Michael Jackson ‎ Thriller Rare Epic Japanese Import Vinyl w/OBI & Booklet NM

$

130

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Thriller Studio album by  Michael Jackson Released November 29, 1982 Recorded April 14 – November 8, 1982 Studio Westlake, Los Angeles, California Genre

• Pop 
• post-disco 
• rock 
• funk 
• synth-pop 
• R&B

• Quincy Jones 
• Michael Jackson

1. "The Girl Is Mine"
   Released: October 18, 1982
2. "Billie Jean"
   Released: January 3, 1983
3. "Beat It"
   Released: February 14, 1983
4. "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"
   Released: May 9, 1983
5. "Human Nature"
   Released: July 4, 1983
6. "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"
   Released: September 19, 1983
7. "Thriller"
   Released: November 11, 1983

Thriller is the sixth studio album by the American singer and songwriter Michael Jackson, released on November 29, 1982, by Epic Records. It was produced by Quincy Jones, who previously worked with Jackson on his album Off the Wall (1979). Jackson wanted to create an album where "every song was a killer". With the ongoing backlash against disco music at the time, he moved in a new musical direction, resulting in a mix of pop, post-disco, rock, funk, synth-pop, and R&B sounds, and darker themes. Paul McCartney is the first credited appearance of a featured artist on a Jackson album. Recording took place from April to November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, with a budget of $750,000.

Upon its release, Thriller was lauded by critics. It was Jackson's first number-one album on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart, where it spent a record 37 non-consecutive weeks at number one, from February 26, 1983, to April 14, 1984. Seven singles were released: "The Girl Is Mine", "Billie Jean", "Beat It", "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", "Human Nature", "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)", and "Thriller". They all reached the top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, setting a record for the most top 10 singles from an album, with "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" reaching number one. Following Jackson's performance of "Billie Jean" in the Motown 25 television special, where he debuted his signature moonwalk dance, the album began selling one million copies per week. Sales doubled after the release of the "Thriller" music video on MTV in December 1983.

Thriller was a phenomenon, achieving sales of 32 million copies worldwide by the end of 1983, making it the best-selling album of all time. It was the best-selling album of 1983 worldwide, and in 1984 it became the first album to become the best-selling in the United States for two years. It set industry standards, with its songs, music videos, and promotional strategies influencing artists, record labels, producers, marketers and choreographers. The success gave Jackson an unprecedented level of cultural significance for a black American, breaking racial barriers in popular music, earning him regular airplay on MTV and leading to a meeting with US President Ronald Reagan at the White House. Thriller was among the first albums to use music videos as promotional tools; the videos for "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "Thriller" are credited for transforming music videos into a serious art form.

Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time, having sold an estimated 70 million copies worldwide. It is the best selling non-compilation album and second-best-selling album overall in the United States, and was certified 34× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2021. It won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards at the 1984 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for "Beat It". Jackson also won a record-breaking eight American Music Awards at the 1984 American Music Awards, including the Merit. Thriller is frequently included in lists of the greatest albums of all time. In 2008, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant recordings".

Background

Jackson's previous album Off the Wall (1979) received critical acclaim and was a commercial success, having sold 10 million copies at the time. The years between Off the Wall and Thriller were a transitional period for Jackson, a time of increased independence. The period saw him become deeply unhappy; Jackson said, "Even at home, I'm lonely. I sit in my room sometimes and cry. It's so hard to make friends ... I sometimes walk around the neighborhood at night, just hoping to find someone to talk to. But I just end up coming home."

When Jackson turned 21 in August 1979, he hired John Branca as his manager. Jackson told Branca that he wanted to be the biggest and wealthiest star in showbusiness. He was upset about what he perceived as the underperformance of Off the Wall, feeling it had deserved the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. He also felt undervalued by the music industry; in 1980, when Rolling Stone declined to run a cover story on him, Jackson responded: "I've been told over and over that black people on the cover of magazines doesn't sell copies ... Just wait. Some day those magazines are going to be begging me for an interview. Maybe I'll give them one, and maybe I won't."

For his next album, Jackson wanted to create an album where "every song was a killer". He was frustrated by albums that would have "one good song, and the rest were like B-sides ... Why can't every one be like a hit song? Why can't every song be so great that people would want to buy it if you could release it as a single? ... That was my purpose for the next album."

