THRILLER POLL

okay lol

I predict a landslide for "[/i]"

isn't that a Magnetic Fields record title?

human nature

my top 3 is Wanna Be/PYT/title track, #1 changes on any given day.

actually no "Baby Be Mine" clicked for me in a big way a few years ago too, damn this hard.

my top three are Wanna Be/Human Nature/(rotating wild card depending on which of these I've heard most recently: "Beat It"/"Billie Jean"/"Thriller")

most impossible poll ever obv, but i voted for 'baby be mine' as an underdog (only non-single, right? but so great).

xp

"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'".

I can't get over the fact that his stated intention at the outset was to make the biggest-selling album ever, and despite many factors being beyond his (or anyone else's) control, he fucking did it.

without hearing the less famous album tracks in years, for me it's bj vs wanna be startin something

I honestly didn't realize how many writing credits he had on this album

p.y.t.

PYT

"Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady In My Life" were the 2 nonsingles

By the late 1970s, Jackson's abilities as a vocalist were well regarded; Allmusic described him as a "blindingly gifted vocalist".[7] Rolling Stone compared his vocals to the "breathless, dreamy stutter" of Stevie Wonder. Their analysis was also that "Jackson's feathery-timbred tenor is extraordinary beautiful. It slides smoothly into a startling falsetto that's used very daringly".[8] With the release of Thriller, Jackson could sing low—down to a basso low C—but he preferred to sing higher because pop tenors have more range to create style.[32] Rolling Stone was of the opinion that Jackson was now singing in a "fully adult voice" that was "tinged by sadness".[33] "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)", credited to James Ingram and Quincy Jones, and "The Lady in My Life" by Rod Temperton, both gave the album a stronger R&B direction; the latter song was described as "the closest Jackson has come to crooning a sexy, soulful ballad after his Motown years" by Taraborrelli.[28] The singer had already adopted a "vocal hiccup" which he continued to implement in Thriller. The purpose of the hiccup—somewhat like a gulping for air or gasping—is to help promote a certain emotion; be it excitement, sadness or fear.[34]

holy shit

that's like a 4-octave range excluding his falsetto

That's amazing.

I have to say, though, while the hiccup works brilliantly on Thriller, by Bad it sounded like a tic.

ah yes i remember well in the late 1970s when Allmusic praised Michael's vocals

hahaha I was so busy boggling at the low C that I glossed over that

lol @ u Wikipedia

also I guess it's a 3-octave range (4 Cs: high C, middle C, low C, bass C)

listening to "The Girl Is Mine" and boggling that MJ is dead and Paul McCartney is still alive

she told him that he's her forever lover, don't you remember

I don't believe it.

oh my god is the low voice about 2:45 into this Michael and not Paul????????

I sort of hate this album

like I roll my eyes at it the way lex probably rolls his eyes at the Beatles

we know, Shakey in SFC

oh no way

xp to djp

here's a really great/underrated vocal performance from young mj (doing stevie): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ3Gm3DORaM

regardless of which one it is, it's pretty impressive how low they get on the last phrase, which is like Russian bass territory

coming of age in the Bad/Dangerous era makes me kind of jealous of people who got to be ridiculously overexposed to Thriller instead

this is a remarkably good headphones album

there are a lot of neat panning tricks and production details I've never noticed before, esp. with dropped-in percussion enhancements and small background asides in either the background vocals or instruments

Might vote "Beat It" - his singing is phenomenal on that.

the "oh no" after the "eyes looked like mine" line low in the right ear on "Billie Jean"... wau

love "beat it." "they'll kick you then they beat you and they tell you it's fair" always makes me sad these days.

coming of age in the Bad/Dangerous era makes me kind of jealous of people who got to be ridiculously overexposed to Thriller instead

As a stubborn fourth-grader, I held back for so long. I was a Men at Work man, fan of Billy Joel and the Police. Not really into this dance music.

