Boo: Way Back WhensDay: Thriller

Michael Jackson's Thriller

By Kevin Hunsperger
@kevinhunsperger & @my123cents on Twitter

I was 10 years old when Michael Jackson's Thriller album was released.  I'm pretty sure it's the first non cartoon/Muppet/Sesame Street album I ever owned.  I also believe it's one of the greatest albums of all time.  I won't go into all those details, since this is a Halloween blog, I'm going to focus on the title track: Thriller.

The song is one that you can instantly start dancing to, but I think that has a lot to do with the video that went along with it.  Back in the early 80's, the M in MTV stood for Music and there was lots of it on the cable network.  Music videos were all the rage.  In fact, at one time, that's about all you saw on MTV.  Artists had to be creative and flashy to get their music over.  Michael Jackson lead the way.

By now we've all seen the Thriller video, and if you haven't let's get that out of the way now...

Nice eyes

Nearly 30 years later, I'd have to say this is still one of the greatest music videos of all time.  It's a mini-movie.  Despite the path Michael Jackson's personal life took, I still love watching this.  The music, the costumes, the dancing.  Thriller has everything you could ask for in a music video. It truly defined an era. I think the work done here set the bar pretty high for everyone else in the music industry, but plenty of other artists released solid work as a result and tried to come close to what Thriller had produced.

I know I'm probably overselling Thriller, but I grew up on it.  I'm old enough to remember watching the video time after time and doing that crazy zombie dance in front of the TV.  I listened to the album until I wore out the vinyl on my turntable.  All these years later, we still do it from time to time here at my house.  Rest in peace Michael, and thanks for the memories.