Michael Jackson - Thriller

I'm not sure if musical PTSD is a real thing or not, but I think I have it. I lived through disco and lived to tell the tale - over time I think I developed a pretty serious case of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to a lot of stuff that made me want to puke or change the station when I was a teenager. Over the last couple of years I not only bought Saturday Night Fever, I kind of liked, in some cases really liked, a couple of the songs. I also have more than one album by The Village People.

Back in the early '80s, after Michael Jackson single-handedly took over the world, it was pretty much impossible to not be exposed to his stuff on the radio, and goodness gravy that guy had a lot of songs on the radio. They were the worst of times.

Now to be fair, "Beat It" with Eddie's solo was awesome, and it certainly didn't hurt that Steve Lukather was the sonic glue that held the whole thing together. However, the world in those turbulent years was divided into the world with Michael, and the rock world without Michael, and boy howdy rock and roll was alive and well. But honestly it was also a bit like the Python Spam sketch. You could hear anything you wanted so long as Michael was there somewhere. I was quite firmly in the opposite camp and felt obligated to actively dislike much of Mr. Jackson's material.

Until recently, when I found a copy of Thriller, and honestly it was surprising how hard it was for me to find a copy considering there were like forty-eight million copies of the record out there by the end of the '80s, I HAD NEVER HEARD THE ENTIRE RECORD. It was sort of a badge of honour.

Over the intervening decades I absorbed a lot of trivia about the album and the players, and eventually the record started to become a bit of a white whale or dwarf unicorn. It was finally time to find out if all of my pent-up vitriol was warranted, or if it was simply time to admit what I wouldn't or could not admit to myself: that Thriller was the best-selling album of all time for a reason. Heck, when it came out Michael Jackson was crowned the Prince of Pop. If there was someone out of step, it was me.

So I put the record on, and up first was "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and it was so good, but it was thinner than I remembered. It also reminded me of the kind of drum loop a newbie creates when you first get a drum machine. "Let's press all the buttons at the same time." Still, it was pretty good, and it was never one of the bigger hits. Frankly, considering seven of the record's nine tracks cracked the top ten over the span of a couple of years, most (not all) of the songs have at least a little nostalgia baked in.

Of the two non-top-ten songs, I was actually surprised that "Baby Be Mine" wasn't a hit, as frankly this was better than some of the songs I was forced to listen to as a kid. Yes, I am explicitly thinking of the vomit-inducing drek that is "The Girl Is Mine." Good lord, Paul McCartney has never sounded worse, and I don't need to be reminded that "Say Say Say" with Michael was a hit too. I suspect that there's a jukebox in the seventh layer of hell that only plays "The Girl Is Mine" all day and all of the night, and that's something that you can't get the kinks out of.

Thriller has some stellar moments. "Billie Jean" is infectious, "Thriller" is so much fun, and "Human Nature," the song the guys in TOTO passed on but played on, is really good. The centrepiece, "Beat It," is a cross-charting anomaly that still sounds amazing. The rest? Borderline filler, and that's probably because the other songs were so good that the rest had a hard time measuring up. However, Michaelmania and the unbelievable momentum from hearing songs on the radio for literally years just kept the album at the top of the charts and right at the centre of the popular zeitgeist. Which sort of explains why a weaker entry like "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" managed to crack the Top Ten. It was a perfect storm and we all got wet. Some more than others.

Looking at this whole mess with the benefit of hindsight, it's a little bittersweet. The nostalgia for the good here is actually much greater than I expected. Then there's the dark side of fame and the allegations and rumours, and inevitable excesses that highlighted a very disturbing side to celebrity culture and glory that seemed to be at odds with the carefully crafted persona. People are complicated, and chances are he was all the things we thought he was.

Time has taken the shine off Thriller a little, as it's kind of hard to separate the artist from the art. It's not like Michael and Gary Glitter have shared the same fate. Still, it does make it all seem a bit tainted.

There are just about fifty million people who shelled out for Thriller, and billions of people who know the name and his music. I may be over forty years late in finally hearing the record, but even now, when he was good, he was really good.