TS: Thriller vs. Purple Rain

Thriller vs. Purple Rain? Purple Rain wins.

"No, Prince, I fancy that sweet ass, ol' boy"
"Nuh uh, this fine ass is for funkin' til the dawn, Sargeant Pepper"
"oh, Roger, must we fight?"

Case made. Purple Rain it is.

Reasoning: As above, "The Girl is Mine" - blech (I'm sure I liked it in at the time, though). Plus "Darling Nicky" was one of the more memorable songs I remember from pre-junior high (at the time I'm sure I was thinking, "whaaaaa?").

"Bad", the song, was originally written by Quincy Jones intended to be a Michael Jackson/Prince duet. Sure, Prince may not have taken part of USA For Africa, but he and his band did contribute a song to the album, so he could be brought in to work with the King Of Pop, no prob! By the time Prince broke through, the next Michael Jackson album was going to feature Prince acc. to Jackson/Jones inc.!

So they thought.

Quincy got Prince and Michael together, and Prince quickly and politely bowed out and said "you guys don't need me for this song", so "Bad" ended up being Michael solo, and Quincy called Scorcese to do the video.

Welcome to the weird world of Michael Jackson's production team in a nutshell!

OMG. My heart just stopped.

PURPLE RAIN THRILLER

Purple Rain (no comparison)
Let's Go Crazy Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
When Doves Cry Billie Jean
Darling Nikki Beat It
I Would Die 4 U Thriller
Take Me With U P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)
The Beautiful Ones Human Nature
Computer Blue Baby Be Mine
Baby I'm A Star (no comparison)
(no comparison) The Lady In My Life
(no comparison) The Girl Is Mine

This gets kinda dodgy--honestly, "Billie Jean" isn't really the equivalent of "When Doves Cry," but then again, "Baby Be Mine" is considerably worse than "Computer Blue," which gets a bad rap anyway. So I'm actually less sure of my opinion than I was before, but nevertheless, Thriller has no song of epic perfection like "Purple Rain," they both have perfect, minimal pop nuggets, and Purple Rain, as stated above, does not have "The Girl is Mine."

Quite obviously there should be actual songs with these titles.

for unknown reasons, the song [Let's Go Crazy] was banned in South Korea. (from Wikipedia)

* 1. 1999
* 2. Little red corvette
* 3. Delirious
* 4. Let's pretend we're married
* 5. D.m.s.r.
* 6. Automatic
* 7. Something in the water (does not compute)
* 8. Free
* 9. Lady cab river
* 10. All the critics love U in New York
* 11. International lover

are you kidding? his shit just got even weirder afterwards!

I'm gonna need some backup on this one.

You simply must listen to 1997's ""Morphine." Holy fuck...

Tho I'll second the opinion that "Billie Jean" is the best thing on either. And I'll be petty and say that Thriller has the better drum sound; but I've almost NEVER liked Prince drums anyhow.

DEMEROL OHMIGOD SHE'S TAKING DEMEROL!

yeah, thank god Eddie Van Halen didn't guest on "Beat It" or anything

If by polite, you mean Prince apparently saying the song was "garbage" and Mike was "silly", then I guess he did bow out smoothly alright.

My fave story of that time was their two meetings - one in which they simply stared each other down and the other in which Prince apparently brought Michael a box of feathers and random jewelry or something. Naturally, what really was a loss was the video of 'Bad' not featuring an MJ/Prince dance-off.

Oh, and Thriller, barely - I made up for Purp's absence in my childhood big time recently.

I end up narrowly picking "Thriller", probably mainly because "Purple Rain" has a track or two that I am not too keen on while "Thriller" is great all the way. "Thriller" contains nothing as good as "Darling Nikki" though.

Oh my gosh, Tuomas.

this thread just inspired me to buy Off the Wall

Any thread that does that to anyone is totally worthwhile. :)

The Stevie Wonder song on that is so fucking rad.

"I Can't Help It"

Eh, what? Do you really think the song comes off as antisemitist?

Yes.

Okay, but I guess you could also say John Lennon's "Woman is the Nigger of the World" is a racist song then, because it uses a racial slur in a similar way as "They Don't Care About Us", as a shorthand metaphor for discrimination. I know using racist words in this manner is a dodgy practice and MJ shouldn't really have done it, but that still doesn't mean the song has an antisemitist message. You can't just take those words out of context as a proof of MJ's supposed bigotry.

Of course I could be wrong about all this, but maybe you could elaborate your point of view beyond one word posts then?

Using ethnic slurs isn't necessary unless you're trying to get a rise out of people, and then it's just cheap. How's that?

This is the kind of thing that derails threads for months, obv, so I'm hesitant to play into it too much, but this:

to me it seems pretty obvious he means "you treat me like Jews have been treated by antisemites".

this is not obvious to me at all. And even it it was, who the fuck goes around saying things like that? It that a common rhetorical device where you come from?

