Thriller

No, I'm still not over losing Michael. I won't get over it for a long time. He still had great music and tours left to do.

I've been playing Thriller basically non-stop for about two weeks now. This album stands with Pet Sounds, Kind Of Blue, and Highway 61 Revisited as the one of American music's greatest landmarks. I remember being a kid and hearing "Billie Jean": it was dark, hypnotic, paranoid, angry, joyous, fun, danceable... actually, it's still all of these things. The emotions in this song are inexplicable. Blender magazine (unfortunately now defunct) called it the greatest song of the last 30 years. I have a hard time arguing against that.

Even the "deep cuts" on this album are perfect. Everybody remembers "Beat It", "Thriller", "Wanna Be Starting Something", and "Billie Jean". Slightly less memorable are "PYT" and "Human Nature", but even the "deep cuts" were top ten hits and some of the best songs of the 80s. "Human Nature" is the standard against which all pop ballads should be measured: catchy, soaring, perfect mid-tempo pacing, and with a brilliant mix of falsetto vocals and shimmering layers of keyboards. Slow dances don't get better than this.

"The Girl Is Mine" is so corny it manages to be hilarious and affectionate. This is the greatest thing Paul McCartney accomplished after the Beatles. "Baby Be Mine" sounds like a leftover disco gem from his first masterpiece Off The Wall. Both of these tracks would be overbearing if he tried these ideas more than once on this record, but the short nine track album has just the right amount of variety.

I could rant for hours on the genius of this record, but for once I don't need to try to convince anybody to buy it: it's sales are an estimated 100 million worldwide. If you've never heard it, life has literally passed you by. You are missing American culture completely.

This might be my last Michael Jackson rant, but it might not be. Anyway, rest in peace Michael.