Michael Jackson: Thriller

This came out when I was in the second grade.  My older brother who was into metal got this through Columbia House Record Club for some reason (I guess it was the automatic monthly feature) & promptly announced that it sucked.  So I believed him.  Of course it went on to be the best selling album of all time for over twenty years.  One day in school they had an assembly where all us kids watched the video for “Thriller” & then a documentary on the video & I suppose I preferred the opening werewolf bit to the dancing zombie bit.

I guess I was 25 when I realized I should hear the album Thriller after hearing “Billie Jean” on the radio.  I figured I’d get it used at a thrift store for a dollar, but oddly (unlike Billy Joel’s The Stranger) it was never there.  I’d occasionally bring the album up to other music friends & while no one seemed to own it, most open minded people seemed to be of the opinion it must be a pretty great album.

So this morning I was at a buddy’s house & “Beat It” came on VH1 Classics & I said I’d been wanting to hear the album to review, but had as yet to be willing to pay $5 for it.

So he loaned me his copy saying it wasn’t as good as people think.  He’s right.  I thought it was going to be a tour de force – a dance pop equivalent of Guns N Roses’s Appetite for Destruction.  It’s not.  It’s four or five decent dance pop songs & four or five songs in the ballad style of “Ben” (only “Ben” is cool because it’s about loving a mouse).  I don’t know if the mixes of the dance songs (“Billie Jean”, “Beat It”, “PYT”, “Thriller”) are longer than the mixes they play on the radio, but I think they’d all be more effective with a minute trimmed off of them.

I feel like it was really important to hear a record that somehow became of such worldwide significance & that propelled a man from being a singer to a megastar; but it’s kind of depressing that regardless of me not personally liking it, it’s simply not solid as an album.  My advice is enjoy the singles when you hear them on the radio or in the grocery store & don’t worry about checking out the album.