I finally relented and I remember riding home from Wal-Mart, looking at the cassette and thinking, Okay, we'll give it a chance.

Then I opened it up and went, Ooh! A tiger!

The least likely song I'd vote for is "Lady in My Life."

i could choose either Gonna Be, PYT, Billie Jean or Beat It and live with the decision. choosing between them is impossible

also the least like song you'd write (xpost)

I would write "The Girl is Mine," however.

"The Girl Is Mine" is the only song I would for sure never ever vote for. Usually I toss a vote to "Baby Be Mine" for its gloss.

Yeah, I've heard it all before, Michael. She told me I was her forever lover.

shit idk -- PYP

lol PYT

this is impossible

I wanna love you, my Pleasant Young Plains

voted "Human Nature", one of my favorite songs in the universe as I've probably blabbed about elsewhere on ILM; obv the singing is incredible but that closing keyboard riff, with the little "cha cha" (is that a drum machine or is that Michael scatting?) is unearthly. plus the vibe of the song never fails to disorient me; even as an eight-year old I found the "I like living this way / I like loving this way" liberating & couldn't figure out if Michael meant it or not, & that's part of its attraction to me still.

This poll is harder than fuck. The palm muted guitar on "Wanna Be..."!!! The synth trumpet on "Billie Jean"!!! Everything about "Beat It"!!! The total cocoon-womb of "Human Nature"!!!

i lent this to a family friend when i was little and he drew stubble and a moustache on MJ in ballpoint pen - i have seriously never forgiven him for that

especially considering it wasn't The Girl Is Mine

[/i] 12

lol

feel like everyones gonna rep for dif songs then billie jean will crush all

― ice cr?m, Wednesday, August 31, 2011 7:31 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ILM seems like a place where "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" or "Human Nature" could stage an upset imo

― ✇ ruehl (some dude), Wednesday, August 31, 2011 7:38 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nailed it

I'd have thought more of ILX would rep for Baby Be Mine, the archetypal hidden-in-plain-sight sleeper. Just listen to the verses ffs; sensual and graceful but inapproachable at the same time, draped in cold velvet silhouette, and so very tantalizing.

that's precisely why I didn't vote for it

it's MY secret

I like the Stanley Jordan version of "lady in my life". I know it's muzak-y, but still.

i wanted to vote for "Baby Be Mine" but i wanted "Startin'" to beat "Billie Jean" more

off the wall > thriller > dangerous > bad

This changes daily for me.. i'm not sure how anyone can definitely say "this is the best, this is the least" out of these 4.. they all have something great and different about them.

I hear you, mostly, but for me at least Bad is easily the worst of them. Don't know if I would have said that even five years ago, but time has not been kind to that record.

I still like it tho, just not a patch on the others

god i don't know why people think that, "dirty diana" running right into "smooth criminal" makes me all breathless and shit, still

funny (and geeky) thing : now, "baby be mine" (which is an amazing track and I can't understand those who see it as a minor track) reminds me of cruising in "miami" in GTA vice city at sunset (I know. I said it was geeky).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3oiDmaCL9c&NR=1

once you get back to the initial groove of it, even "the girl is mine" is kinda cool, actually !

Did Thriller really sell a hundred million copies?

Wyman was decidedly more cynical about Jackson's purported sales figures in the days after Michael's death (on Wyman's now-defunct Hitsville blog):

[Thriller was the best-selling album ever in the U.S.] until Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles supplanted it. Now, you’ll, note, everyone talks about how Thriller is the largest selling album worldwide. It probably is, but it’s a conveniently uncheckable factoid; in some twelve days of almost constant coverage, I’ve yet to hear someone say that Thriller is the second best-selling album in U.S. history.

Nice to know it only took him three and a half years to check the "conveniently uncheckable."

pyt

TLC

Don't get all the hate for Bad; to me, it's his best album.

