My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (7) Thriller - Michael Jackson

[This is the fourth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Even before the trials and plastic surgeries, Michael Jackson more closely resembled a cartoon character than a human being, living through the greatest fame any individual has ever known in a private amusement park with a pet chimp named Bubbles. His greatest album endures a similar fate. The vast margin by which Thriller has outsold all other studio albums has in some ways managed to overshadow the music it contains. The issue is compounded by the skepticism often engendered by chart success, where lasting material is cheapened by association with the transient hits with which it shares airtime. Yet one doesn't move 60 million units by accident, and in fact, beyond the sheer magnitude of its success there isn't anything inexplicable - or even particularly surprising - about Thriller. When Jackson entered the studio in April 1982, he did so on the heels of Off the Wall, armed with a returning producer and the artistic freedom from Epic Records that only a critical and popular smash of that magnitude (20 million units in its own right) can provide. In many ways, the follow-up simply constituted a post-disco update: the album featured nine songs written and arranged by the best in the business, comprising ballads and up-tempo numbers expertly balanced against one another. Though Thriller does feature more unexpected additions than Off the Wall - an Eddie van Halen guest solo on "Beat It" and a repurposed African call-and-response coda to "Wanna Be Startin' Something" - the musical feel of the two albums remains much the same. Thriller was able to transcend its predecessor and became a phenomenon in part due to its stellar songwriting. Indeed, it contained enough quality material that its least interesting song was a duet with Paul McCartney; it also spawned seven Top 10 singles (one of which, the immortal "Billie Jean," nearly missed the album's final cut). The true deciding factor, though, was Jackson himself. Primed in the wake of Off the Wall to take over the music business, Jackson produced a supremely danceable album nonetheless infused with enough nervous energy to take advantage of the high-octave vocal leaps which had become his trademark. Though it's easy in retrospect to forecast Jackson's downfall in the paranoia that suffuses Thriller, taken on its own terms the music projects an air less of fear than of a yearning for respect, for success, or simply (as on the exemplary ballad "Human Nature") for love. Of course, in the final analysis, Thriller can't be seen out of context - not in the wake of 25 years of tabloid covers, and not with Jackson cuddling a Bengal tiger cub on the cover of the Special Edition reissue. Beyond the circus with which it will always be associated, though, the most remarkable aspect of Thriller will surely remain that a single listen always reveals what led it to conquer the world in the first place.