Thriller Review

Judge it by the room it commands and very little touches it. Jones builds each track around one unmistakable idea, the bassline on Billie Jean, the rock solo dropped into the middle of Beat It, the creaking door and the laugh, and then keeps everything else out of the way. Nine songs is a lean album by any standard and there is nothing here you would skip. The consensus at the time was strong rather than reverent.

Several critics argued that Off the Wall was the better record and that this one plays safer, and that reading has never fully gone away. Jackson the writer is the weak link. Outside Billie Jean and Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' the words are pop shorthand, and the two ballads are handsome rather than interesting. What is not arguable is the feel. Every track on here still moves a room forty years later, it broke a color line on radio and television that badly needed breaking, and the same outlets that hedged in 1982 now treat it as untouchable.