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Callaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fisher, And on the first
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day of recording for what would become the best selling
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album of all time, producer Quincy Jones walked into Westlake
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Recording Studios in Los Angeles and said, okay, guys, we're
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here to save the recorded music industry. He wasn't joking.
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It was April nineteen eighty two, the music business was dying,
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and they were about to spend seven hundred and fifty
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thousand dollars nearly two point five million dollars in today's
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money to create something that would either resurrect the industry
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or become its most expensive funeral. They ended up doing both,
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and the song that best captured this death and resurrection
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story was fittingly about the undead. Thriller started life as Starlight,
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with the chorus lyric give me some Starlight and Starlight.
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Sun Rod Temperton, the British songwriter who'd written Rock with
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You and Off the Wall for Jackson's previous album, had
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been improvising with bass and drum patterns until he developed
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that hypnotic bassline that runs through the song. But Quincy
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Jones felt Starlight wasn't a strong enough title for what
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they hoped would be the album's title track. They wanted
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something mysterious to match Jackson's evolving persona. Temperton went through
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several titles, including Midnight Man, which Jones felt was going
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in the right direction. Then it hit him Thriller. Within
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a couple of hours, he'd rewritten the lyrics. The intro
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was loaded with sound effects creaking doors, thunder footsteps, winds,
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howling wolves, but Temperton knew the ending needed something special,
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something theatrical. Jones's wife, Peggy Lipton, suggested Vincent Price. Here's
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how last minute this was. Temperton wrote Price's spoken word
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section in a taxi on the way to the studio
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on the day of recording. Price, the master of horror
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who terrified audiences for decades, nailed it in three takes.
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Jones called his performance fabulous, noting how difficult it is
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to do a voiceover for a song. That voice, beginning
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at four to twenty five in the album version, would
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become one of the most quoted passages in pop music history,
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even though we can't legally reproduce it here. The album
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Thriller was released November twenty ninth, nineteen eighty two. By
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late October they were still mixing. Bruce Swedeen had done
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ninety one different mixes of Billy Jean alone. They had
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three studios going at once. They ended up submitting the
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record on November eighth, just twenty two days before release.
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Mixed number two of Billy Jean was the one they used.
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Sometimes perfection comes early, and you spend months trying to
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recapture what you already had. The album exploded within fifteen months,
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It became the best selling album in music history, shifting
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more than twenty two million copies. Every song was a potential,
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but by mid nineteen eighty three, after six singles had
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been released, sales began to decline. Jackson, who was obsessive
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about his sales figures, was watching his masterpiece slip from
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the top of the charts. Enter Frank Delo, Jackson's manager,
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with a suggestion release Thriller as the seventh and final single,
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backed by a music video. Epic Records thought he was insane.
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Who wants a single about monsters? Asked executive Walter Yetnikoff.
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The label saw it as a novelty song. They refused
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to finance a video, believing Thriller had peaked, Jackson had
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other ideas. He'd seen John Landis's An American Werewolf in
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London and knew exactly what he wanted to transform into
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a monster on screen. Not just any monster. He wanted
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to be a werewolf, then a zombie, then lead an
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army of the undead and synchronized dance. Landis, when Jackson called,
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said yes, but with conditions. This wouldn't be a music video,
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it would be a short film. The budget five hundred
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thousand dollars, at the time, the most expensive music video
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ever made. The financing came through an ingenious workaround. Since
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CBS wouldn't pay and MTV had a policy of never
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financing videos, they created a forty five minute making of
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documentary making Michael Jackson's Thriller. MTV and Showtime each paid
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two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the rights to
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air it. MTV reasoned that if they were paying for
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a movie, not a music video, they weren't violating their
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own policy. The documentary would sell over a million copies
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on vhs, becoming the best selling videotape at the time.
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The fourteen minute film premiered on MTV on December twod
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nineteen eighty three, the network cleared its schedule advertising each
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upcoming showing. Audience figures were ten times the norm. Within week,
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it was playing hourly to meet demand. The plot was
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deceptively simple. Jackson takes his girlfriend Ola Ray to see
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a horror movie. In that movie, within a movie set
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in the nineteen fifties, Jackson transforms into a werewolf. She
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runs out, scared. He follows amused. Walking home. They take
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a shortcut through a graveyard. The dead rise, Jackson becomes
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one of them. Then comes the moment that changed everything,
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the zombie dance. Choreographed by Jackson and Michael Peters, who
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also did Beat It. The dance was something no one
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had seen before. These weren't shambling George Romero zombies. These
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were zombies with rhythm, with style, with coordinated moves that
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somehow made being undead look cool. The combination of Rick
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Baker's makeup effects he'd won the first Academy Award for
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Best Makeup for an American Werewolf in London, and the
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dancer's ability to move fluidly while appearing stiff created something
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uncanny and unforgettable. But here's the thing most people don't
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know the video almost never aired. Jackson was a Jehovah's
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witness at the time, and he didn't get approval from
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church elders until after the video was finished. When they
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saw it, they threatened excommunication. Jehovah's witnesses believe the dead
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will rise after Christ's second coming, and some take offense
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at trivial depictions of the undead. Jackson panicked called the
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record company, begged them to cancel the premiere and burn
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the negatives. Landis talked him down, suggesting a compromise, a
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disclaimer at the beginning, stating that the video in no
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way endorsed the occult or supernatural practices. The disclaimer, ghost
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written by Landis, satisfied the church elders. The video aired,
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History was made. The impact was immediate and staggering. Thriller
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doubled the sales of an album that had already sold millions.
