Thriller (album)
Thriller is the sixth studio album by the American singer Michael Jackson . It was released on November 30, 1982 on Epic Records . As with the previous album Off the Wall (1979), Quincy Jones was the producer, while Jackson co-produced some tracks and exerted a much stronger influence on the album on their second collaboration. With Thriller he became the world's most commercially successful pop singer of the 1980s . From then on, he was often referred to as a “megastar”, which was an uncommon expression until then.
The album combines genres similar to those of Off the Wall , such as pop , R&B , rock , post- disco , funk and adult contemporary . The recordings took place between April and November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles with a production budget of $ 750,000. Of the nine tracks on the album, four were written by Jackson alone. Seven thriller singles were released, all of which hit the Billboard Hot 100 .
With around 65 million copies sold, Thriller is the world's best-selling album of all time. Other sources are currently even assuming up to 110 million units. At the 1984 Grammy Awards , Jackson won eight awards for the album, which is also a record today. In the list of 500 best albums of all time the music magazine Rolling Stone has Thriller place 20th
Emergence
Jackson worked with Quincy Jones on about 30 songs during the making of Thriller , nine of which ended up on the album. Recordings began on April 14, 1982 with work on The Girl Is Mine with Paul McCartney , which was also selected as the first single. The last four songs completed for the album were Beat It , Human Nature , PYT (Pretty Young Thing) and The Lady in My Life . With the last day of the mixing process on November 8th, 1982 work on the album was completed.
Four members of the American rock band Toto , which won six Grammys in 1983, were also involved in the creation of the album. The members Steve Lukather (guitar and bass), David Paich (keyboard and synthesizer) and the two brothers Steve (keyboard and synthesizer) and Jeff Porcaro (drums) can be heard on the album. Steve Porcaro also wrote the song Human Nature for Jackson . Jackson himself wrote four tracks for the album: Wanna Be Startin 'Somethin' , The Girl Is Mine , Beat It and Billie Jean , for which Jones wanted a much shorter intro. However, Jackson insisted on it because it made him dance. For the guitar solo of the title Beat It , Jones and Jackson looked for a suitable guitarist for several weeks and finally decided on Eddie Van Halen of the rock band Van Halen , who recorded the solo for free.
Other titles that Jackson couldn't fit on Thriller include Carousel (written by Michael Sembello ), Nite Line (written by Glen Ballard), Trouble (also called She's Trouble , written by Terry Britten, Bill Livsey and Sue Shifrin) and Hot Street (written by Temperton, also known as Slapstick). There are demos of these titles that have meanwhile been distributed on the Internet. Carousel and Hot Street were completed but later not included on the album.
On the opening record cover , Jackson is shown in a white suit against a dark background. This figure is shown expanded on the opened inside, there is a young tiger on Jackson's knee. Artist and song title are printed in cursive.
Content and music
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With the departure from the disco sound of its predecessor, Thriller is considered a post-disco album. In contrast to the previous album Off the Wall , Thriller is more oriented towards pop music and, as was common in the early 1980s, is much more synthetically produced. The songs on the album range from 80 BPM on The Girl Is Mine to 138 BPM on Beat It .
The opening track Wanna Be Startin 'Somethin' was written and recorded for Off the Wall and takes a critical look at the media and the spread of rumors. The chorus line "Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah" originally comes from the Manu Dibango classic Soul Makossa from 1972 and was also used for Rihanna's Don't Stop the Music (2007) , for example . Michael Jackson was sued by Dibango for copyright infringement. The song is in E major and has 122 BPM.
Baby Be Mine is a 110 BPM pop piece in E minor in which a man tries to convince his loved one to join him.
The Girl is Mine was released as the first song to better place the album through this duet with Paul McCartney, who is better known in Europe. The song was after the two titles Say Say Say and The Man , which appeared on McCartney's album Pipes of Peace in 1983 and had already been recorded in 1981, the third musical collaboration between the two artist friends. The song is about two men fighting over the same girl and which of them is more fond of this girl.
Originally, the title track was supposed to be Starlight or Midnight Man , but Rod Temperton eventually changed the name to Thriller because he thought it had better commercial potential. The song Thriller covers a medium tempo of 118 BPM. The recitation comes from the actor Vincent Price , who completed his recordings in just two takes, which the producer Jones later described as "great". The instrumentation of the song consists of a synthesizer, guitar, trumpet, flugelhorn, saxophone, flute and a trombone. The title also includes various sound effects, such as creaking doors, thunder, footsteps on wooden floorboards and howling dogs.
