Line #27 Trivia/Thriller


1	!! The [[Music/{{Thriller}} album]] by Music/MichaelJackson:
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3	* BreakthroughHit: A virtually-forgotten fact in the wake of ''Thriller'''s massive success. ''This'' is the album that established Michael Jackson as a solo artist with a fully-fledged career of his own. ''Music/OffTheWall'' came close to doing this, but like all his solo albums before it, it was still technically received as a side project, and given less public attention than the albums Jackson recorded with [[Music/TheJacksonFive his brothers.]] After ''Thriller'' became such a blockbuster hit, the tables turned––suddenly, the ''Jacksons'' became the "side" project. Michael would begrudgingly participate in one more Jacksons album and tour, 1984's ''Victory,'' before finally throwing in the towel at the end of that year and leaving the family group forever.
4	* CutSong: Several of them, though not all are listed here:
5	** "Carousel." Written by Michael Sembello, with lyrics about a man who "lost [his] heart, on the carousel, to a circus girl." Music/QuincyJones bumped it in favor of "Human Nature." The 2001 remaster of ''Thriller'' contains an excerpt as a bonus track, but the full song has been leaked. Sembello's demo was leaked also.
6	** A CoverVersion of Music/YellowMagicOrchestra's 1979 song [[Music/SolidStateSurvivor "Behind the Mask"]]. According to original songwriter Music/RyuichiSakamoto, he had requested to hear Jackson's version, only for Creator/EpicRecords (Sakamoto's US label at the time and Jackson's worldwide label) to state that they couldn't send him it, leading him to deny permission to release the song. Sakamoto joked in 2013 that if he ''did'' give permission, he'd "have ten different houses all over the world." Jackson's cover would become the go-to template for other artists' renditions (including a solo version by Sakamoto himself) before a remix was ultimately included on ''Music/{{Michael}}'' in 2010. The original demo, consisting of Jackson and uncredited guitar and synth players performing over the Yellow Magic Orchestra version, was later included on the 40th anniversary edition of ''Thriller''.
7	** "Nite Line." Cut from the album, so writer Glen Ballard gave it to the Pointer Sisters instead. Has been leaked. Ballard's demo was leaked as well.
8	** "Got the Hots." Was completed, but left off of ''Thriller''. Siedah Garrett, who later worked with Jackson on "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" and "Man in the Mirror," would record her own version of the song with completely different lyrics and a different title, "Baby's Got It Bad," for her album ''Kiss of Life''. The Japanese version of ''Thriller'''s [[MilestoneCelebration 25th anniversary reissue]] added Jackson's version as a bonus track.
9	** "She's Trouble." Also known as just "Trouble." Written specifically for Jackson by Terry Britten, but never made the cut. At least two versions by Jackson are out there. Britten's original demo was leaked also. It would later be given to British reggae-pop group Musical Youth, who released their version as a single from their second album ''Different Style!''
10	** "Hot Street." Working title was "Slapstick," written by Rod Temperton. Two versions by Jackson leaked; one for each title. (He later claimed that he really liked this one.)
11	* ExecutiveMeddling: A rare case where executive meddling actually benefited the artist in question. When "Billie Jean" was released as a single, Creator/{{MTV}}, then still in its infancy, and already notorious for rarely airing videos from black artists, refused to air the song's music video. CBS Records executive Walter Yetnikoff, Jackson's boss at the time, went ballistic upon finding out, and not only threatened to go public about the network's racial bias, but also completely pull all of CBS' music videos off the network unless the video was given airplay. This finally broke MTV's "color barrier", and kickstarted Jackson's runaway success on the network.
12	--> '''Walter Yetnikoff:''' "I'm pulling everything we have off the air [...] I'm not going to give you any more videos. And I'm going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact you don't want to play music by a black guy."
13	* FollowTheLeader: ''Thriller'' changed the music industry in many ways. By becoming the best-selling record of all time, all pop musicians, including Jackson himself, tried in vain to surpass it. The use of elaborate music videos to promote the singles also set a trend that is still felt in pop music today. If an artist wants their hit single to be commercially successful, they're often forced to make a music video for it. Of course, this has led many people to be far more interested in the visuals than the actual music, an evolution many musicians and music fans regret.
14	* LoonyFan: Music/QuincyJones claims that one source of inspiration for "Billie Jean" was a woman who approached Jackson, and accused him of fathering ''one'' of her twins.
15	* ReferencedBy:
16	** The title track is so popular it has its [[MichaelJacksonsThrillerParody very own trope]] for things referencing it.
