Epic 38112
Producer: Quincy Jones
Track listing: Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ / Baby Be Mine / The Girl Is Mine / Thriller / Beat It / Billie Jean / Human Nature / P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) / The Lady in My Life
February 26, 1983
37 weeks (nonconsecutive)
By the dawn of the ’80s, Michael Jackson was already a superstar. He had grown up as the frontman of the Jackson 5 and recorded several successful solo albums, but Jackson wasn’t truly launched into orbit until he began working with veteran producer Quincy Jones. Off the Wall, his first Jones-produced solo album, reached number three in October 1979 and spawned the Number One singles “Don’t Stop Until You Get Enough” and “Rock with You,” but it hardly prepared the world for what was to follow in its wake.
“We were very excited and happy with the results of Off the Wall and were hoping that the next one would do as well,” says Jones. For Off the Wall, Jackson wrote three songs. On Thriller, he composed four tracks: “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “The Girl Is Mine,” “Beat It,” and “Billie Jean.” Others contributing songs included ex-Heatwave member Rod Temperton (the writer of “Rock with You”), whose Thriller contributions included the title track.
Demos, or what Jones calls “Polaroids,” for the album were cut in a studio located in the Jackson family’s Encino, California, estate. “Rod brought his songs in and we’d try everything out.” Jones recalls eating candy with a young Janet Jackson at a makeshift candy store located next to the studio.
“The Thriller process was just fascinating,” says Jones. “We were open to try anything our impulses told us to.” For example, Jones contacted heavy metal maestro Eddie Van Halen to lay down a blazing guitar solo on “Beat It,” while the title track features a spoken-word segment by actor Vincent Price.
Yet the album was recorded during a particularly frantic period. Jackson and Jones only had four months to complete Thriller and in the middle of the project, Jones’s friend Steven Spielberg recruited the pair to record narration and a song for the E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial storybook album. “In those four months we did E.T. and Thriller, and it almost put us in the hospital,” says Jones. “But the one good thing about it is that we didn’t have time to get into paralysis from analysis. We didn’t have time to mess around.”
Jones actually began working on Thriller in December 1981, before he wrapped up State of Independence with Donna Summer. “I had to take time off Donna’s album to go to Tucson with Michael to record Paul McCartney and Michael on ‘The Girl Is Mine.’ That was the only time we could get with Paul, so we had to get it. We only had three days,” recalls Jones.
The bulk of the Thriller sessions, however, didn’t take place until August 1982. In fact, Jones was still mixing the album when “The Girl Is Mine,” released in advance of Thriller, was climbing the Hot 100. “That made us a little nervous,” Jones says. The day before Jones was supposed to turn the album in, Jackson and Jones pulled an all-night session. “We worked until 9 a.m.,” he says. “We were fixing ‘Beat It’ in one room and [engineer] Bruce [Swedien] was mixing something in another room.” A few hours later, Jones and Jackson went to listen to the final master. “It sounded terrible,” Jones says. “We had put too much music on each side. Since it was vinyl, you could only have about 20 minutes a side. Michael was crying at the time and we all felt terrible. After a two-day break, Jones went back to work, editing the songs down. “The ‘Billie Jean’ intro was too long and we had to take one verse out of ‘The Lady in My Life,’ ” Jones says. “From there on in, it was like magic.”
The final version of Thriller was so magical that it spawned seven top 10 singles and went on to become the best-selling album of all time, with sales of over 24 million in the U.S. alone.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of February 26, 1983
1.Thriller, Michael Jackson
2. Built for Speed, Stray Cats
3. H20, Daryl Hall & John Oates
4. Business as Usual, Men at Work
5. The Distance, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band