Critical reception

Thriller was widely acclaimed by critics, further strengthening Jackson's position in popular music. In a contemporaneous review for Rolling Stone, Christopher Connelly called Thriller "a zesty LP" with a "harrowing, dark message". He compared the songs on the album with the life challenges that the 24-year-old Jackson had faced since Off the Wall, while observing that he "dropped the boyish falsetto" and was facing his "challenges head-on" with "a feisty determination" and "a full, adult voice". Connelly emphasized Jackson's musical progression from Off the Wall, writing, "Jackson's new attitude gives Thriller a deeper, if less visceral, emotional urgency than any of his previous work, and marks another watershed in the creative development of this prodigiously talented performer."

John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times that perhaps Jackson was a "sometimes too practiced ... performer", that at times Quincy Jones may "depersonalize his individuality" with his "slightly anonymous production", and that Jackson may be hiding his true emotions behind "layers of impenetrable, gauzy veils". Rockwell nonetheless deemed Thriller "a wonderful pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today" and that there are "hits here, too, lots of them". Rockwell believed it helped breach "the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music", especially as "white publications and radio stations that normally avoid black music seem willing to pretend he isn't black after all". In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said "this is virtually a hits-plus-filler job, but at such a high level it's almost classic anyway". He later wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), "what we couldn't know is how brilliantly every hit but 'P.Y.T.' would thrive on mass exposure and public pleasure."

A year after the album's release, Time summed up the three main singles from the album, saying, "The pulse of America and much of the rest of the world moves irregularly, beating in time to the tough strut of 'Billie Jean', the asphalt aria of 'Beat It', the supremely cool chills of 'Thriller'." In 1989, Toronto Star music critics reflected on the albums they had reviewed in the past ten years in order to create a list judging them on the basis of "commercial impact to social import, to strictly musical merit." Thriller was placed at number 1 on the list, where it was referred to as his "master work" and that "commercial success has since overshadowed Jackson's artistic accomplishments on Thriller, and that's a pity. It was a record for the times, brimming with breathless anticipation and a dread fear of the adult world, a brilliant fantasy that pumped with sexual heat, yet made room for serious reflection".

Awards

Thriller topped The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll of 1983. Jackson was nominated for a record 12 Grammy Awards at the 26th Grammy Awards. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. Jackson won seven of the Grammy Awards for the album, while the eighth Grammy Award went to Bruce Swedien. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post described the ceremony as 'The Michael Jackson Show', writing "it was exactly the kind of one-man show that everyone had anticipated". In winning the Album of the Year award, Jackson became the third-youngest to win the award after Barbra Streisand at 22 and Stevie Wonder at 23. That same year, Jackson won eight American Music Awards, including the American Music Award of Merit, and three MTV Video Music Awards. Thriller was recognized as the best-selling album of all time on February 7, 1984, when it was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Rankings

In 1992, Thriller was awarded the Special Billboard Award to commemorate its 10th anniversary. In 2000, it was voted number 64 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. It was also ranked number 2 in the Soul/R&B – All Time Top 50 albums. The book states; it is the finest example of perfect disco-pop, and a record that should be prescribed to musical snobs and manic depressives. At the 2002 Billboard Music Awards, as a sign of the album's longevity, Thriller was awarded a second Special Billboard Award as a recognition for spending more weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 than any other album in history. In 2003, it was ranked at number 20 on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, maintaining the ranking in a 2012 revised list — it's the highest ranked pop album on both lists. In a 2020 updated list by Rolling Stone, Thriller was ranked number 12. It was ranked by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), in conjunction with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at number three on its list of the Definitive 200 Albums of All Time. "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" were both included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. In 2006, Time included Thriller in its list of the All-TIME 100 Albums. In 2008, 25 years after its release, the record was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and, a few weeks later, was among 25 recordings preserved by the Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry as "culturally significant". In 2009, music critics for MTV Base and VH1 both listed Thriller as the best album released since 1981. Thriller, along with other critic favorites, were then polled by the public. 40,000 people found Thriller to be the Best Album of all time by MTV Generation, gaining a third of all votes. Thriller was ranked third on the Greatest of All Time Billboard 200 Albums. Billboard also ranked the album fourth on its list of All 92 Diamond-Certified Albums Ranked from Worst to Best: Critic's Take. In 2018, The Independent named Thriller the "most inspiring album of all time".

Track listing

• Quincy Jones 
• Jackson

• Jones
• Jackson

• Jones 
• Jackson

• Jones 
• Jackson

• Steve Porcaro 
• John Bettis

• James Ingram 
• Jones