17	** In ''Film/XMenApocalypse'', Nightcrawler owns a jacket which is a replica of Michael Jackson's from the ''Thriller'' music video.
18	** Music/WeirdAlYankovic spoofed "Beat It" and its music video as [[Music/WeirdAlYankovicIn3D "Eat It"]].
19	** Music/RunDMC's song "King Of Rock" from their album ''Music/KingOfRock'' has the line "It's not Music/MichaelJackson and this is not 'Music/{{Thriller}}'." Funny enough, Jackson himself would sample from this Run-DMC song on his own single "2Bad" from ''Music/HistoryPastPresentAndFutureBookI'' (1995).
20	** Music/{{Eminem}} referenced the music video for "Billie Jean" by imitating Jackson dancing on the light reflecting steps in his music video for "Just Lose It".
21	** ''WesternAnimation/TheSuperMarioBrosSuperShow'' features {{Cover Version}}s of the TitleTrack and "Beat It"; the former plays in "Count Koopula" when King Koopa's Werekoopas transform during a full moon (additionally nodding back to the werecat sequence that opens ''Music/MichaelJacksonsThriller''), while the latter plays in "The Unzappables" during a shootout at the Koopa Klub.
22	* TroubledProduction: Making the album went along smoothly, but post-production was another matter. All parties involved testified that, upon playing it back after its completion, it was a supreme disappointment. Jackson was in tears. Jones felt it was "unreleasable." Bruce Swedien, the recording and mixing engineer, thought it sounded like "dog doo." Not only were the mixes unsatisfactory, but the songs themselves were too long to fit comfortably on an LP, decimating the sound quality. The decision was made to [[MidairRepair delay the album by a week, remix all of the songs, and shorten them as much as possible]]; the full-length versions of some songs would later resurface as 12" singles.
23	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
24	** The final track list had some radically different changes made before their final mixes. Namely, "Billie Jean" originally had a drum machine/synth bass rhythm section instead of the final mix's live instruments, and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" was a completely different song altogether, with nothing in common with the album version besides the title. It was originally a mellow, Music/StevieWonder-inspired piece instead of the pop funk of the album version.
25	** Long as the TitleTrack's music video is, it could've been even ''longer''. As played on a re-release CD bonus, there was a second verse of Creator/VincentPrice's rap, ending in "[[Film/TheWarriors Can you dig it?]]"
26	** Music/QuincyJones's wife was friends with Vincent Price's wife, which is how Vincent came to be included on "Thriller". According to Cassandra Peterson, Jackson originally wanted her to provide the rap in-character as Creator/ElviraMistressOfTheDark.
27	** Price was originally going to AdLib a "spooky" monologue before it was decided at the very last minute that songwriter Rod Temperton ought to write a proper "rap" for him to perform -- so last-minute, in fact, that Temperton wrote the lyrics ''on the way to the recording session''.
28	** The title track was originally a love song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_kimWJ7128 "Starlight"]].
29	** Quincy Jones wanted to trim the intro to "Billie Jean," thinking it was too long. Jackson persuaded him not to by saying that the intro was what made him want to dance, and as Jones later admitted, when Michael Jackson tells you that something makes him want to dance, you ''don't'' argue.
30	** Enough material was recorded for the album to potentially release it as a double-LP, and Jackson initially wished to release it as such once recording sessions had finished. Quincy Jones talked Jackson into making it a one-disc release to increase its commercial viability, and when the musician's proposed configuration proved infeasible, he had to be further talked into cutting down some of the remaining songs. Jackson, a notorious [[ThePerfectionist perfectionist]], was reportedly upset when he had to cut out an entire record's worth of material in post-production. Much of the scrapped songs would later resurface in leaks and officially as both bonus content on reissues and remixed tracks for posthumous studio albums.
31	* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: Owing to a scheduling snafu which wouldn't allow him to write it earlier that morning, Rod Temperton was forced to write Vincent Price's spoken-word portion of "Thriller" while waiting for his car to drive him to the recording session.
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33	!! The [[Series/{{Thriller}} 1960s TV series]]:
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35	* The series adapted stories by famous authors like Creator/RobertEHoward and Creator/CornellWoolrich.
36	* TomHanksSyndrome: "Man in the Middle" has political comedian Mort Sahl playing a dramatic role.
37	* MarketBasedTitle: Shown on British TV as ''Creator/BorisKarloff Presents''.

Context Trivia / Thriller