. You can dance to it, work out to it, make love to it, sing to it. It's hard to sit still to."
The pulse of America and much of the rest of the world beat in time to the tough strut of Billie Jean, the asphalt aria of Beat It, the cool chills of Thriller. Thriller was on the Japanese charts for 65 consecutive weeks, and local teens were copying Michael's moves and singing his songs. Thriller was also South Africa's top seller: "Jackson bridged the apartheid gap," declared one record executive. The Soviet press in Moscow denounced Jackson, and his fans couldn't buy his records in any stores, but bootleg tapes were swapped and treasured.
"Michael used to say, when he wrote, he'd write for everyone," says his mother Katherine, "even though the music business would list it as rhythm and blues because of him being Black." Jackson was the biggest thing in music since The Beatles. He was the hottest single phenomenon since Elvis Presley. He just may be the most popular Black singer ever.
This success, Jones says, "had never happened to a Black performer." Rock critics (who are mostly white) liked Thriller well enough and wrote respectfully of it when it was released in December 1982, but they were as surprised as record-company executives (who are mostly white) when the album started burning its way into the country's collective musical consciousness. The message is obvious anyway: soul is for sharing, not segregating.
When Jackson died in 2009, Thriller was still remembered by many as a high point in his career. "For a generation, the magic is partly nostalgic; everyone in his fifties remembers exactly where they were when they heard Beat It for the first time," wrote Time's Richard Corliss in his remembrance of the pop idol. "As a piece of music, it remains the greatest pop album of all time."