I totally agree with that, I think it's a bad lyric and the same thing could've been said in a much more sensible way. But I still don't see the antisemitism there, unless you feel that using racial slurs is always racist regardless of the context. Which is a fair enough point, but I think sometimes a more nuanced analysis is more useful than a blanket judgement.

(x-post)

Using ethnic slurs isn't necessary unless you're trying to get a rise out of people, and then it's just cheap. How's that?

Extraordinarily polite.

And even it it was, who the fuck goes around saying things like that? It that a common rhetorical device where you come from?

No it isn't, like I've already said I think it's a bad rhetorical device and shouldn't have been used, but I think the message behind the lyric was supposed to be antisemitism. If you look at the whole lyric of "They Don't Care About Us", it's a song opposing discrimination and defining people through narrow, prejudiced categories. Having an antisemitist message in the middle of that would make absolutely no sense at all, and I don't think even MJ is that bad a lyricist.

"but I don't think the message behind the lyric was supposed to be antisemitism"

When the two choices of possible intent are "racisism" and "dumb as a tree stump," I tend to bet on "racism."

Anyway, sorry about derailing the thread, I don't really care strong enough about MJ or this song to go into some heated debate, so I'll stop now.

(x-post)

Fair enough, Kenan.

I will say though that I've always wondered if "don't you black or white me" was some kind of apology for the controversy over the video. Not likely, though.

I will say though that I've always wondered if "don't you black or white me" was some kind of apology for the controversy over the video.

I wasn't aware of controversy, but this made me lol:

To make the vandalism more palatable to viewers, racist graffiti was digitally added to the windows that Jackson smashes (reading "KKK Rules", "Nigger Go Home", "Hitler Lives" and "No More Wetbacks").

Ahhh. That feels so much better.

(Quote is from Wikipedia, btw. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_or_White)

michael was very publicly fighting w/his record company at the time of that "kike" lyric. we all know who runs the entertainment industry...

I have no recollection of such a fight, what was it about?

his career was on a major downslide at the time of hisTORY and he seemed totally oblivious. epic records reputedly spent $30 million on promotion for the album which was packaged w/his greatest hits as "bait" and when people didn't buy michael went ballistic on sony.

Isn't Sony a Japanese company? If he wanted to insult them in "They Don't Care About Us", wouldn't he have used some other racial slurs?

no wait...the 30 million and subsequent fight w/sony & tommy mottola was over Invincible. but history sparked a similiar controversy, i think the figure was 20 million at that time with the same disappointing result. I attended a record-company party where the new songs from history were debuted for journalists. the president of epic made a speech introducing the music and I've never seen anyone so uncomfortable.

tuomas: sony bought CBS records including the columbia & epic labels but americans still ran the company...into the ground.

I don't still understand the chronology of what you are suggesting... Even if Michael was angry with his record company because of the promotion/bad sales for HIStory, how could he have expressed that anger in a song which was on that same album, since the song must've been written months (if not years) before the album ever came out?

And his previous album was still a rather big success, wasn't it?

Oh, not that that matters. Didn't you hear? We're all out to get him for not reason at all.

I'm not anxious to pile-on or further derail the thread on this point. Nevertheless:

Pop superstar Michael Jackson must apologize for allegedly making a series of anti-Semitic comments on a voicemail message, the Us Anti-Defamation League (ADL) demanded on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a tape purportedly featuring Jackson leaving a message for his former advisor Dieter Wiesner two years ago was aired on TV show Good Morning America. On it, the man - alleged to be Jackson - says, "They (Jews) suck. They're like leeches... I'm so tired of it... they start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."

In response, ADL director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement: "Michael Jackson has an anti-Semitic streak and hasn't learned from his past mistakes. It seems every time he has a problem in his life, he blames it on Jews." In his 1996 song "They Don't Care About Us," Jackson sang, "Jew me, sue me," and "kick me, kike me".

At the time, the singer apologized, explaining the lyrics had been intended as anti-racist. The controversial tape was released by Wiesner's lawyer Howard King. On Monday Wiesner filed a $64 million lawsuit against Jackson, claiming fraud and breach of contract. Jackson had no comment yesterday, according to his spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain, writes the New York Daily News.

Jackson's lawyer didn't deny the singer left the voicemail, but he insisted that Jackson isn't anti-Semitic based on the lawyer (who is Jewish) knowing Jackson for years.

FWIW, I am a fan of Michael Jackson's work up through Thriller. I am also Jewish.

Hasn't Jackson flirted with militant Islamism lately? In which case, antisemitism from his side would hardly be a surprise.

Not sure about the "militant" part, but it's been reported that Jackson has flirted with becoming a Muslim.

I don't get all this blah-blah-blah about the falloff of late/current MJ/Prince. Sure, it's diminished. But it's diminished from genius like Off The Wall or Thriller or Purple Rain or Sign O' The Times. To my ears, both have settled into good-not-great, formalist variations on their former selves. And there's even been some great along the way ("Morphine;" most of The Gold Experience). Are people really claiming this music is flat-out bad?

