Thriller 25

One of the best ways I've seen to show people how much Michael was on fire during the creation of that album is to play the demo version of Billie Jean, which he made in his home studio.

There's also been some pretty good articles written lately. The requisite press release about an upcoming re-release of the album, and then a great Telegraph story about its recording.

I've been following the stories about the making of this record for decades now (it was a famously tortured process, during which Michael actually decided to completely restart the effort while halfway through), and I am surprised at how deliberate so many of the decisions about the record were. Granted, some of this is revisionist, like George Lucas asserting that he had a great mystical plan for Star Wars when it was created, but a lot of it is obviously not just a simple retcon, because the proof is in the music itself. That clip of Billie Jean is the best example.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention this quote, about Quincy Jones coming up with the really loud synth fanfare at the beginning of the song "Thriller":

It was late in the evening one night when we were working, and Quincy came to us. We all knew how Thriller was going, they were trying to get Vincent Price, they were doing all this stuff, but he wanted this huge chord sequence - he said, 'There's this sound that I've got in my head, there's this underground, this new artist, that nobody's ever really heard of but he's great, he's hot, he's got this great song.' And he pulled out the album and it was Prince, '1999'. And you know the opening sound on that? Duh-da da, Dur-duh-duh? Well that was the sound - that big, bitey chord sound at the opening of '1999' - he wanted that, but bigger, for Thriller.

Uh huh.

Update: Since Garth hadn't heard it in a while, I added in the album version of Billie Jean, as well as the instrumental. The part that still kicks my ass is the amount of space in the drums at the opening. Genius.