Thriller

Thriller, studio album by American singer and songwriter Michael Jackson, released on November 30, 1982. The album had a monumental impact on popular music and became the top-selling album of all time, a title it continues to hold more than 40 years after its release. Produced by Jackson and Quincy Jones, Thriller spawned seven hit singles, including “Beat It” and “Billie Jean,” both of which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Music videos for three of the album’s songs transformed the medium into an art form. After Thriller, Jackson rightfully became known as the “King of Pop.”

Making the album

Thriller was Jackson’s sixth studio album as a solo artist and his second release on the Epic label. It followed the massive success of Off the Wall (1979), a disco and rhythm-and-blues (R&B) album that marked Jackson’s first time being produced by music industry veteran Quincy Jones. Off the Wall became the best-selling album ever by a Black artist and earned Jackson a Grammy for best R&B male vocal performance (for “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough”). It also produced four top 10 hits, a music industry milestone for a solo artist. However, Jackson set his sights even higher: he was determined to create an album composed entirely of songs that would become hit singles—as he put it, an album with “no B-sides.” In order to accomplish this, one of the priorities was to balance the album’s various genres and forms, between R&B, pop, rock, disco, funk, and ballads. Jackson and Jones spent four months reviewing hundreds of song demos, listening to each one to see if it had the qualities they were looking for and whether it worked with preexisting material. Of the nine selected songs, four were written by Jackson: the funky and fast-paced “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” the catchy “The Girl Is Mine” (recorded as a duet with former Beatle Paul McCartney), the rock-infused “Beat It,” and the evocative R&B “Billie Jean.”

The album’s recording and mixing took place at Westlake Audio and Ocean Way Recording Studios in Los Angeles between April and November 1982. A month before Thriller’s completion, “The Girl Is Mine” was released as a single; it reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the R&B and adult contemporary charts, the first indication of the album’s astounding crossover success. On November 30 the full album was released; the week of December 25 it entered the Billboard 200 chart at number 11. By February 1983 Thriller was set on a course to change music history.

Setting records

In late January 1983 Thriller reached number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart. A month later it topped the Billboard 200 chart. Altogether it spent 37 nonconsecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200, setting a record for the most weeks at number one by a music artist. (In November 2023 it spent its 600th week on the chart, becoming the 10th album in history to do so.) Rolling Stone reviewer Christopher Connelly noted that, compared with Off the Wall, Thriller features darker and edgier themes, such as the tinge of defensiveness and suspicion in “Billie Jean,” a song about a femme fatale who has accused Jackson of fathering her child. Connelly praised the album’s “deeper, if less visceral, emotional urgency” and called it “another watershed in the creative development of this prodigiously talented performer.”

Yet Jackson’s achievements were more than just notches on his belt; they signified a breakthrough for Black artists in an era when radio programming had become racially segregated. In 1983 “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” topped both the R&B chart and the Billboard Hot 100, the latter of which was dominated by white artists. (The previous year only two songs by Black artists—namely, Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder—reached number one on that chart.) Jackson’s crossover success on the charts extended to radio play. As Time’s music critic Jay Cocks wrote in 1984, “Thriller brought black music back to mainstream radio, from which it had been effectively banished after restrictive ‘special-format programming’ was introduced in the mid-’70s.”

Jackson rode a tidal wave of excitement for the album throughout 1983. In May he participated in the television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, joining his brothers for a Jackson 5 reunion to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of Motown Records, a Detroit-based label that had launched the Jackson 5’s career. The group was one of several classic Motown artists appearing on the show. But it was Jackson’s debut of his trademark “moonwalk” dance move during his solo performance of “Billie Jean” that became the hands-down highlight of the night and established Jackson as a pop culture phenomenon. An estimated 47 million viewers watched the Motown special; among them was silver-screen dance legend Fred Astaire, who called Jackson afterward to congratulate him on his performance, telling him, “You’re a hell of a mover.”