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The single, release January twenty third, nineteen eighty four, hit
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number four on the Billboard Hot one hundred, making Thriller
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the first album to generate seven top ten singles. The
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video won three MTV Video Music Awards. Jackson took home
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eight Grammys in nineteen eighty four. But the real impact
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wasn't in awards or sales. It was in what happened
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every Halloween Thereafter, the Thriller dance became a ritual, not
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just a dance, A global, cross cultural, multi generational ritual,
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performed in streets, schools, prisons, and flash mobs worldwide. In
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two thousand and six, Guinness introduced a record for largest
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thriller dance. In two thousand and nine, following Jackson's death,
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thirteen thousand, five hundred ninety seven people in Mexico City,
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most dressed as zombies shattered that record. That red and
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black jacket, designed by Landis's wife, Deborah Nadulman, became as
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iconic as any costume in film hit. More importantly, Thriller
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changed what music videos could be. Before Thriller, videos were
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promotional tools, three minute commercials for singles. After Thriller, they
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were art. Directors like David Fincher, Spike John's and Michael
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Gondry could trace their careers to the path Landis and
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Jackson carved. The making of documentary started a trend that
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would become standard practice in the DVD era. Every behind
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the scenes feature you've ever watched, Oh something to making
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Michael Jackson's thriller. Thriller also broke MTV's color barrier in
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the most dramatic way possible. The network, which had been
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reluctant to play black artists, couldn't ignore a video this popular.
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As John Landis later said, the reality is it was
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a vanity video. None of it was planned. Yet this
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unplanned vanity project accidentally revolutionized multiple industries. See low Green,
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who was nine when the video premiered, recalled being so
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terrified he would flee the room whenever it came on.
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If he could be possessed, then I damn sure could
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be possessed Because Michael was so much stronger than I.
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That terror was part of the appeal. Landis understood that
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transformation horror is really about puberty. Youngsters begin to grow
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hair in unexpected places, and parts of their anatomy swell
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and grow. The werewolf transformation was Jackson experimenting with danger,
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with sexuality, with becoming something other than the child star
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America had watched. Grow Up Today. Thriller returns to the
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Billboard Hot one hundred every Halloween, one of the few
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songs with a built in annual resurrection. It's been viewed
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over a billion times across various platforms, though that doesn't
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count the hundreds of millions who watched it in the
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pre Internet era. It's a Halloween institution, as essential as
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candy corn and questionable costumes more in a moment. John
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Landis once said there was a course taught at Harvard
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Business School about Thriller, and he called it complete bullshit
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because none of it was planned. But maybe that's the point.
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The greatest cultural phenomena can't be engineered. They happen when
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someone with unlimited talent meets someone with unlimited ambition, when
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technology enables new forms of expression, when the culture is
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ready for transformation. Vincent Price, recording his part in those
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Three Perfect Takes, had no idea his evil laugh would
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echo through four decades of Halloween's The dancers learning those
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moves had no idea they were creating a new form
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of folk dance. Jackson transforming into a werewolf had no
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idea he was actually transforming the entire entertainment industry. The
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Irony is Beautiful, a song about death, brought the music
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industry back to life. A video about monsters made a
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black artist the biggest star on the planet. A dance
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of the undead became humanity's most joyful Halloween tradition. Every
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October thirty first, somewhere in the world, someone is hitting
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that first shoulder pop, throwing their arms up, beginning the ritual. Again.
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Thriller isn't just a song anymore. It's not even just
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a video. It's proof that pop culture at its best
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becomes folklore, that a baseline, a Vincent Price laugh, and
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some synchronized shoulder rolls can unite humanity in a silly, spooky,
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absolutely essential dance of the dead. Forty two years later,
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we're still in that graveyard, with Michael still rising from
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our graves, still hitting those moves. The music industry was saved,
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but we're the ones who were transformed. We're all zombies now,
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and every Halloween we dance to prove it. Darkness falls
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across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand,
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and somewhere in a school gymnasium, or a city street
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or a YouTube video filmed in someone's living room, the
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dead are dancing. They always will be. That's the real thriller.