In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s blockbuster album Thriller, Sony is a releasing a double CD, featuring the original album with demos and rarities.
Videos by American Songwriter
The titles of 10 bonus tracks on Thriller 40 will be revealed one at a time beginning on Labor Day 2022, with the final song revealed before the release of the double CD on Nov. 18. Additionally, 15 tracks that were limited in release will also be featured as part of an expanded digital release of Thriller 40.
Originally released on Nov. 30, 1982 and produced by Quincy Jones—who also worked on Jackson’s solo debut Off the Wall in 1979—Thriller earned Jackson eight Grammy Awards and spent 37 non-consecutive weeks at number one from February 26, 1983, to April 14, 1984, and more than 500 weeks on the Billboard Album Chart.
Selling 100 million copies since its release in 1982, Thriller became the biggest-selling album of all time, worldwide.
Thriller also produced seven of Jackson’s biggest hits, including “The Girl Is Mine,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing”), and the title track “Thriller.”
Hitting a number of new records, the title track also boasted one of the most expensively made music videos at the time with a $1 million budget. Running more than 13-minutes, the video doubled the sales of the album upon its release and blew up the airwaves of the then two-year-old MTV when it premiered on December 2, 1983.
A pop culture phenomenon, “Thriller” shifted how a music video was made, from fashion with Jackson donning the now-iconic red leather jacket, designed by Landis’ wife Deborah Nadoolman, who already worked as a costume designer on Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, and inspiring more scripted, choreographed videos—with the origination of the “zombie dance,” created by Jackson and choreographer Michael Peters—in its aftermath.