Jones and Jackson were determined to record a rock song with Beat It that would please everyone regardless of their musical tastes. The text is about defeat and courage and is an important example of Jackson's rejection of violence. The line “don't be a macho man”, for example, is a reference to this, which is also due to the abuse in his childhood by his father Joseph .
The title Billie Jean was first to be called Not My Lover , because Quincy Jones wanted to avoid confusion with the American tennis player Billie Jean King . The song is about a woman who claims that the protagonist of the song is the father of her child. Billie Jean is mentioned in the play Wanna Be Startin 'Somethin' . Billie Jean has 119 BPM and is composed in F sharp minor. On the album's original German LP record sleeve, a stanza is printed twice in the text by Billie Jean , the correct stanza is missing.
The ballad Human Nature was written by Steve Porcaro , keyboardist for Toto, who wrote the song for his daughter. It was chosen as the last track, displacing Carousel from the final track list. While PYT (Pretty Young Thing) is one of the faster songs on Thriller , the album closes with another ballad, The Lady in My Life .
Track list
- Wanna Be Startin 'Somethin' (Michael Jackson) - 6:03 *
- Baby Be Mine ( Rod Temperton ) - 4:20
- The Girl Is Mine (duet with Paul McCartney ) (Michael Jackson) - 3:42 *
- Thriller (Rod Temperton) - 5:57
- Beat It (Michael Jackson) - 4:18 *
- Billie Jean (Michael Jackson) - 4:54 *
- Human Nature ( Steve Porcaro , John Bettis ) - 4:06
- PYT (Pretty Young Thing) ( James Ingram , Quincy Jones ) - 3:59
- The Lady in My Life (Rod Temperton) - 5:00
The titles marked with * are a co-production by Michael Jackson.
Re-releases
2001: Special Edition
Since November 2001 only the Special Edition has been sold at times . It also contains audio commentary by Quincy Jones and Rod Temperton and the following bonus tracks:
- Someone in the Dark (Temperton, Alan Bergman , Marilyn Bergman ) (previously published on the " ET Storybook ")
- Billie Jean (Home Demo) (Jackson)
- Voice-over Session from 'Thriller' (with Vincent Price) (Temperton)
- Carousel (Short Version) ( Sembello , Freeman )
2008: Thriller 25
In 2008 the album was re-released with a bonus DVD and five remix tracks as well as a new title as Thriller 25 . The hip-hop musicians will.i.am and Kanye West worked as producers . The first single was a remix of the song The Girl Is Mine . The second and final single released was a new version of Wanna Be Startin 'Somethin', on which Jackson worked with Akon . Thriller 25 has sold over three million copies so far. In addition to the nine original songs , the 25th Anniversary Edition , released in 2008, contains the following bonus tracks:
- Voice-over Session from 'Thriller' (Excerpt) (with Vincent Price) (Temperton)
- The Girl Is Mine 2008 (with will.i.am ) (Jackson, will.i.am, Harris)
- PYT (Pretty Young Thing) 2008 (with will.i.am ) (Jackson, will.i.am, Harris)
- Wanna Be Startin 'Somethin' 2008 (with Akon ) (Jackson, Akon, Tuinfort)
- Beat It 2008 (with Fergie ) (Jackson)
- Billie Jean 2008 (with Kanye West ) (Jackson)
- For All Time (Sherwood, Porcaro)
- Got the Hots (Jackson, Jones) (Japan only)
The Thriller - 25th Anniversary Edition (Deluxe Digipack) contains, in addition to the bonus titles of the 25th Anniversary Edition, a DVD with video clips. This is available with two different covers.
- Thriller (video clip)
- Beat It (video clip)
- Billie Jean (video clip)
- Billie Jean Performance from Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (Live Performance)
Reception and commercial success
Thriller is considered Jackson's best album and was very successful commercially; Jackson's music videos ( Beat It , Billie Jean , Thriller ) and his dance technique, especially the moonwalk, contributed to this . His changed, but still dark-skinned appearance, as well as his outfit, for example the single white glitter glove, were also positively received. The following points illustrate Jackson's success at the time:
- International sales: Thriller is the world's best-selling album since the decade of its appearance and overtook the previous leader, the album The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd . The album received platinum status in 15 countries and gold in seven more. Sales were over 30 million at the end of 1984, and over 50 million at the end of the 1980s. From this point on, the numbers mentioned vary greatly. Some sources give around 65 million copies sold to date, while the Guinness Book of Records , for example, awarded Jackson at the beginning of 2006 for 104 million units of Thriller . At the end of June 2006 there was already talk of 109 million copies. After Jackson's death in June 2009, four million records of the album were sold that same year.
