Thriller (album) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

Thriller was released on November 30, 1982, and sold one million copies worldwide per week at its peak. Seven singles were released from the album, including "The Girl Is Mine"—which was seen as a poor choice for the lead release and led some to believe that the album would be a disappointment, and to suggestions that Jackson was bowing to a white audience. "The Girl Is Mine" was followed by the hit single "Billie Jean", which made Thriller a chart-topper. Success continued with the single "Beat It", which featured guitarists Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather. The title track "Thriller" was released as a single and also became a hit internationally.

Thriller was well received by most critics. Christopher Connelly in a January 1983 review in Rolling Stone described it as "a zesty LP" with a "harrowing, dark message". Comparing the songs on the album with the life challenges that the 24 year old Jackson had faced since Off the Wall, Connelly remarks that he has "dropped the boyish falsetto" and is facing his "challenges head-on" with "a feisty determination" and "a full, adult voice". John Rockwell in a December 1982 review in The New York Times also commented on Jackson's age, comparing his youth with his experience as an entertainer, feeling that perhaps he is a "sometimes too practiced ... performer", and that at times Quincy Jones may "depersonalize his individuality" with his "slightly anonymous production", and that Jackson may be hiding his true emotions behind "layers of impenetrable, gauzy veils". The bulk of Rockwell's review concentrated on how he felt that the album was helping breach "the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music", especially as "white publications and radio stations that normally avoid black music seem willing to pretend he isn't black after all". He feels that Thriller is "a wonderful pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today", and that there are "hits here, too, lots of them".

In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave the album an A– rating and commented that "this is virtually a hits-plus-filler job, but at such a high level it's almost classic anyway". He later revised it to an A, and commented in retrospect, "what we couldn't know is how brilliantly every hit but 'P.Y.T.' would thrive on mass exposure and public pleasure." A year after the album's release, Time summed up the three main singles from the album, saying, "The pulse of America and much of the rest of the world moves irregularly, beating in time to the tough strut of "Billie Jean", the asphalt aria of "Beat It", the supremely cool chills of "Thriller".

The album won Jackson a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards in 1984, including Album of the Year. The eighth Grammy went to Bruce Swedien. That same year, Jackson won eight American Music Awards, the Special Award of Merit and three MTV Video Music Awards. Thriller was recognized as the world's best-selling album on February 7, 1984, when it was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records. It is one of only three albums to remain in the top ten of the Billboard 200 for a full year, and spent 37 weeks at number one out of the 80 consecutive weeks it was in the top ten. The album was also the first of three to have seven Billboard Hot 100 top ten singles, and was the only album to be the best-seller of two years (1983–1984) in the US.

On August 21, 2009 Thriller was certified 29× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, for shipments of at least 29 million copies in the US. The album topped the charts in many countries, sold 4.2 million copies in the UK, 2.5 million in Japan and went 15× Platinum in Australia. Still popular today, Thriller sells an estimated 130,000 copies in the US per year; it reached number two in the US Catalog charts in February 2003 and number 39 in the UK in March 2007. As of 2010, the album is estimated as having sold approximately 65–110 million copies worldwide.