How Michael Jackson's Thriller Became The Best-Selling Album Of All Time

A duet with Paul McCartney, the hard-rock guitar of Eddie Van Halen... Michael Jackson's album

, the best-selling record of all time, sculpted 40 years ago a hybrid pop that has become the norm since .

Sold out in “

” copies according to the Sony record company and the legatees of the artist who died in 2009,

was released on November 30, 1982. And consecrated Michael Jackson as the “

”.

The image of the megastar is no longer the same forty years later, except for his fans.

A recent documentary, disputed by his heirs, relaunched the accusations of pedocrime, denied during his lifetime by the singer, who was never convicted for such facts.

Read alsoThe spoiled anniversary of the ten years of the death of Michael Jackson

Thriller

nonetheless remains a marker of musical history.

, album by hit machine The Weeknd, released in early 2022, is clearly inspired by it.

“

, ”confides the Canadian to the magazine

The sound layered side of

owes a lot to the association between Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, legendary producer recruited on his previous album (

, 1979).

The singer initially calls Quincy Jones for his address book to find a producer.

But “Q,” as Frank Sinatra nicknames him, offers himself.

"

Off The Wall

which doesn't sell a peanut'

”, tells AFP the Frenchman Olivier Cachin, author of the books

and

.

We worked five days and nights in a row without sleeping.

So much so that at one point the studio speakers overheated and caught fire

Quincy Jones, on Beat It, to Rolling Stone

The collaboration between Jones and Jackson, both co-producers of

, will however spark.

Literally as well as figuratively.

For the title

, “

,” Jones recalled in

On this track, there is the guitarist of Toto, Steve Lukather, crushed by Eddie Van Halen's solo.

We therefore find a pinch of hard-rock on

, but also Paul McCartney in duet for the bluette

.

We also hear a rap rhythm on

.

Not to mention the sample - without authorization - on this same piece of

.

Its creator, saxophonist Manu Dibango, figure of Afro-jazz, will file a series of lawsuits for plagiarism, resulting in a financial settlement.

MTV censorship

The disc - originally nine tracks, the anniversary album

which comes out on Friday is enriched with unreleased tracks - is extended by clips in 1983. But the new music channel MTV, which programs rock played by white artists , refuses to diffuse that of

.

The boss of Jackson's label, Walter Yetnikoff, "

", recalls Olivier Cachin.

The battle is won.

Yetnikoff then braces himself when Jackson proposes for the end of 1983 a clip of almost 14 minutes for the track

, directed by John Landis, the director of the

whose film

he likes .

"

", rewinds the journalist Olivier Cachin.

The mini-film is presented in preview in a cinema of Los Angeles in front of an audience of stars.

We see Jackson transforming into a werewolf in a 4-minute prologue before the song begins.

Then the living dead come out of their graves, on a voice-over by Vincent Price, a cult actor in horror cinema from the 1950s and 1960s.

has just given birth to another revolution between pop music and horror film.