Wow, this is maybe the most OTM poll result spread ever, except for "Baby Be Mine" beating "The Girl Is Mine" and "bracket slash i bracket" beating "Beat It."

lol

Nah, swap "The Girl Is Mine" with "The Lady in My Life."

^

weird that thriller itself scored so low imo; i mean human nature's nice but fuckin thriller y'all

just read Nelson George's Thriller book on the plane ride from Chicago.

tracer otm. also the girl is mine shouldn't have gotten any votes

now Hungry4Ass we're really not gonna fight about this, ok?

Really wasn't sure whether I wanted to write about this, but in the end I decided better done than not done: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/michael-jackson-thriller.html

Aha awesome! I'm glad you did, MC.

(Saves link to Pocket, brews another PG Tips).

guys i just uploaded this for you cause its so dope yw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTBQilmQhjI

this is wayyyyyy better than the released version!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFWmSULkvXU

you're right; that version is much better.

Are the drums on Billie Jean played by a human or a machine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_%22Ndugu%22_Chancler

thanks. the beat is so solid, I thought it was a machine.
And the sound of that snare is great - instantly recognizable. so crisp.

Yes, for many years I also assumed that the drums were sequenced samples. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a human being could play with such extraordinary precision.
As to the sound of Chancler's kit, it's apparently down to a special wooden platform constructed in the studio by the engineer on the Thriller sessions, Bruce Swedien.

No, those are definitely acoustic drums, just very well engineered, as you'd expect!

Man, The Lady in My Life, which I’ve always thought of as the boring one, is a-mazing.

Yes ! I have Loved this album since its release when I was a kid but I still find things to enjoy and « the lady in my life » is one of those. I think the album would have been almost perfect if « the girl is mine » had been the version without McCartney.

It seems like one of those rare albums where the first single is the worst song on it

I kind of love The Girl is Mine too. It's the only non-banger on th album but it brings me great joy. When we were teenagers we used to cackle at the lameness/weirdness of Paul's "I don't believe it", and the fucking terrible cartoon in the insert, and now the whole song makes me smile.

https://cdn-p.smehost.net/sites/28d35d54a3c64e2b851790a18a1c4c18/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/190108_TGIM_feat.jpg

Such a weird choice for a first single, but I think the album ended up doing okay for itself.

I absolutely adore Paul's pathetic collapse the moment the song actually arrives at a head-to-head conflict. I have happy memories of sharing chuckles over that, at a sunny and jolly little office I worked at in 2009, where this was one of the CDs in rotation. (It was the 25th Anniversary reissue, but we rarely made it deep into the BEP half...)

did MJ draw that cartoon himself?

Surprising to find people who don’t hate « tgim » on ilm ! I don’t hate it but it’s obviously over cheesy and the low point of the album. The demo without McCartney shows there’s a decent song in there but still weaker than the rest. Considering the other unreleased songs of these sessions I’m not sure which one could have replaced it though.

random memory unlocked:
i had to be driven to the next town over for a soccer game. i took my walkman and thriller tape for company on the drive. the batteries were really not even at half charge the day before, so they were definitely not lasting the entire drive today. anyway, the conversation portion of "the girl is mine" is really good at about 60% of its normal speed. sidebar to that: mccartney has zero understanding of how 'that's what she said' jokes work.

but seriously: for a novelty, it's quite good. be a lover, not a fighter.

First time I listened to this was also the first time I used a Walkman, lent to me by another kid in the hospital ward we were both temporarily occupying. I learned then about not singing along while listening to headphones.

Macca said the conversation bit didn't bother him so much, it was "Doggone.." he had an issue with.

https://cdn-p.smehost.net/sites/28d35d54a3c64e2b851790a18a1c4c18/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/190108_TGIM_feat.jpg

Such a weird choice for a first single, but I think the album ended up doing okay for itself.

― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, April 25, 2025 7:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

some jigglin' fightin' booties right there