(December 1, 2017) This week marks the 35th anniversary of one of the seminal albums of our lifetime: Michael Jackson’s Thriller. When Thriller won a bucketful of Grammy Awards in early 1984, it was a recognition of not only the artistic merit of an excellent album, but also of the tidal wave of popularity it garnered -- the enormity of public acclaim that would result in it becoming the biggest selling album of all time.
(December 1, 2017) This week marks the 35th anniversary of one of the seminal albums of our lifetime: Michael Jackson’s Thriller. When Thriller won a bucketful of Grammy Awards in early 1984, it was a recognition of not only the artistic merit of an excellent album, but also of the tidal wave of popularity it garnered -- the enormity of public acclaim that would result in it becoming the biggest selling album of all time.
Thriller was more than an album. It was a cultural phenomenon back at a time when an LP could capture black, white, pop, soul, rock, young and old audiences alike. Of course, the concept of an album crossing so many boundaries seems foreign - almost quaint – by today’s standards. Now "narrowcasting" dominates today's musical landscape, with streaming, internet and satellite radio and even broadcast radio carving up audiences into such small, specialized groups that it has become impossible to have the kind of shared American cultural experience that Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen created back in the day.
Thriller sold 27 million units its first time around, and then millions more when Michael Jackson died in 2009. Those kinds of numbers are mind-boggling today, and we won't see anything like that again in our lifetime. To put it in perspective, the biggest selling album of 2017 will be the new Taylor Swift disc, and it will likely top out at under three million sold. And most of America will never hear a single cut from it. Could you say that about Thriller or Born In The USA? Back then it would be tough to find someone who hadn't heard at least 3 or 4 tracks or who couldn't sing one by heart.
A new album today can struggle to attract a focused target group of urban college aged men or 30 year old suburban housewives, but nothing now can even come close to connecting with the kind of mass audience that Thriller and its progeny did in 1982. In this era of uberchoice, popular music as a societal unifying force - as a common language - is virtually gone, and we're left with our shared musical experiences all being in the past.
So this anniversary of Thriller is coming at a time when, frankly, the original album's impact would be impossible to replicate. And while Thriller is arguably not even Jackson's greatest album (I'd argue that Off The Wall was front to back his finest product), it is a sort of cultural icon that is still shared by generations (my kids know the songs on Thriller as well as they do anything on the radio now).
I don’t know if we’ll still be singing songs from Thriller thirty-five years from now, but I think there is a good chance we will. Not just because of the album’s musical brilliance, but because it represents a time that may not be recaptured soon – one of a shared musical experience that crossed so many demographic lines that have since hardened. We all knew all the words by heart. Can you say that about any song today?
By Chris Rizik