Micheal Jackson’s Thriller Album is one of the most loved and best-selling albums of all time and it’s just turned 40! Many people are celebrating the revolutionary album by listening to it and buying the Remastered version for it to mark the milestone called Thriller 40! The album debuted on November 29, 1983, to critical and commercial successes, and within 15 months of its release, it became the best-selling album in the history of the music industry selling more than 22 million copies. The album also later won a record-breaking 8 Grammys at the 1984 Grammy Awards with Micheal taking home the Album of the Year award and many others. While we are talking about the album I want to talk about the a\lbum’s title track Thriller and the production of it and the impact that it had.
Aftersales of the album started to die down a bit, and Jackson’s promoter persuaded Micheal to make a third music video to join the other singles on the album, Billie Jean and Beat It. But Micheal didn’t want his music videos to be like those that were being made at the time. With a lot of them being nothing too impressive and felt more like commercials than music videos. He wanted them to be “genre advancing, innovative, and inventive” Micheal said, “I want to be a pioneer in this relatively new medium and make the best short music movies we could make!”.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jacobwhittaker/2994315289
Jackson soon hired John Landis to direct the music video due to him making a couple of horror films with a bit of a comedic style to them. During the filming of Thriller, multiple celebrities were spotted on set such as Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. While Eddie Murphy, Prince, and Dianna Ross were seen at the private premiere of the music video.
After the video premiered on MTV on December 2nd at midnight it sealed the network’s reputation as a new cultural force getting rid of the racial barriers in the stations treatment of music. At the end of production, Thriller’s cost was 900,000 dollars. Which at the time I would even say now is a huge amount of money for a music video. But Micheal thought of a genius way to get back the money. He hired a second filming crew to document the making of the music video and all the behind-the-scenes of it which he later released and called “The Making of Thriller”. “The Making of Thriller ” reportedly sold a million copies and was shown on MTV as well as Showtime which boosted its popularity. The video and its title song released in February 1984, drove 40 million additional sales of Thriller in the first six months after its release. So after Thriller turned the making of music videos into a proper industry, it launched Thriller-mania! The video won three MTV awards, two American music awards, and a Grammy. In 2009, it became the first music video inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry designated as a film treasure. And of course, we all know the iconic dance that is shown in the music video With Michael in his red jacket dancing with a punch of zombies that has been replicated again and again in pop culture. But in the end, the Powerful impact that Thriller has had not only in the music industry but on the whole world is unforgettable! And though it’s true that a lot of people listen/watch it around Halloween time, we all have to admit that no mere mortal can resist the evil of the Thriller!
