It is a well-known fact that this is the biggest-selling album of all time; although the bulk of its sales were in the pre-SoundScan era and thus are a matter of some conjecture, it's reliably thought that this record has sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 million copies, making it the best-selling album worldwide and second in the US, behind Eagles' Greatest Hits (ugh).
When I was researching this I went down a delightful rabbit hole concerning the history of the best-selling album of all time. The first biggest album ever was the 78 rpm soundtrack to Oklahoma!, which held the title up until 1946. It was briefly interrupted by Al Jolson's The Jolson Story, which I'm sure is an absolute banger, and then regained the crown in 1956. Then it's mostly soundtracks - Boomers fucking loved soundtracks - until 1973, when Carole King's Tapestry became the best-sellling album of all time. For a while it was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, and then Thriller took over for good in 1984.
So is it any good? Yes, most of it is very good. There are at least two God-tier songs on this album, "Beat It" and "Billie Jean." The latter, specifically, is such a perfectly written and constructed song that it's hard to find an equal in the pop canon anywhere. It starts with that drum pattern, then the bass, and there's a shaker in there that gives it that hissing back-and-forth rhythm. It's a long intro - almost 30 seconds - but nothing feels out of place. Jackson's vocals are, of course, immaculate - the man could fucking sing - as he spins out a dark tale of a woman trying to claim her baby is his:
For forty days and for forty nights, the law was on her side
But who can stand when she's in demand? Her schemes and plans
'Cause we danced on the floor in the round (Hee)
So take my strong advice
Just remember to always think twice
(Don't think twice) Do think twice! (A-hoo!)
She told my baby we'd danced 'til three, then she looked at me
Then showed a photo of a baby cryin', his eyes were like mine (Oh, no)
'Cause we danced on the floor in the round, baby
And, of course, the chorus, "Billie Jean is not my lover/She's just a girl who claims that I am the one/But the kid is not my son." One detail music nerds like myself will find fascinating: engineer Bruce Swedien did an astonishing 91 mixes of the song and, as you can guess if you've ever worked in a studio, they used the second mix.
"Beat It" is the album's centerpiece, quite literally - there are four songs before it, and four after - and also figuratively. It's the closest thing to a pure rock song on the album, with an unforgettable guitar riff and a solo by Eddie Van Halen that sounds exactly like a solo by Eddie Van Halen. At the time, VH's presence lended some actual rock cred to the song and the album and probably helped get it on MTV, where it immediately became one of the most famous videos of all time.
Then there's the second tier of songs on this album. This includes "Thriller," the epic with the equally famous long-form video and the Vincent Price vocal break, "P.Y.T.," and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," the album opener that Jackson penned himself and which is an undeniable jam despite some very odd lyrics in the middle. There's this whole part where I could swear he's singing "You're a vegetable" over and over. For 30 years or whatever I've just assumed I misheard it and finally here's my chance to find out what the real lyrics are. So I go to genius.com and voila:
You're a vegetable (You're a vegetable)
You're a vegetable (You're a vegetable)
Still they hate you (Still they hate you)
You're a vegetable (You're a vegetable)
You're just a buffet (You're just a buffet) (You're a vegetable)
You're a vegetable (You're a vegetable)
They eat off of you (They eat off of you) (You're a vegetable)
You're a vegetable, aaow!
Wait, what the fuck? Is there even a term for a reverse mondegreen, where you understood the lyrics correctly but always assumed they were wrong? (Genius' annotation for this lyric, incidentally, is "You can be whatever you want to be. You can choose to have a good ethos and pursue an ambition of good will. But you will still be hated and the energy you have will be eatin' off of you by critics," which is NOT SUFFICIENT to explain these weird-ass lyrics.)
Then we have the bottom of the barrel and I regret to inform you that this album has some crap on it, first and foremost "The Girl Is Mine," a duet with Paul McCartney who hopefully regrets it. To say it's treacly and dumb is to insult treacly dumbness; it is just truly awful. And it was the first single! The album also ends with a dud in "The Lady in my Life," a lifeless ballad that never really goes anywhere.
So with these undeniable flops, I cannot say this is the Best Album of All Time, only the best-selling. There are some great tracks, and some good tracks, and some dirt. I can understand why it's the best-selling album of all time; back in the 80s, you might buy an album just for one or two songs, and the one or two songs on here are worth buying an album for.
We cannot leave without discussing the fact that Michael Jackson has not suffered the same kind of rapid cultural excommunication that Kanye West has, despite allegations of arguably much, much worse actions on Jackson's part. As I talked about the last time we saw Ye, there are some significant differences, such as the fact that Kanye's bad behavior came straight out of his mouth, while Jackson denied any wrongdoing and was in fact acquitted at trial of sexual abuse. This, and the recency/distance factor is why Jackson continues to be a music legend and sell millions of records and Kanye is in musical Siberia, at least for the time being. It's interesting, if nothing else.
Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.
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