Michael Jackson's thriller is so closely associated with Halloween that it can be
easy to overlook the fact that it's also the most influential music video ever made
for a host of reasons only partly related to its spooky subject matter.
For starters, it's the most popular and critically acclaimed music video
in history, one whose fame helped push the album.
It was part of 1982 Thriller to become the highest selling album in music
history, with some estimates claiming over 100 million copies sold worldwide.
It was legendarily scandalous,
with a now famous disclaimer that it in no way endorses a belief in the occult
feeding into the era's titillating frenzy over satanic panic.
Thriller expanded the boundaries for music videos, single handedly transforming what
was then a new and oft maligned genre that killed the radio star into a cultural
phenomenon and an art form in its own right.
Public demand to watch Thriller outside
of its TV airings, created a video rental boom and crucially, its popularity pushed
FM radio stations and MTV to give equal time to black entertainers,
along with white artists on what had been until then tacitly segregated outlets.
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The inspiration,
the seventh single from the Ten track album, didn't have the most auspicious
of starts when it was released a full year before the Thriller video.
The thrill is gone, suggested the Melody Maker and its review of the album.
And it wasn't until videos for Billie Jean
and Beat It hit heavy rotation on MTV in early 1983.
And Jackson performed the moonwalk
for the first time on the Motown 25 TV special in May that it really took off.
However, album sales started to fall
in late 1983, so promoter Frank DiLeo assuaged Jackson's angst over declining
sales by encouraging him to make a third video to join the other two.
Thriller was considered an easy lift due to content.
All you've got to do is dance, sing and make it scary.
While Epic Records was certainly thrilled
with the landmark success of Thriller after the hit singles Billie Jean
and Beat It were released, the label viewed the album's title track
as something of a novelty and had no plans to release it as a single.
In his 1988 memoir Moonwalk, Jackson discussed how he had conceived
of each of the three short films that were produced to accompany Thriller.
The music videos for Billie Jean Beat It
and Thriller to be genre advancing, innovative and inventive.
I wanted to be a pioneer in this relatively new medium and make the best
short music movies we can make, Jackson wrote on the set.
I explained that we were doing a film
and that was how I approached it, DiLeo recalled,
saying to Jackson in a 2010 Vanity Fair profile of Jackson in the film.
Music videos at the time were always just needle drop.
Some are pretty good, but most were not.
And they were commercials.
Michael, such a huge star that I said,
maybe I can bring back the theatrical short.
I pitched him the idea and he totally went for it.
Michael was extremely enthusiastic because he wanted to make movies the production.
John Landis was in London in 1983 when
Jackson called to ask if he was interested in making a video for Thriller.
Seemingly unaware of the time difference,
Jackson had called at two a.m. U.K. time, and the sleepy director had to feign
knowledge of the song, which he hadn't heard.
Jackson, for his part,
hadn't seen Landis films, Animal House, The Blues Brothers or trading places.
He wanted Landis because
of an American Werewolf in London, the film that established the horror
comedy as a galvanizing force within the horror genre.
Jackson wanted to hire Landis because the concept of the thriller music video
also involved a weird transformation, and because Landis darkly comedic touch
matched the comical pastiche of serious horror that Jackson was aiming for.
Thriller was an event even when it was being shot in October 1983.
Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire,
Rock Hudson and Jackie Kennedy Onassis all turned up on set.
And Eddie Murphy, Prince and Diana Ross
were spotted at the private premiere, the commercial release
after the video premiered on MTV at midnight on December 2nd.
It sealed the network's reputation as
a new cultural force, dissolved racial barriers in the station's
treatment of music, and helped create a market for VHS rentals and sales.
When the production budget ran over double
the original proposal, Thriller ultimately cost 900000 dollars,
then an unprecedented cost for a music video.
Jackson found an ingenious way to make up the difference.
He hired a second film crew to document the production as it was happening
and convinced MTV and Showtime to pay to license the making of Thriller,
which ultimately premiered after the music video.
And, as Jackson reported in Moonwalk, sold a million copies all by itself.
It was the first time a documentary film had ever been made about a music video,
and it further legitimized the work Jackson was doing.
Jackson reported and moonwalk that the video and its title song,
released as a single in February 1984, drove 40 million additional sales
of Thriller in the first six months after their release.
Ultimately, the monumental success of the album Thriller,
nominated for 12 Grammys and winning a record breaking eight,
made Jackson an unstoppable force who had to be taken seriously.
There were times during the Thriller
project when I would get emotional or upset because I couldn't get the people
working with me to see what I was, Jackson wrote in Moonwalk.
Thriller turned the making of music videos into a proper industry.
It launched a dance craze and a red jacket fashion favorite.
It won three MTV Awards, two American Music Awards and a Grammy.
In 2009, it became the first music video inducted into the Library
of Congress National Film Registry, designated as a national treasure.
Then there's the sheer memetic quality
of Jackson's iconic thriller dance itself, which has been endlessly mimicked.
Duplicated and recreated in nostalgic pop culture moments.
But if anything, the extended life that Thriller has had
all over the world suggests that we're still capable of being brought together
and feeling that collective sense of exhilaration.
And while it's true that our interest in Thriller peaks annually on Halloween,
it's really just an excuse to celebrate a love that flows year round after all.
For fans of the King of Pop, every night is a thriller night.
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