Thriller [Remaster] - Jackson, Michael (CD 2001)

It almost seems superfluous writing a review of this album. What can I possibly say that roheblius, sadgit, Jaguardog, and the demon of speed (531) didn't? Well, probably nothing, but seeing as how life is one long attempt to commune with the smartazz within, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Before I get into the crashing and bashing, let me just say that "Thriller" is a great album. It's the best album Toto never released under their own name (no less than four members of the band played on most of the songs, and Steve Porcaro even wrote "Human Nature"), and would've made a great Rod Temperton solo release (he composed "Thriller", "Baby Be Mine", and "The Lady In My Life", as well as some of the songs from "Off The Wall"). Other than those minor quibbles, it's justifiably regarded as Michael's moment in the land of sister golden hair, and a fan base the size of Britain's population wholeheartedly agrees (it sold over fifty million copies worldwide).

Around this time, Michael Jackson indirectly saved my life. In late 1984, I was forced to attend a ghetto school in Denver (thanks to the highly enlightened decision to bus about twenty-five of us honkies into the hood, in the name of desegregation); needless to say, I didn't just fit right in. But Jacko came to the rescue, in the form of a biography. I gave my paperback to a Gary Coleman-sized local bully named Chauncey (!), and he became my bodyguard. Problem solved.

So here's my deal on "Thriller", if you really care to know. Some of it hasn't aged that well, most notably the "Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough" rewrite of an album opener, "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'". Maybe I just find lyrics like "you're a vegetable/you're just a buffet" and "ma ma se/ma ma sa/ma ma coo sa" a little silly at this advanced age, or maybe I think that kind of disco had already run its course.

Also less than stunning all these years later are "The Girl Is Mine" (a lazy duet that finds Jacko bickering with Paul McCartney), "Human Nature" (a wimpy ballad written by Steve Porcaro and John "Bette Davis Eyes" Bettis), and "The Lady In My Life", a lackluster 70's-style lovey piece that perfectly matches the police description of "anticlimactic". As boring as I find these songs in the modern era, they strangely fail to detract from the album's strengths.

One song that I used to never really notice, "Baby Be Mine", has actually become a favorite. Where else can you find so much flugelhorn on a spacey disco number? "Beat It", if you can forget about Michael wearing his PJs in the video, is still a peak of the man's career, and even has Eddie Van Halen using his guitar to rip yo azz like a whittled toothbrush in a prison shower. "Billie Jean" is probably my all-time Jacko favorite, even though I've never understood his insistence on pronouncing kid with a "ch". Maybe the dude's not a native speaker.

Also great is "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)", a James Ingram/Quincy Jones-penned track that introduced me to the word "tenderoni", which I try to use at least once a day. And then, of course, there's "Thriller", a song that had to have made Rod Temperton a zillionaire. In case you've lived in the mountains of Nepal for the past thirty years, it's a nifty little funker that features ghosts, ghouls, aliens, creatures with forty eyes, and most frightening of all, Jacko wanting to cuddle while Vincent Price uses words like "y'awl" and "getting down". Chilling.

If you buy the remastered special edition disc, you get a few bonuses that I could honestly live without. "Someone In The Dark" was apparently on the "E.T." soundtrack and makes Celine Dion sound like Motorhead, while "Carousel" (written by Michael "She's A Maniac" Sembello) was recorded for "Thriller" but left off at the last moment. Probably because it's so dreadfully uneventful.

The demo version of "Billie Jean" sounds underdeveloped (as is the usual case with demos); Quincy Jones mumbles about how Michael wrote the song after being stalked by some chick who claimed that Jacko had fathered one of her twins. Making such a wild claim reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of conception and Michael Jackson's sexuality. The voice-over session from "Thriller" just has Vincent letting loose another "spooky" verse (he apparently got the whole thing down in two takes). For the Jacko-obsessed only.

So that's how "Thriller" has held up in the eyes of Pyfr, all these years and moonwalks later. If you come to the NY M&G, maybe I'll get hammered and wiggle my hips a la Jacko. As long as no "chids" are watching, that is.

The record, as you know, won eight Grammys, enabled Michael to buy a ferris wheel, and made the man a household name (which he still is, but for different reasons entirely). And even though he didn't write a good number of these songs, he was the sole creator of "Beat It" and "Billie Jean", which is good enough for me. And while he ended up becoming too much of a spectacle for my taste, I can never deny the urge to grab my crotch and dance in synch with white-clad gangsters once I hear the music kicking in.


Related Reviews:

Off The Wall http://www.epinions.com/content_211314511492