- Placement of the album in the US hit parade: Thriller was in the top ten of the US hit parade for 80 weeks. It was the first album that stayed there for more than a year. Then Celine Dions Falling into You and Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill also succeeded . With a total of 37 weeks, it was also at the top for the longest time, including 17 consecutive weeks.
- Placement of the single releases in the US hit parade: Seven of the nine album tracks were released as a single (only Baby Be Mine and The Lady in My Life not). All of them made it into the top ten of the US hit parade; Billie Jean and Beat It also sat at their head. With the exception of the first and last single - The Girl Is Mine (1982) and Thriller (1984) - all were released in the course of 1983. With the exception of the album Thriller, seven top ten singles are only on Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and included on Sister Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 .
- On March 25, 1983 Jackson first showed the moonwalk in his performance of Billie Jean at the celebration of the 25th anniversary of his former record label Motown . This then new dance step - it is not Jackson's creation, but became known through him - became Jackson's trademark. This made the Thriller album even more commercially successful.
- On December 2, 1983 Jackson and producer John Landis launched a short film of around 15 minutes as a video clip for the album's title track, Thriller . It is the world's best-selling video clip. There is also a making-of VHS video of the same.
- Awards: In early 1984, Jackson received a record eight Grammy Awards . It was not until 2000 that an artist, Carlos Santana , received eight of these awards on the occasion of his album Supernatural .
- The music magazine Rolling Stone chose Thriller ranked 20 of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time and ranked 7th of the 100 best albums of the 1980s.
- Tour for the album: A tour accompanying the album, the Victory Tour , finally took place in North America in the second half of 1984. In favor of this last joint tour with his brothers, Jackson decided not to go on a solo tour. In doing so, he accepted commercial losses, but his mother had asked him to, because his brothers had become musically insignificant compared to him - at least since the success of Thriller .
In 2008, Thriller was added to the National Recording Registry . Several excerpts from this LP were sampled by various musicians, mainly from the hip-hop and R&B genre .
Chart placements
album
| year | title |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 DE
|
 AT
|
 CH
|
 UK
|
 US
|
|||
| 1982 | thriller |
DE1  × 3
(164 weeks)DE |
AT3 × 8
(87 weeks)AT |
CH4th × 6
(53 weeks)CH |
UK1 × 13
(259 weeks)UK |
US1  × 3
× 3
(… Where.)US |
First published: November 30, 1982
|
gray hatching : no chart data available for this year
Singles
| year | Title album |
Top ranking, total weeks / months, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks / months, awards, notes) |
Remarks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
DE
|
AT
|
CH
|
UK
|
US
|
|||
| 1982 |
The Girl Is Mine Thriller |
DE53 (4 weeks) DE |
- | - |
UK8 (12 weeks) UK |
US2 (18 weeks) US |
|
| 1983 |
Billie Jean Thriller |
DE2 (40 weeks) DE |
AT2 (6½ months) AT |
CH1 (34 weeks) CH |
UK1 (33 weeks) UK |
US1 (25 weeks) US |
|
|
Beat It Thriller |
DE2 (34 weeks) DE |
AT6 (2½ months) AT |
CH2 (24 weeks) CH |
UK3 (22 weeks) UK |
US1 (25 weeks) US |
||
|
Wanna Be Startin 'Somethin' Thriller |
DE16 (11 weeks) DE |
- | - |
UK8 (12 weeks) UK |
US5 (15 weeks) US |
||
|
Human Nature Thriller |
DE64 (3 weeks) DE |
- |
CH46 (3 weeks) CH |
UK62 (2 weeks) UK |
US7 (14 weeks) US |
||
|
PYT (Pretty Young Thing) thriller |
DE51 (5 weeks) DE |
- |
CH92 (1 week) CH |
UK11 (9 weeks) UK |
US10 (16 weeks) US |
||
|
Thriller thriller |
DE9 (31 weeks) DE |
AT5 (13 weeks) AT |
CH3 (27 weeks) CH |
UK10 (55 weeks) UK |
US4 (18 weeks) US |
||
There were the following differences in European publications, especially in Great Britain and Germany:
Here PYT (Pretty Young Thing) was the last single in March 1984 (GB) or May 1984 (D), while Thriller was released in Great Britain in November 1983, in Germany in January 1984, similar to the USA. Human Nature was also never released as a single in the UK.
