In my imagination, the 60s and the 90s are decades of eternal sunshine, characterised by an upbeat, optimistic spirit and defined musically by unmistakeably red-blooded men wielding guitars and making rock music. In the 60s, the post-war consensus and economic boom were still very much intact and supplemented by a spirit of youthful, buoyant revolution; in the 90s, the Cold War had been won and the US was enjoying a unipolar moment of unchallenged pre-eminence, which translated into a garish, globalised, in-your-face popular culture. The 70s and 80s, by contrast, appear to me as dark and foreboding decades. In the 60s and 90s, it’s always mid-afternoon; in the 70s and 80s, it’s always night.
But there are subtle differences; the blackness of the 70s connotes decadence and decline, trash-strewn and crime-infested streets, freaks like Bowie, Bolan, and Mercury emerging from the shadows to make our brains hurt a lot with their strident gender-bending and glammy lack of authenticity. The darkness of the 80s, however, feels somehow futuristic, illuminated by the garish pink lights of yuppie discotheques offering a dazzling contrast to the darkness, islands of obscene opulence in oceans of deprivation. It’s a decade defined by Duran Duran drinking cocktails underwater, Gordon Gekko telling us that greed is good, and of course, by the stratospheric rise to prominence of world-conquering American popstars like Prince, Madonna, and Wacko Jacko himself.
The video to “Thriller” gave me sleepless nights as a kid. I first saw it as a five-year-old, and it was four years later before I plucked up the courage to watch it again. Looking back, its tongue is obviously very firmly in its cheek. Yet it remains unsettling, particularly the leering faces and matted garbs of the risen dead as they enact their dance macabre in front of Michael’s horrified and defenceless date. The song itself is, quite simply, a work of unparalleled pop genius – unparalleled, that is, except by Jackson himself on this very album. It’s basically a gimmicky Halloween song, full of Rocky Horror sound effects of creaking doors and howling wolves, that somehow manages to be dramatic, sinister, and catchy all at the same time, with lyrics about ghosts and ghouls – the “thing with 40 eyes” – that quite literally thrilled and terrified me as a kid. It’s utterly unique in the annals of pop, an unmatched and unrepeatable original, although Vincent Price’s malevolent monologue is less harrowing than Paul McCartney’s intervention on “The Girl is Mine.”
Which brings us to the unfortunate fact that Thriller – this “greatest pop album of all time” – is a surprisingly mixed bag. In fact, half of it is rather naff. Apparently, even in 1982, disco was simply refusing to die, much like a zombie from the “Thriller” video: it staggers around this album, bewildered and gangrenous, infecting it with funky bass, futuristic synths, and the kind of asinine lyrics that you’d expect the half-rotten brain of a reanimated corpse to commit to paper. Yes, the dirty, discoey funk of “Baby Be Mine” is undeniably groovy, as is the frenetic, speedy “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing).” But the lyrics of these songs are straight up Disneyfied bubblegum pop, holding out the promise of unending Nirvana-like romance to diffident schoolgirls undergoing uncomfortable physical and emotional changes and refusing to do their Geography homework. This demographic is obviously pop’s most fertile market, and I have nothing against it or even the music designed to cater to it. But the two songs mentioned above, though passable, are not especially exemplary examples of the genre and, in my opinion, their presence on the “greatest pop album of all time” seems a bit anomalous.
The reanimated corpse of disco is one thing; other moments on Thriller veer dangerously close to the spectacularly uncool gloopiness of Luther Van Dross or Barry White. Tragically, and as alluded to above, one such moment involves Paul McCartney. “The Girl is Mine” was released as Thriller’s lead single, which renders the album’s subsequent mega-success even more impressive. It’s an anodyne, rather mortifying, though deceptively Freudian, R’n’B infused soft-rock ballad in which Michael and Paul play jokey love rivals who insist that “the doggone girl is mine,” like a pair of feuding pensioners. Admittedly, the sheer weight of musical history and pop stardom renders the whole thing too intriguing to be truly bad, but ultimately, the song is unworthy of a collaboration between two behemoths of 20th century popular culture. Other disposable ballads on Thriller lack even this silver lining of historical import, most notably “Lady in my Life”, the album’s closer and a song that wouldn’t sound out of place as track eight on a Boys 2 Men album.
