This is one of those albums where it’s pretty much the artist’s Greatest Hits – Thriller, Beat It, The Girl is Mine, Billie Jean, Wanna Be Startin’ Something. In fact, all but one song (Baby Be Mine) were released as singles. There’s a funkier tone to the songs compared to Off The Wall, thanks in part to some back and forth between Jackson and producer Quincy Jones over the final sound which, I think, resulted in both of them pushing to make the songs the best they could.
There are a few collaborations on here, including a fun one with Paul McCartney on The Girl is Mine where the two have a bit of dialogue at the end. Jackson Sisters Janet and La Toya provide backing vocals on P.Y.T (Pretty Young Thing); Eddie Van Halen does some great guitar work on Beat It, a service he offered for free and which gives a nice rock / funk / pop crossover track, and Vincent Price does a bit of narration (and evil laughter) at the end of Thriller.
For my money, the best tracks on here are the ones written by Jackson himself – Thriller and Beat It – which coincidentally are also the ones with significant videos. Jackson, like Prince, had to fight to get himself seen, as a black man, on MTV, but he also set the bar for mass-dance videos, creating a visual look and choreography for Thriller that has become a cultural icon. For Beat It, written to dispel gang violence, Jackson even recruited real members of the rival gangs The Crips and The Bloods to have a “dance fight” before all joining together. Whatever else you may think of the man, his alleged predilections, and the way he went in life, this is an admirable sentiment.
One thing that’s good about this project is that it gets me to sit down and listen to an album that I would never have chosen to listen to otherwise. This didn’t convert me to a massive Jackson fan, but did make me appreciate some of musicianship in the songs more - they've been on the radio for four decades but in all that time I've never really listened to them.
Comments
Post a Comment