If you’re a musician, even aspiring to attain half of the amount of acclaim, fame and fortune as Michael Jackson is a long shot at best. Still, there are some fundamental principles about showmanship, marketing and promotion that can’t be simplified with the internet or a social media campaign.
Embrace The Slow Burn
Thriller’s tracklist holds a handful of Jackson’s most popular songs. Cuts such as “Billie Jean,” “Thriller,” “Beat It” and “P.Y.T.” have become required listening when it comes to R&B and pop music – if you don’t know them lyric for lyric, some may question the rock you’ve lived under.
But none of those songs was the lead single for the album. Instead, “The Girl Is Mine,” featuring Paul McCartney, was the chosen cut to ignite the promotion of Jackson’s sixth album in 1982. The song peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but received heavy criticism from Rolling Stone, who labeled the song to be a “wimpoid MOR ballad” and Paul McCartney’s efforts “tame.” It wasn’t until after the album was released that the aforementioned songs began to find their way onto the charts.
Invest In Your Live Show
During the television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, in 1983, Jackson debuted a dance move that validated his superhuman image: the moonwalk.
Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ at 35: A Look Back at the Groundbreaking Album
The critically acclaimed album sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards and broke down racial barriers on radio and television networks like MTV. The global impact of the “King of Pop” could be measured in album sales (close to 1 billion) but is also evident in the statues of Mr. Jackson that have been erected in countries like Australia, Brazil, China and Italy.
While the album was released more than three decades ago, songs from it, including “Thriller,” “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” still play regularly on the radio and in nightclubs. The YouTube uploads of some of those songs have hundreds of millions of views: One link for “Beat It” has 300 million.
“Beat It” was the third single from “Thriller” to be released after hits like “The Girl is Mine” and “Billie Jean,” and features a dance routine that brings two rival gangs together. Over the years, the song has been sampled by Justin Bieber, Fergie and Eminem to name a few.
On Dec. 19, 1982, the Times music critic John Rockwell reviewed Mr. Jackson’s album in glowing terms:
“Thriller” is a wonderful pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today. But it is more than that. It is as hopeful a sign as we have had yet that the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music — and between whites and blacks — in this culture may be breached once again. Most important of all, it is another signpost on the road to Michael Jackson’s own artistic fulfillment.
While a different album, “Off The Wall,” earned Mr. Jackson recognition as one of the era’s great artists, it was “Thriller” that transformed him into a global star. He went on to release four more albums, including “Bad,” “Dangerous,” “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” and “Invincible” before his death at age 50 in 2009.
Over the last year, Mr. Jackson’s songs have defined dance music. The arrangements on the “Thriller” album mesh his piping voice with a muscular blend of real and electronic sounds, in rhythms that can’t be categorized as rock or funk or disco.
“Thriller” is now played on rock radio stations that cater largely to young white listeners as well as on urban dance-music stations that appeal largely to blacks. Before “Thriller,” few entertainers were able to cross that subtle color line. A similar crossover has taken place on cable television, where Mr. Jackson’s video clips are shown on programs that rarely offer black performers.
Thriller is the sixth studio album by American singer Michael Jackson, released on November 30, 1982, in the United States by Epic Records and internationally by CBS Records. It explores genres similar to Jackson’s previous album, Off the Wall, including pop, post-disco, rock and funk. Recording sessions took place from April to November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, with a production budget of $750,000. Quincy Jones produced the album and Jackson wrote four of its nine songs.
In just over a year, Thriller became—and currently remains—the world’s best-selling album, with estimated sales of 66 million copies. It is the best-selling album in the United States and the first album to be certified 33× multi-platinum, having shipped 33 million album-equivalent units.[9] The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awardsin 1984, including Album of the Year. It produced seven singles—”The Girl Is Mine“, “Billie Jean“, “Beat It“, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’“, “Human Nature“, “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)“, and “Thriller“—all of which reached the top 10 on theUS Billboard Hot 100 chart. Thriller broke racial barriers in pop music, enabling Jackson’s appearances on MTV and meeting with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The album was one of the first to use music videos as successful promotional tools, and the videos for the songs “Thriller”, “Billie Jean”, and “Beat It” all received regular rotation on MTV.
In 2001, a special edition reissue was released, which contains additional audio interviews, demo recordings and the song “Someone in the Dark”, a Grammy-winning track from the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial storybook. In 2008, Thrillerwas reissued again as Thriller 25, containing remixes with contemporary artists, previously unreleased songs, and a DVD with three music videos and Jackson’s performance of “Billie Jean” from the 1983 television special Motown 25.
In the same year, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame along with Off the Wall. In 2012, Slant Magazine named Thriller the best album of the 1980s”. In 2003, Rolling Stone placed the album at number 20 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time“. The album was listed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers at number three on its “Definitive 200” album list. Thriller was also included in the Library of Congress‘National Recording Registry of culturally significant recordings, and the Thriller music video was included in the National Film Preservation Board‘s National Film Registry of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films”.