Sales figures and awards
| Country / Region | Award | Sales |
|---|---|---|
| Awards for music sales (country / region, Award, Sales) |
||
 Argentina (CAPIF)
|
diamond
|
500,000 |
 Australia (ARIA)
|
16 × platinum
|
1,120,000 |
 Denmark (IFPI)
|
6 × platinum
|
480,000 |
|
Germany (BVMI)
|
3 × platinum
|
1,500,000 |
 Europe (IFPI)
|
platinum
|
(1,000,000) |
 Finland (IFPI)
|
platinum
|
129,000 |
 France (SNEP)
|
diamond
|
1,000,000 |
 Hong Kong (IFPI / HKRIA)
|
platinum
|
20,000 |
 Japan (RIAJ)
|
 gold
|
100,000 |
 Canada (MC)
|
2 × diamond
|
2,000,000 |
 Mexico (AMPROFON)
|
diamond
|
1,000,000 |
 New Zealand (RMNZ)
|
12 × platinum
|
180,000 |
 Netherlands (NVPI)
|
8 × platinum
|
800,000 |
|
Austria (IFPI)
|
8 × platinum
|
400,000 |
 Portugal (AFP)
|
platinum
|
50,000 |
 Sweden (IFPI)
|
4 × platinum
|
400,000 |
|
Switzerland (IFPI)
|
6 × platinum
|
300,000 |
 Hungary (MAHASZ)
|
platinum
|
20,000 |
|
United States (RIAA)
|
33 × platinum
|
33,000,000 |
|
United Kingdom (BPI)
|
13 × platinum
|
4,470,000 |
| All in all |
1 × gold 84 × platinum 8 × diamond |
47,489,000 |
Main article: Michael Jackson / Music Sales Awards
See also
- List of the best-selling music albums certified by BVMI in Germany
- List of best-selling music albums in the United States
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ release date "Thriller"
- ↑ Release date
- ↑ a b The Baby Boomer Encyclopedia, July 20, 2009
- ↑ Guinness World Records 2011 : New and explosive - Das Rekordfeuerwerk, p. 181
- ↑ Taraborrelli, pp. 220-221
- ↑ Halstead, pp. 27-28
- ↑ Thriller 25 Booklet
- ↑ a b Thriller - Special Edition Audio - Interview with Quincy Jones
- ↑ theguardian.com
- ^ The Complete Michael Jackson, International Music Publications Ltd, 1997, ISBN 1859094473
- ↑ The Guardian: Rihanna and Michael Jackson sued by African singer February 4, 2009 (engl.)
- ^ Halstead, p. 119
- ↑ Press release from Nov 2007 on The Telegraph
- ↑ a b Whiteley, p. 35
- ↑ Original demo
- ^ Roger Friedman: Jacko: Neverland East in Upstate New York . Fox News. May 16, 2008. Archived from the original on May 19, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 22, 2008.
- ↑ www.allmichaeljackson.com Article on Thriller
- ↑ Music Icons: Michael Jackson , Taschen Verlag, 1st edition October 2009, p. 39
- ↑ www.Smithsonian.com The Arranger from March 2008
- ↑ www.Telegraph.co.uk Michael Jackson's best-selling studio albums article from June 26, 2009
- ↑ mjjsource-eu.blogspot.com FINAL UPDATE: ALBUM SALES FOR 2009, BOTH US AND GLOBALLY from January 11, 2010
- ↑ Levy, Joe (Ed.): Rolling Stone. The 500 best albums of all time . (Original edition: Rolling Stone. The 500 Greatest Albums of all Time . Wenner Media 2005). Translation: Karin Hofmann. Wiesbaden: White Star Verlag, 2011, p. 39
- ^ Rob Copsey: The UK's biggest studio albums of all time. officialcharts.com, October 13, 2018, accessed November 9, 2018 .
