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Michael Jackson · S4 E7
66 Million Copies
What it means to make the best-selling album of all time
February 28, 1984, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. Michael Jackson wins eight Grammy Awards in a single night, and the music industry finally understands what has happened to it.
At the peak of Thriller mania, the Jacksons release the Victory album. Michael refuses to appear in the music video, so the director uses a wax figure and special effects in his place.
Torture, The Jacksons (1984)
Michael sang his vocal parts separately and refused to appear in the music video, which used a wax figure and animated sequences instead. The song peaked at number seventeen on the Hot 100: respectable for any group, but a clear sign that the Jacksons without a willing Michael were a different proposition entirely. Listen for Michael's vocal, unmistakably Thriller-era, layered and intense, carrying a song that the rest of his career had already outgrown.
Sources
Victory album credits, Epic Records, 1984
J. Randy Taraborrelli, Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story, 2009
The Number
Thriller will eventually be certified at 66 million copies sold worldwide. No album in history has come close. It is a number so large that it bent the entire music industry around itself.
“"There had never been anything like it. There may never be anything like it again."”
— Walter Yetnikoff, president of CBS Records (Howling at the Moon, 2004)
TAP TO REVEAL: How did one album save an entire industry?
The Girl Is Mine, Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney (1982)
The first single from Thriller, released on October 18, 1982. Quincy Jones chose it deliberately as the lead single: start safe, start warm, let the world underestimate what was coming. It reached number two on the Hot 100 and number one on the R&B chart. Six months later, Thriller had seven top-ten singles and was selling faster than any album in history.
At the 1984 Grammy Awards, Michael Jackson won Record of the Year. Which song took the prize?
Michael Jackson has achieved something no musician has ever achieved. Now comes the question nobody thought to ask: what does it cost a person to become the most famous human being alive?
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