Michael Jackson - Thriller

Released in November 1982, Thriller spent 37 non-consecutive weeks at number one, won eight Grammys at the 1984 ceremony including Album of the Year, and has been certified 34x platinum in the US alone. It is the best-selling album ever made. All of that is true and none of it is the interesting part. The interesting part is that it is nine tracks long and there is nothing on it you would skip.

Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson built it with an economy that pop records almost never manage. Side one runs from the six-minute "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" through the Paul McCartney duet "The Girl Is Mine" to the title track and its Vincent Price monologue. Side two opens with "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" back to back, which is very likely the strongest one-two in pop history, Eddie Van Halen's solo on the first and one of the great bass lines on the second. But the album quietly does its best work elsewhere: "Human Nature," floating and unresolved, and "The Lady In My Life," which closes things on something far more intimate than the singles suggest.

Everything about how modern pop is recorded, sequenced, marketed and filmed traces back through this record. Forty years of imitation have not produced anything with a better strike rate.

This 140-gram single LP reissue on Epic / MJJ Productions.