Entertainment & SocietyMichael Jackson's Timeless Album 'Thriller' Turns 40

Michael Jackson’s Timeless Album ‘Thriller’ Turns 40

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November 25, (THEWILL) – ‘Thriller’, Michael Jackson’s first-of-its-kind fusion of rock, pop and RnB rendition, is set to turn 40 years old next week.

The album has turned out to be the most successful album of all time and dominated a coming era with its audiovisual ambition.

‘Thriller’ has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide since its release on November 30, 1982.

It consecrated Jackson as the “King of Pop” and ever since, remained a drawing force in the world of music.

Even British filmmaker, Dan Reed’s 2019 documentary, “Leaving Neverland”, based on paedophilia allegations against Jackson didn’t dent his popularity.

Jackson’s music is currently ranked 60th in the world on Spotify with 36.7 million monthly streams.

The album was produced by Quincy Jones, who had worked with Jackson on 1979’s ‘Off The Wall’.

The producer once revealed that while working on ‘Beat It’, they worked five nights and five days, with no sleep. And at one point, the speakers overloaded and caught fire.

The album became a revolution in the music industry and Jackson started to pull in influences from across pop culture.

However, MTV, then, a newly established channel, in the beginning, refused to show the video for the megahit single ‘Billie Jean’ on the grounds that black music did not fit with its white-dominated rock programming.

Walter Yetnikoff, the head of CBS, Jackson’s parent label, threatened to publicly denounce MTV and block their access to videos of rock artistes in its catalogue.

Yetnikoff won that battle but then found himself clashing with Jackson over his plans for a $1 million video for the album’s last single, the title track, “Thriller”.

Jackson wanted to work with a director, John Landis, having loved his movie, “An American Werewolf in London”, while Yetnikoff thought it was pointless when the album was already at number one.

Eventually, a 14-minute mini-film premiered at a Hollywood cinema before a star-packed crowd, showing how Jackson turned into a werewolf, bringing the living dead out of their graves, which further helped in re-energise sales of the album.

The process started a whole new branch of the music business- extravagant and ambitious videos that came to define the next two decades of pop culture.

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