Michael Jackson: Thriller [EPIC]

Why you'll love it

Thriller won a record eight Grammys, sat at No. 1 for 37 weeks and became the first album to land seven Top 10 singles. It is still the best-selling album of all time, and "Billie Jean," "Beat It" and the title track still fill dance floors 40-plus years on.

This edition

• Epic pressing of the original nine-song album
• Gatefold jacket with the classic white-suit cover portrait

About the album

At its height, Thriller was selling nearly one million copies per week worldwide. Not bad for nine songs. Quincy Jones, who'd already worked his magic with Jackson on Off the Wall (1979), produced it at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles; the pair cut around 30 songs and whittled them down to the nine that made the album, with Paul McCartney dropping by for "The Girl Is Mine."

The result went to No. 1 pretty much everywhere (Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the U.K.) and went Diamond in Canada, the U.K. and beyond. Then the moonwalk happened on Motown 25, the "Thriller" video hit MTV, and the thing simply never stopped selling. Every single cut here feels like a hit because, well, seven of them were.

Also at Kops: more Michael Jackson on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Epic (cat# 88875143731), a reissue of the 1982 album.