Yeah, “PYT” and “Wanna Be Startin Somethin” were my go to songs on the album.
Once again I will say I thought “Off The Wall” (1979) was a superior product. I could listen to all ten songs.
That video, tho, was a pretty big deal at the time. There were actually watch parties set up for the MTV debut of it.
At the time (college boy just out of high school), I tried to act like MJ wasn’t cool. I was a Prince/Time/Vanity fan over the Pop-ish leanings of MJ early 80s, but I couldn’t deny that it was a popular album. I was also going to Punk and Reggae clubs and events at the time and thought Talking Heads was more cool than Pluto in the Winter. I was even starting to experiment with House/Techno by then. So, take this all with a grain of salt.
P-Funk was still my goto band for all things mega cool, btw. The Funkentelechy was strong with this one.
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Have I owned it? Of course! I have it on vinyl, looking at it right now across the room. Though to be truthful, I loved ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ (and even ‘Wanna be Starting Something’) actually more than ‘Thriller’ itself.
Vinyl and tape. I am surprised at the number of people here who are indifferent to the album, not only because it’s a brilliant album but also because it was a bestseller. So I’m going to ask this. Do the people who dislike it also mostly dislike black genres like disco, soul, funk, house?
In my case, yeah. Not being black, I didn’t grow up immersed in culturally black music (I think most white kids do, nowadays, but there was more separation in the 60s and 70s). My first serious exposure was in junior high, where we had a juke box (!) in the lunchroom and it had a lot of soul hits as well as white-centric pop / rock stuff. (I was also not into pop and rock as a kid so it was simultaneously my first really serious exposure to that as well).
My original tastes were all classical and tended towards dramatic bombastic classical (Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, not little string quartets, in other words). When I got over my knee-jerk revulsion towards all popular music, the stuff I became fond of was hard rock and especially progressive rock (dramatic bombastic and with long complex motifs and countermelodies, much like the classical stuff I liked). Never cared for that top 40 shit, black or white. Detest disco and probably 85% of all “dance music” regardless of genre.
The handful of culturally black tracks that I like tend to have cool vocals — like the trend in the late 60s was towards hanging chords out there with very little instrumentation; or as with MJ’s Billie Jean, create a fascinating sound texture that’s catchy yet distinctively different.
ETA: This was the first “black” song that really got stuck in my head. 1971.
My very first single was a Michael Jackson song, Rock Steady, so I’d have been the perfect target for this when it came out. Alas, I was right in the middle of my ‘only Christian rock’ phase, so felt it was sinful to own it. Regardless, I loved almost all the hits off of it (except The Girl is Mine, which sucks), and fortunately, got to see the video for Thriller pretty early on when it debuted during a drama tournament I was at. We all huddled around in awe like it was the first Mars landing. It was glorious. I also felt the same way about Billie Jean and Beat It, which I still love to this day. I finally got in on CD when I joined Columbia House in the early 90s and I’m sure it’s still around here somewhere. Great album.
No, like I said, I’ve been a fan of alternative/college/modern rock since around age 13 or 14. I’m not a fan of Top 40 pop and was never really a Michael Jackson fan. I like the Beatles.
After posting it occurred to me that rather than the haters not being appreciative of black music, it could be that they loved black music but thought Jackson wasn’t raw, underground, soulful enough, just too poppy. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that but it would be an interesting argument to make. One thing I would say is that the production on Thriller is pretty out there for pop music. There’s a lot going on and on some songs the vocals are sparse. I think Quincy Jones background in jazz shines through, the LP is not some homogenised typical pop record. Plus Van Halens guitar solo is very memorable.
The fact that’s it’s bubblegum is a lot of it. Good production and good session musicians can’t save music that doesn’t offer me anything I like.
Seriously, I was honestly bewildered how my friend who introduced me to this record could think it was good. When I heard it, it was literally the worst record I had heard up to then (hey, I was only 12). I’ve never even heard a cover of one its songs that I thought was good.
madriscool: get over it. There’s nothing that’s universally enjoyed. If people don’t like what you like, it’s not because they’re worried they’re not cool enough.
As mentioned above, the song Thriller suffered due to the cheesy Vincent Price line reading. The video was awesome. It seems to me that the song was written with the extended video in mind. Then the shortened song only was finalized for album/single release. imho, ymmv
I hated the song Billie Jean. The video, tho, once again looked great.
Beat It was a decent song on its own, but it, too, really shined in the video version.
The two songs I’m already on record as liking, PYT and Wanna Be Startin Somethin… I don’t even remember at this moment if I ever saw videos for them. I will have to look those up at some point in the future. If I did see them, they obviously didn’t have any staying power with me.
So, the whole thrust of this post: Maybe the songs were created more for their videos than for actually being ‘listenable’ songs. It WAS the heyday of MTV after all…