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Drenched in Blog: Happy 25th, Thriller | Rocks Off | Houston | Houston Press | The Leading Independent News Source in Houston, Texas
If you didn’t already have enough reasons to feel old, tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, released December 1, 1982. Thriller still holds or shares several of the music business’s most prestigious records: It’s the best-selling album of all time at more than 104 million copies sold, a tally that still increases by 60,000 every year in the U.S. alone. Besides Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill and Celine Dion’s Falling Into You, it’s the only album to remain in Billboard’s Top 10 for a solid year – 80 weeks, to be exact, 37 of those at No. 1. It was the best-selling album of both 1983 and 1984, and the first album ever to spin off seven Top 10 singles, a feat since matched by Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA and sister Janet’s Rhythm Nation 1814. One of its two songs not released as a single, “The Lady in My Life,” was sampled by Houston rapper Trae on his late 2005 hit “Swang.”
Besides Michael and producer Quincy Jones, among those lending their musical talents to Thriller were Paul McCartney, Eddie Van Halen, Vincent Price, Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro and L.A. producer/arranger extraordinaire David Foster. To mark this momentous occasion in a way that would make MJ proud, here’s more conclusive data that white people, in fact, suck. Vanilla-faces like these give dynamite dancing machines like me a bad name. But I don't mind. I just get to work that much harder to melt your faces with the "Craigers." It looks like Mick Jagger being raped by Glenn Danzig.
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