Have you ever terced if it were possible for one album to ever change the rules of pop music in its entirety? In my twenty years in the music industry, it breaks the mold when one album can ever create such immense change in the music world like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Upon its release in the latter part of 1982, it came at the end of an era in pop music. Disco music had seen better days, MTV had just launched in the US, and artists were looking for some change in the music industry. Michael Jackson and music producer Quincy Jones felt that this change in music was exactly what Jackson needed, as it made “Thriller” much darker and much more experimental compared to any of Jackson’s past releases. “Thriller” incorporated pop music, funk music, RnB music, and hard rock for the very first time in music history, when Jackson felt that “he just had to go in a new musical direction” and disco music supporters just faltered in their enthusiasm for music. Thriller went on to create seven Top-10 hits in pop music, and what made this possible is that it had never been done in music history until then.
The “Thriller jacket” at the Grammy Museum., 18 December 2019, Mic JohnsonLP, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Breaking New Ground in Production and Sound
Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson went all out on the recordings too. Thriller was made on an enormous budget and featuring the best session musicians of the period (and including members of Toto, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, and much, much more). Jackson went out and hired Paul McCartney for a duet (“The Girl Is Mine”), making this one of the first pop records that included a professional guest artist of this caliber on the credits. Thus began the making of records that obliterated boundaries between genres. For the first time ever, “a superstar member of the race” made pop records that had genuine rock attitude—Rock attitude on tracks such as “Beat It”’s hard rock guitar solo, which featured the legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen. Jackson had always advocated that “Billie Jean” and the title “Thriller” tracks had to retain extensive instrumental introductions and frightening sound effects because every bit of music contributed towards reaching every aspect of the listen perfectly possible. In fact, Michael Jackson famously declared that “why can’t every song be so great that people would want to buy [it] if you could release it as a single?”. Critics recognized this aspect of the work too. Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones’ Thriller drew extensive praise for its artist and genre-busting conception of mixing fantasy, fear, and “doo-bah” music, and it soon became Michael Jackson’s first number-one album, leading the top of the USA Album Chart for an unprecedented 37 weeks.
A Visual Revolution: Music Videos and MTV
Even more than the music itself, Thriller launched a movement in the presentation and dissemination of pop music itself. Music videos were still a relatively new phenomenon at this point, and Jackson approached them like feature film releases. His “Thriller” video (a 13-minute film in itself and directed by John Landis of An American Werewolf in London fame) had unprecedented levels of production and special effects. And when MTV played it in December 1983, it shook the very fabric of pop music history. According to The Guardian, “Thriller consolidated MTV’s status as a cultural phenomenon and smashed the racial barrier that had kept all-blackprogramming off MTV,” writes The Guardian. “MTV was initially intended for an underground college radio crowd. White kids didn’t connect to it at first, and it would play only white music. Jackson changed that when Thriller. Before that, MTV played very few music videos of blacks performing music. In this case, it included Michael Jackson and helped break down this racial barrier that existed at that point in American pop music history.” “’Thriller’ and Michael Jackson raised the ante on music video quality and helped launch the era of music video superstars,” writes Susan Martin of the Los Angeles music promotion and entertainment video makers’ guild, M.U.S.i.C.). “Their claim to fame? Music video supremacy, of course—primarily on MTV and the artists’ promotional needs and desires for increased exposure and music video coverage on TV and on music channels and stations that would later develop and emerge in the music video industry in the 1980s and 90s.” Indeed, music video supremacy in this manner became Michael Jackson and “Thriller”’s claim to fame. His “$100,000”-budget “$100,000 ‘Billie Jean’ video”—a “14-minute video that showcased this pop superstar’s dancing abilities and featured Jackson performing his unforgettable and history-changing, world-famous ‘moonwalk’ step for the first time on live network
Shattering Records and Racial Barriers
David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Michael Jackson impersonator Pete Carter at the 25th anniversary celebration of Thriller for the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. Pictured is the cast of Step It Up and Dance!, who put on a show with the original choreographer of the Thriller video. Photographer's blog post about this image and the death of Michael Jackson.In the records, record after record was shattered. Jackson’s three singles on Thriller were the largest (“Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Thriller”); each single topped the charts, and each and every other single on the album made it into the Top 10 of the records too![3] No album had ever achieved such feats. In 1984, more than 32 million copies of Thriller had sold worldwide—the top album sold at that point in history. Even the pop industry had racial barriers shattered. Jackson is the first African-American artist to lead MTV and the pop music charts at the same time in history. In the words of Rolling Stone: “In the world of pop music, Michael Jackson and everyone else are in Michael Jackson’s world,” and “’Time’ famously declared Jackson a ‘One-man rescue team for the music business.’ In actual fact, “’Time’ observed that in the wake of the MTV slump of the post-disco early 80s, the end of the MTV slump in pop music had much to do with the revived success of “’Thriller,’” and that “the whole industry had a stake in this success” because this indeed stood for the “music business’ first ever “blockbuster” success.”
Cultural Impact and Legacy
Mexico City established a new Guinness World Record for the largest number of people dancing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” simultaneously with 13 thousand people.Eneas, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“The aftereffects of Thriller are still evident in the present day. Thriller made Jackson one of the world’s most recognized figures in history and made him the first and only African American entertainer to achieve such widespread success.” It broke down barriers in what constitutes a pop album: “a combination of fantastic songs, visuals, and storytelling, marketed in the vein of the larger-than-life artist himself.” Many pop artists in the past several years of pop music history have looked back at Jackson’s Thriller, such as Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, for inspirations in genre-meshing and music video filmmaking on the level of Thriller’s music videos. Many of Thriller‘s legacies are codified within pop music history. In regards to the awards and accolades Thriller received, “the unprecedented run of hits on Thriller reinvigorated the singles market and redefined what could be accomplished in the space of single album releases.”
Even to this day, “Thriller” still finds itself on lists of the very best records ever made. It holds the record for the “most Grammy Awards won for an album”, winning an unprecedented eight awards, and it has been etched into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry for its “cultural, historical, or aesthetic” importance. “Its impact can still be felt in contemporary pop music”, and this has been in many areas, right down to budgeting for music videos and what constitutes a concept album. In every aspect, “Thriller” remains much more than just an iconic album: it is and remains the catalyst for change in every aspect of pop music and in Michael Jackson himself becoming an international phenomenon.
Sources: Thriller’s outsized influence is documented by music historians and journalists. For example, Rolling Stone and Time have described it as a watershed “blockbuster” that rebuilt the music industry, and The Guardian explained how its videos “sealed MTV’s reputation as a new cultural force. Chart records, sales figures, and awards are noted in official music histories, and retrospective analyses emphasize Thriller’s revolutionary sound and legacy. These sources together show why Thriller stands out as the one album that truly reshaped modern pop.