Fluff of this nature represents one half of Thriller’s Janus face, the half-witted teen pop of moonlit adolescent romance that somehow snuck onto one of the greatest and most cutting-edge albums of all time. The other half of Thriller is very different. It invokes the sound of the street, an edgier, more threatening mood which immediately confronts us on the opener, “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”, a slow building, menacing, synth-infused funk song which culminates in an exultant and incongruous African chant. The lyrics are jarring; Jackson claimed that they were about the destructive power of hearsay, rumour, and gossip, and the opening verses do seem to allude to this, but the closing sections address, variously, the urgent necessity for better family planning.
How to interpret this? God knows, but it sounds like the fractured language of a bustling urban landscape, thereby effectively setting the tone for Thriller’s standout songs, which are shot through with the brooding, aggressive, but vigorous and life-affirming ambience of 1980s New York, and the dramas and problems which beset its less privileged inhabitants. “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” are funky but rather discomfiting urban fairytales. They are also two of the greatest songs in the history of pop music which, in terms of sheer catchiness and pop brilliance, have rarely, if ever, been surpassed. “Beat It” starts with booming synth notes, the bell chiming for high noon and the Mexican standoff about to follow. The lyrics – everyone knows – are Jackson’s warning against gang violence and, ultimately, against trying to live up to an abstract ideal of masculine “toughness,” perhaps the sensitive kid’s subtle rejection of his macho and violent father’s value system. It’s a work of genius; glammy guitars set to a driving, funky beat, and Eddie Van Halen stepping in to casually deliver one of my favourite ever guitar solos.
Astonishingly, this masterpiece is followed by “Billie Jean,” a song that’s every bit as good, its opening, stabbing, dramatic synths invoking the anxiety of our protagonist as he sees his life of carefree rockstar frivolity consumed by a tidal wave of shit-filled nappies and child support payments. Billie Jane may be just a girl, making unfounded claims about the identity of the father of her child, but in the end, of course, the kid’s “eyes are like mine,” and we all know that our boy is screwed, which is what makes this impossibly catchy, groovy, dramatic, profoundly distressed song so historically and uniquely amazing.
“Human Nature” is a step down from such genre and era-defining brilliance, but it’s still great, a shimmering synthpop imagining of a cityscape and the two primary, primal movers of human behaviour that give such places their buoyancy: in verse 1, ambition; in verse 2, sex. Stacked alongside “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”, “Beat It”, and “Billie Jean”, “Human Nature” seals Thriller’s status as an unmatchably edgy and surprisingly anguished collection of dingy urban fairytales. If it was a five-track EP along with “Thriller”, it might be the seminal moment in the history of pop music. Arguably, these songs are so good that the album still merits that status, despite the inclusion of some forgettable and regrettable kitsch.
In a sense, though, we might argue that Thriller’s Janus-face perfectly reflects the fractured psychology of its creator. In interviews, Michael Jackson seemed painfully shy and delicate, almost an un-person in his inarticulate, stammering, childlike diffidence and asexuality. It’s no surprise that this Michael was so accomplished in appealing to and speaking the language of teenage girls; he was one, after all. On stage and in videos, however, he was a different prospect; the leather jacket-wearing thug of “Bad”, the perfect-date-turned-thrusting-zombie of “Thriller”; the mysterious superhero of “Moonwalker.” It’s not one and the same person, as far as I’m concerned. For the “Thriller” video, he became a threatening and self-confident demon, but that’s a metaphor for his whole career; the shrinking violet who wouldn’t rest in peace until the lie became the truth.
8/10
Highlights: “Thriller”, “Beat It”, “Billie Jean”