Thriller’s guest artists

In addition to Paul McCartney, a number of other artists and songwriters made substantial contributions to Thriller. “Beat It” features a searing guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen that gave the single the rock element that Jackson and Jones had wanted to include among the album’s diversity of genres. Songwriter Rod Temperton penned the horror-themed lyrics for “Thriller,” while horror-movie actor Vincent Price performed the song’s ghoulish voice-over, lending the single its foreboding mood. Peaking at number four on the Hot 100 in 1984, “Thriller” became a Halloween classic, ensuring that it would return to the charts around that holiday in the years to come.

Members of the rock band Toto also appear on several songs, including “The Girl Is Mine” and “Beat It.” The atmospheric single “Human Nature” was cowritten by Steve Porcaro, Toto’s keyboardist and songwriter. The song also features Porcaro’s bandmates David Paich on synthesizers, Steve Lukather on guitar, and Jeff Porcaro on drums. In a 2009 article on the making of Thriller, Rolling Stone singled out “Human Nature” as the “most memorable pure-pop” track on the album. “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” was written by Jones and R&B singer James Ingram and features Jackson’s sisters La Toya and Janet as backup singers. The song reached number 10 on the Hot 100.

Music videos

Jackson made three videos to accompany the album—for “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller”—each one helping to set a new standard of excellence in the making of music videos. As with the singles’ radio play, the videos’ popularity helped other Black artists get their songs featured on the music video channel MTV, whose programming favored white artists. Jackson’s dancing talent took center stage in his videos. The video for “Billie Jean” has a noir-ish setting and style, while that for “Beat It” is reminiscent of the musical West Side Story, showing rival street gangs getting ready to rumble before joining Jackson in a final dance scene.

The nearly 14-minute-long “Thriller” video, directed by filmmaker John Landis, is widely regarded as the most ambitious music video ever made. Featuring a plot that plays with time, its scenes move from the 1950s to the present. In both eras, Jackson seems determined to terrify his date for the night (played by model Ola Ray), turning into a werewolf before her eyes in the video’s opening scene and then dancing with a group of zombies as he walks her home. The video premiered on MTV on December 2, 1983, and it quickly became a pop culture sensation. Such was the enthusiastic response that MTV would air the video in scheduled slots up to five times a day and see the channel’s ratings increase during those times. Its popularity may have been heightened by a disclaimer that Jackson added at the beginning of the video, which states, “Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.” A devout Jehovah’s Witness at the time, Jackson became concerned about criticism he had received from his fellow church members that his song promoted demonology. The disclaimer not only helped him set the record straight about his faith but also piqued viewers’ curiosity. In the music industry, Jackson’s videos challenged other artists to step up their game in video making by incorporating plot, storytelling, and choreography.

Awards and legacy

Thriller reaped as much success during the music awards season as it did on the charts. Jackson won eight Grammy Awards in 1984, seven of which were for Thriller. Notably, he won in three different music genres: pop, rock, and R&B. His eighth Grammy was in the category of best recording for children for narrating the audiobook E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. It was the first time in history an artist won eight Grammys in one night.

In global sales Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 67 million copies sold. In the United States it held the record for best-selling album until 2018, when the Recording Industry Association of America, which certifies record sales, reported that the Eagles’ album Their Greatest Hits 1971–1975 (1976), with 38 million copies sold, had overtaken Thriller. As of 2021 Thriller had sold 34 million copies domestically.

In 2007 Thriller was inducted into the National Recording Registry, a music preservation program established by the U.S. Library of Congress that selects recordings of cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.

In 2023 the documentary film Thriller 40 was released in honor of the 40th anniversary of the album’s debut. Directed by Nelson George, the film showcases Thriller’s enormous impact on the music industry and includes behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the album as well as interviews with artists such as Usher, Mary J. Blige, and will.i.am (of the Black Eyed Peas), the last of whom calls the album “the ultimate blueprint to modern pop music.”