Start My Baby Cryin'

I've got a dirty little secret to tell the world. I have always been a fan of the more demure, salacious R&B than the clean-cut, Michael Jackson circa 'Off The Wall' kind. I can't help it if the sound of a falsetto every now and then makes me want to take off my clothes and dance around the room. The sound of Michael Jackson's voice is continually alluring despite the fact that he was indited on several counts of child molestation(and acquitted, thank God!). It is not too masculine for soft-eared listeners, nor is it too soft for those who like to blast their albums at the maximum volume. But rather, it has an androgynous quality that makes it as appealing to males as it is to females, to hard rockers as much as it does to smooth pop listeners. All of these helped to define the appeal of Michael Jackson when he first burst onto the scene in 1982 with this seminal album.

It was a blockbuster back then. It's an unqualified smash now.

Leading off with the amazing "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin", 'Thriller' never loses its immediacy no matter how many spins. The sound of Jackson mimicking the syncopated bass line that opens up the song is killer, while the reach he employs in his singing is very virtuosic and inspiring. He shifts from a gritty, gospel-inflected shout to a smoother, more malleable tenor voice that allows him to draw you into the song. The lyrics are as eerily prophetic as ever, considering what happened to him much later. Somehow "you're a vegetable, you're a vegetable" points toward one's personal dintegration, and the mindless, faux-African chant at the end of the songs finds Michael surrounding by kids of varying ages and genders. Again, eerily prophetic. Producer Quincy Jones lays down some fluid percussion and horn arrangements, and Rod Temperton's songs suit Michael very well. But it's clear by the end of this song who is the star of the show.

"Baby Be Mine" is a lost pop gem that should have been a single. It's filled with the sort of horn blasts, buzzing synthesizers, and malleable vocal performance that others have mined but never reached the full potential that Michael does here. He sounds genuinely credible when he sings "Baby be mine/and girl I'll give you all I got to give/Baby be mine/You're everything in this whole wide world to me/you're the reason that I live" as his voice grows more high-pitched and euphoric.

"The Girl Is Mine" is as cheesy as Paul McCartney collaborations go. The beat is provided by finger snaps and bits of percussion and bass, while Michael and Paul's vocals seem dialed in from home. There is nothing celebratory about this song. No, not even the girl in question.

"Thriller" is a Little House of Horrors that sounds more dated and contrived with each passing spin. That cheesy synthesizer opening, those overdubbed screams and goblin noises, Michael Jackson's fear and paranoia throughout. All of this qualifies as nothing more than an excercise in music theatre that does not work so many years later.

"Beat It" is the second-best single of the '80s. It breezes by in four and a half minutes with enough energy to rip the hair off of the back of your neck. Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo is superb, thrashing all over the place as Michael's pathetic drumcase-tapping provide the only other musical accompaniment to the guitar break. The way Quincy Jones speeds up the synths, slickens the bass, and overhauls the percussion makes this one of the best industrialized pop songs ever, perhaps even the first.

"Billie Jean" is the first great pop song of the 1980s. It features a drum machine counting off rhythms as a stuttering bass lick locks the groove in check, as Michael flows from one natural high to the next. "Mama always told me/be careful what you do/don't go around breaking young girls hearts" goes the typical lyric. Always girl crazy, always paranoid, one of the biggest stars of the '80s. This song is what made him one.

"Human Nature" feature an effervescent synthesizer melody alongside Michael's own measured, very airy delivery. The song achieves a heaviness by being entirely light on its feat and passionate, never subjecting itself to the bad boy poses of the previous two songs. As a ballad performance it ranks as his best. As a singular performance it ranks with some of the best of the decade.

"PYT" is the song that makes me drop my shorts. Its three and a half minutes of salacious, girl crazy lyrical pretension that I dare say Michael never topped. Backed by his sister Janet and some other female singers, the sound of their light voices purring is as lascivious as ever. "Where did you come from baby/and oooh, can you take me there/right away/I want to, baby" go the unsympathetically sexual lyrics and groove. Some drums, synths, horns and guitar are all that's needed to get his dirty message across. To say that Usher, Justin Timberlake, Omarion, or anyone else that was born in the eighties didn't hear this song and were riveted to either body bump or write another one just like it, would be a total sham.

"The Lady In My Life" is a Luther Vandross-esque tune that is well arranged and well sung, with crystalline synths and bass backing Michael's delicate, harmony rich delivery. Its failure to be distict from anything else on radio is what makes it 'Thriller's weakest moment. A true failure in hindsight of all of those involved.

The 2008 Anniversary Edition of 'Thriller' features some lame remakes of tracks from the likes of Akon, Kanye West, Fergie, and will.i.am. A previously unreleased track called "For All Time" rounds out the original release which, to be honest, didn't need a full makeover after all.
One would have liked to have seen an addition of 'Thriller' that featured the numerous session demos that Michael and Quincy Jones had to record to get the record just right. The omission of the 2001 Deluxe Edition bonus tracks, such as the excellent "Carousel" and the stunning demo of "Billie Jean", is nonpareil in making this hardly a definitive edition of the record so many have treasured. A bonus DVD of the videos from 1982-83 are for the Jackson fanatic in all of us.

Sometimes less is more.