And will no one rep for Invincible? You want innovation? Well, for the first time ever, the ballads were the best things on the album. (!!!) If anything, there's a surfeit of air on "Butterflies." The entire production is high on oxygen. I have profound memories of hearing this song many times on a fantastic Sugar and Poison-esque AM radio station while crossing the lonely, snow-streaked Hoan Bridge late at night in Milwaukee.

As for the title TS, Purple Rain is much more consistent. But not even "When Doves Cry" can match the disco utopia of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" or the freakish wonder of nature that is "Beat Me" (although it probably beats "Billie Jean"). So Thriller it is for me please.

hi dere new screen name

LOL. Hells yes! Spread the gospel!

lollll

I'd really rather not embed it in this thread but this is the only youtube result for Michael Jackson "Beat Me"

he really punched me haha

oh boy

Well, whaddayaknow? The Goo Goo Dolls have a song called "Beat Me." Huh.

Re Prince's coldness and detachment: I realize this will strike lots of people as crazy, and I'm willing to concede that maybe my ears are just screwed on wrong, but I've just never considered him all that soulful a singer -- well, maybe on first few albums he hints that he might be one, but beyond that, he's basically never made me care about his ballads. Feels like to me he puts an artsy kind of distance between himself and his material, but mainly he just doesn't have the voice for them -- certainly not like Michael does. I also wish "Baby I'm A Star" actually had the energy of the best Sylvester disco songs it hints at; as it is, it's always sounded held back, somehow. And though I like every track on Purple Rain, and have since I bought it the day it came out, I can't say I love any of them like I love at least half of Triller (or half of Prince, or pretty much all of Dirty Mind and lots of Controversy.) It's a consistent record, sure. Consistently... really good. Like say London Calling or something, which I also don't love any songs on. I even put Purple Rain in Stairway To Hell. But Michael does loud rock a lot better, too -- he rocks it harder, and he's more convincing, by which I means he pulls off its emotional diturbance better. (If you put "Beat It," "Dirty Diana," "Give In To Me," "Torture," on one album, I'd say that was a better rock/metal album than Purple Rain, too. Though I might take "Bambi" over any of them.)

("emotional disturbance", I mean.)

Prince definitely has more of a tendency to have an arch or artsy buffer that keeps him from being a traditionally sincere/soulful R&B vocalist, but he's still got a shit ton of beautiful emotional ballads where that doesn't matter at all.

But Michael does loud rock a lot better, too -- he rocks it harder, and he's more convincing, by which I means he pulls off its emotional diturbance better

I can't even process this - where does Michael "rock" better or evince "emotional disturbance" better than Prince's one-two punch of the Eddie Hazel homage + totally unhinged shrieking at the breakdown of "Let's Go Crazy"

Prince is (almost always) acting. Michael means it, man!

can't even process this - where does Michael "rock" better or evince "emotional disturbance" better than Prince's one-two punch of the Eddie Hazel homage + totally unhinged shrieking at the breakdown of "Let's Go Crazy"

Other than "Dirty Diana," all of Chuck's examples. I'd add "Morphine" and "Who Is It."

I think I can understand where Chuck is coming from (even though I don't agree) ... Michael exudes a purer form of rage because unlike Prince, he doesn't ever have to try to be sexy.

In other words, life imitates art and vice versa, film at 11 -- Michael is more convincing at "emotional disturbance" because he, uh, is more emotionally disturbed.

how "lolz rockist" is that - priveleging the perception of authenticity...

I'm pretty sure people are allowed to prefer music that they find more emotionally and viscerally persuasive. (If that's "rockist," so be it.) But I want to be clear that I'm talking about Michael's performance (what I hear), not his life.

"rockist" is a completely meaningless term at this point imo

I love Purple Rain but Thriller easily wins this for me. Yeah, 'The Girl Is Mine' is terrible but everything else on there is classic. I really think there's this joyful head-rush quality to Jackson's performance which makes the whole thing so compelling (although the material is obviously great too) - the sound of an artist at their absolute peak really getting carried away. I mean Prince does that too but Purple Rain feels more like a snapshot of someone still developing and working things out (which is still fascinating, and in a way this is sort of unfair to Prince; "Oh, just another great Prince record").

Also I don't know how much of it is down to the mastering on the CD version I've got (the 2001 remaster one, I'd only ever heard the songs on tape/the radio previously) but the production on Thriller really shines through, so many little details in the mix, it's almost like they're taking the piss with how good it all sounds.

my take on "they don't care about us" is that it's probably a garbled anti-racism message from a guy with limited real-world social experience (and thus inability to see that ironic use of "jew me" is as offensive as unironic use would be). on the other hand, if jackson actually is anti-semitic, then it's an anti-racism message garbled by actual racism. too bad, because it's got a pretty sharp tune.

last three posts otm

much as i love 'im, Prince is one cold, calculating mofo. i mean, for a guy that practically writes about nothing else (when he's good), sex almost seems like an abstraction with him; Professor Rogers Nelson's studies of homo pervertus in his (un)natural habitat: an post-ethical treatise. good or bad, Michael is always living (and dying, if you will) in the moment.