Four Walls Won't Hold Me Tonight

For Day 5 of 25 DoN, I want to give a shout-out to Thriller, which was released 25 years ago this week. Doesn't that make you feel old? I'm resisting the urge to rant about PennDot because I have nothing nice to say about the fact that they neither plowed nor salted the roads today. Anyway, Thriller has been mind-bogglingly successful, having sold 104 million albums, making it the top-selling album of all-time (although this has been disputed), and it's only one of three albums to remain on the Billboard 200 for a full year. It has gone 27x platinum; spent 80 weeks in the top 10, including 37 consecutive weeks at number 1; it was the only album ever to produce seven top-ten singles; and it was the best-selling album of 1983 and 1984 in the U.S. Today 600,000 copies of Thriller are sold every year in the U.S. Thriller won Michael Jackson 7 Grammys and 8 AMAs.

Yes, Michael Jackson is in the midst of a downward spiral that has lasted well over a decade so far, but the pop music scene in the 80s belonged, undeniably, to Michael Jackson. Thriller has only 9 songs, but 7 of them are excellent. "The Girl is Mine" is a complete pile of crap ("Paul, I think I told you; I'm a lover, not a fighter."). I happen to like P.Y.T., but compared to Thriller's other tracks, it's filler. That leaves you with the gems: "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Baby Be Mine," "Thriller," "Beat It," "Billie Jean," "Human Nature," and "The Lady in My Life." Yes, it's pop, but it's pop at its finest.

Enjoy some clips from before pop music was about untalented skanks getting out of cars while not wearing underwear.