the essentials in brief
There are only a few albums that have the standing of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. The bare numbers alone are awe-inspiring: “Thriller” has been on the US Billboard charts for over 500 weeks and has sold over 100 million units since it was first published on November 30, 1982. “Thriller” occupied the top position in the official German sales charts for eleven weeks and has been certified four times platinum and eight times gold. Worldwide, “Thriller” made it to number 1 in almost every country on earth, including Great Britain, France, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada and remains the best-selling album of all time to this day over 100 million copies sold.
But numbers are smoke and mirrors: What counts with “Thriller” is the musical creativity, the hit potential and also the visual implementation, because the videos and short films for “Beat It” and “Thriller” wrote music television history. Songs like “The Girl Is Mine” (a duet with Paul McCartney), “Billie Jean”, “Human Nature” and of course “Beat It” and “Thriller” are immortal oversongs – produced by star producer Quincy Jones. But Jackson did something else with “Thriller”: He briefly burst the boundaries between black and white, feminine and masculine, which were still more noticeable at the time, and combined black music with “white” rock and pop music.
The Michael Jackson Thriller 40 double CD, out November 18, includes the original album plus a bonus disc full of surprises for fans, including some previously unreleased songs Michael Jackson recorded in the studio for Thriller. As great as the music and his artistic legacy are, the shadow that hangs over his career and his untimely death is of course just as dramatic. It is up to each and everyone whether one can separate the work from the artist, but one must not sweep this aspect of his artistically so rich and interpersonally so tragic life under the carpet.
