MJ’s Still Thrilling After All These Years

The year 1983 marked a sea change in pop music. Synthesizers and drum machines were heard on albums in the ’70s, but the decade was plagued with disputes over whether synth-driven music was masculine enough to be accepted by all audiences—T. Rex had much more street cred than the Bee Gees. New wave artists like Talking Heads and the Cars demonstrated that synthesizers could fit into rock and not sound nerdy—or at least that it was acceptable to be that nerdy—but they were on the fringe at the beginning of the ’80s, when audiences were still getting over their disco heartburn.

Somehow the battle between rock and disco ended in a truce in 1983, and it was safe to have a drum machine and a guitar solo together. Several successful albums came out of this fusion—Prince’s 1999, David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, and Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues—but the most successful of these was, by far, Thriller. It’s up for debate whether Thriller employed the fusion of rock and disco most effectively, but Michael Jackson clearly devastated everyone else in terms of sheer record sales, and for good reason. He had already gained critical and commercial success with his work throughout the ’70s, being the only major artist with a background in disco to mix it with rock. His reputation in the industry allowed him to take over MTV, and artists have been imitating the Thriller videos ever since. The videos for “Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” and “Thriller” were all carefully-planned during a time when nobody knew what a music video should look like.

Take “Beat It” for example. It’s a good enough dance song, but it also rocks enough to play air guitar to. Not every song on the album has a guitar at its forefront, but the dance music is harder and edgier than disco. Nobody was singing “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” back in the ’70s. This was the beginning of the popular, accessible dance music that would dominate the charts for the rest of the ’80s.

For everything it started, Thriller also arguably marked the end of the 1970s’ rock dynasty. Most of the people who had produced great music in the ’70s—like David Bowie, Queen, and Pink Floyd—lost their stature after 1983 because they were out of place in the new arena. This is true for Michael Jackson himself as well. Thriller was the album that gained him the title “King of Pop,” but he never again created a consistently great album, and this was the last time he would get attention purely for his music. This year marks the 25th anniversary of Thriller’s release, and Michael Jackson has released an extended version of the album for the occasion. Decide for yourself whether you want members of the Black Eyed Peas doing remixes of these songs. Try going for the cheaper re-master—it’s the same great album with less packaging and fewer unnecessary bonus tracks. Or just borrow a friend’s, turn it on, and dance.