World Music: Michael Jacksons Thriller

Michael Jackson’s Thriller
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Michael Jackson’s Thriller
Musically, there are five types of albums. They are live albums; remix albums, sound tracks, extended plays, and studio albums. Of all these, studio albums are the most common types of albums churned out by most musicians and musical groups. A studio album can be understood as a combination of audio recordings made up of tracks that are recorded in a recording studio. In some instances, these recordings may entail visual aspects of the recordings. The aim of this paper is to analyze Michael Jackson’s studio album, Thriller.
According to Vogel (2011), Michael Jackson was first introduced in the music industry as a musician as part of the group that was called ‘The Jackson 5’. While in this group, they produced a number of successful hits such as ABC, I want you back and several other singles. It is however not clear as to why Michael Jackson stopped recording and touring the world with the group, The Jackson 5, and finally left the group. Speculations about his departure indicated that he left the group after launching his two albums Off the wall and Thriller which he considered as being more successful than his work that he did together with the Jacksons.
Michael Jackson’s album, Thriller, has been regarded as one of the greatest works he ever produced as well as one of the finest pop albums ever created. Thriller was Michael’s sixth studio album out of his ten albums that he produced during his lifetime. The album was officially released in November, 1982, with Epic Records being the studio behind its production (Borsboom, 2011). This album was produced approximately 3 years after the release of Michael’s another successful album, Off the Wall. Both the albums, Thriller and Off the Wall, explore almost similar genres that include rock, R’n’B, adult contemporary music and pop. Its actual recording sessions took place in Los Angeles, California in 1982 between the months of April and November. Westlake Recording Studios was the company tasked with recording the sessions. The production budget shot to slightly over $750,000 with assistance from another producer that was influential in Michael’s musical life called Quincy Jones (Vogel, 2011).
In the entire team involved with the thriller album, nobody was actually prepared for the unimaginable magnitude of success that it achieved worldwide. The Thriller album consisted of nine tracks of which four of them were written by Michael himself...