HISTORY’s Moment in Media: Thriller Debuts and Shakes Up the Music Industry

In 1982 Jackson was 24 years old and heamp8217d already been famous for nearly two decades Performing funkinfused bubblegum pop with his four brothers as the Jackson 5 he had his first No 1 hit at age 11 with amp8220I Want You Backamp8221 He released his first solo album Got to Be There in 1971 at age 13 while also still performing with his brothers His first solo No 1 hit came the next year with the title track from his sophomore album amp8220Benamp8221But Jacksonamp8217s big solo breakthrough was in 1979 once he started working with the legendary producer Quincy Jones who passed away earlier this month after a storied career For the Off the Wall album Jones helped Jackson find a more sophisticated popfunk sound and it delivered grownup success It was the first album by a solo artist to deliver four Top 10 hits It won Jackson the Best Male RampampB Vocal Grammy Award The BBC called it amp8220one of the finest pop albums ever madeamp8221When Jackson and Jones got to work on their next effort their ambitions were high But in 1982 the music business was in a tough period The United States was in a deep recession The transition from AM radio to FM had essentially killed off the massaudience Top 40 broadcasters with tastes splintering to more targeted stations Disco was dead but nothing had taken its place MTV was just getting started Even worse CBS Records home to Jacksonamp8217s label Epic was in free fall Industrywide record sales had dropped by 50 million units between 1980 and 1982 Profits at CBS were down 50 percent and that summer the record company imposed mass layoffsJackson knew he wanted to do something different Most albums he said had amp8220one good song but the rest were like Bsidesamp8221 He wanted an album on which amp8220every song was a killeramp8221 Together with Jones he sorted through hundreds and hundreds of demo tracks to select the nine songs that would appear on the album Jackson himself wrote four of them The others were by the songwriter Rod Temperton once a keyboardist for the band HeatwaveProduction started in December 1981 when Jackson and Jones spent three days in Tucson Arizona recording the duet amp8220The Girl Is Mineamp8221 Things really got cranking in the summer of 1982 Jones was a perfectionist and each track was recorded and rerecorded Eventually Jackson and Jones painstakingly remixed each song to achieve the exact sound they were looking for and then remixed them all again Their priority for the album was to balance a range of different styles RampampB pop disco funk rock The recording budget was 750000 close to 2 million today They wanted everything to sound perfectAs the two kept tinkering Epic was forced to delay the release date But once label executives heard the album they knew they had a megahit Because the music industry was so segmented then singles by Black artists typically debuted on RampampB stations only crossing over to mainstream radio if they became big successes But Jackson Jones and Epic marketers were smart By making the McCartney duet amp8220The Girl Is Mineamp8221 the first single in early November they guaranteed airplay across the radio dial and the song quickly debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 The album came out a few weeks later and debuted on the charts at No 11 It was also the first time in history an album was released simultaneously all around the worldamp8220Billie Jeanamp8221 was the albumamp8217s second single eventually Thriller would produce an unprecedented seven singles amp160and the radio stations picked it up immediately Confident they could get it onto MTV too music executives invested in an expensive and lavish video plus another for the third single amp8220Beat Itamp8221 which echoing the McCartney strategy included an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo Till that point MTV was known for playing almost exclusively videos by white artists but in part thatamp8217s because the music network had debuted during a time of a segregated music landscape Its early audience was mostly white teens in suburbs MTV arrived in New York City and Los Angeles only in September 1982 Jacksonamp8217s videos became staples of the young station boosting MTV as much as MTV boosted JacksonThings kept going right The next spring Jackson appeared on the MTV 25th Anniversary special on NBC marking the national TV premiere for the moonwalk Some 47 million Americans tuned in including many who didnamp8217t have cable and Jackson outshone all the legendary Motown stars And then in December of 1983 more than a year after the albumamp8217s debut the 14minute amp8220Thrilleramp8221 video was released directed by filmmaker John Landis Thereamp8217d never been a music video like it before and it launched Jackson to even more fame The behindthescenes makingof documentary another first became a nationwide hit tooBy then Jackson was the undisputed King of Pop At the Grammy Awards a few months later Thriller won eight trophies Perhaps more important it revived the industry Massaudience Top 40 radio came back Major global releases for major albums became the norm Music by Black artists became a staple of MTVJackson would go on to lead a complicated troubled life until in 2009 he died of a drug overdose only 50 years old His music though lives on In addition to its recordbreaking physical sales Thriller has reportedly been streamed more than 5 billion times on Spotify a service founded more than two decades after the albumamp8217s releasePosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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HISTORY’s Moment in Media: Thriller Debuts and Shakes Up the Music Industry

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HISTORY’s Moment in Media: Thriller Debuts and Shakes Up the Music Industry

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