Michael Jackson - "Thriller"

0:00 The hit Maker Chronicles now has merch hats, mugs, t shirts all with the podcast logo. We have free shipping and ten percent off with the code new Merch ten. Just go to Caloroga dot com. That's c A l O r O g A dot com or look for the link in the show notes. It all supports us here behind the scenes of the show and really appreciate it. Thanks Calaroga Shark Media. In the immortal annals of pop music's most incendiary cultural transmissions, few have scorched the world's consciousness with the same combustible force as Michael Jackson's nineteen eighty two Apocalypse funk masterpiece Thriller.

0:49 From those first Opalne synth stabs and Vincent Price's ominous narrated into Nations, conjuring the funk of forty thousand years, we're plunged into an electrifying temper vortex, one where ancient occult dread intertwines with Jackson's futuristic, danceable euphoria to spawn an entirely new, generational demonic vision. This wasn't just another in the gloved Ones pantheon of smash hit singles facilitating the planet's dance floor rapture. No. In the seven and a half bewitching minutes of Thriller, Michael Jackson revealed his true cosmic rock star destiny to distill the entire breadth of human fear, desire, and adrenaline into a singular, pulsing, pantheonic ritual of musical and visual sorcery bubbling beneath the initial layers of pop escapism. Coursing through nineteen eighty two's Thriller album, Jackson and producer Quincy Jones had harnessed something altogether more primal. The thunderous, libidinal vibrations of the human soul's most elemental driving forces, sex death transformation from the song's initial synth drenched dance grooves, manifested oceanic tides of the funklysium, Jackson's euphoric howls, enchanted at their core, yet nefarious demonic rips in the spacetime continuum, tugged incessantly. It's close to midnight and something evils lingering.

2:13 That desolate whisper of grim premonition from Vincent Price's first entrance only intensified how deeply Jackson immersed himself into the shadows to birth his ultimate pop demon while other hits from Thriller, like beat It and the title track showcase the King of Pop's unparalleled sonic deification of daily strife. Thriller found him penetrating deeper into the arcane underbelly of showmanship and funk metaphysics. With the songs closing vamp coder cycling Jackson's high pitched streaks, Price's warning becomes Doom's self fulfilling prophecy. No mere mortal can resist the evil of the Thriller. Suddenly, the singers blissed out Zenith's transmography into involuntary spasms, as if the abysmally unholy forced he'd conjured was commandeering not just Michael's vocal chords, but the entire musical ritual into soul shattering apotheosis. It was the moment Michael Jackson merged mortal pop virtuosity with outright demonic possession.

3:15 Thriller's closing seconds fuse electrobeat bombast with the visceral horror scape of Jackson's vocal deification warping into Beel's Abubian armageddon, the final portal to the darkly sublime Halloween portal he'd manifested through songcraft was now fully breached. Of course, the full seismic impact and horror fantasy immersion of Thriller wasn't unveiled until its iconic fourteen minute music video transmission hit global airwaves in December nineteen eighty three. Working alongside Zombifide maestro John Landis and choreographer Supreme Michael Peters, Jackson transformed the song's relatively concise pop convulsions into a full night of grand guignoles, spectacle, and dance floor necromancy. When Mike Sill and his ghoul date Ola Ray famously shed their human skin to reveal bloodied undead creatures prowling a thicket of yellow eyed zombies. When the opening vamp drops to reveal Jackson's blood curdling howl and choreographic delirium, whipping his crew of graveyard dadites into synchronized submission. This was no mere bit of MTV ephemera. This was a young artist taking the entire concept of pop entertainment into pitch black metaphysical territory for nearly a quarter hour. Thriller's groundbreaking visuals spliced glimpses of Jackson's joyous, danceable grace with unrelenting images of supernatural voodoo and primordial horror, unleashed upon a banal suburban subdivision. Yet throughout its genre splicing odyssey, through teen romance, schlock,

4:46 creature feature, and avant dance recital, a singular, cohesive vision remained intact. Michael J. Jackson had become the eternal balancer, weaving transcendent pop ecstasy with ancient ancestral fears from the darkest human subconscious. With undying charisma and Terpsichorean brilliance, he beckoned everyone across the planet to submit to the rhythm, all while shape shifting into pop's ultimate reaper, lurking beneath the pulsating four quarters groove. It was the literal birthing of pop's most perfect Halloween monster, Michael the funk Revenant, forever daring audiences worldwide to find rapture in the unquenchable nightmare rendered irresistibly funky. When the full length thriller Opus hit the stratosphere, two decades of collective pop culture consciousness shifted irrevocably in its wake. Suddenly the entire world was enthralled by Michael Jackson and his metaphysical pop ghool gestalt sacheting between blissful dance ecstasies and dark forbidden imagery far beyond traditional music video spook show, the youth of multiple generations absorbed the zeitgeist, capturing choreography with baited breath, codifying Thriller as a new ritual of demonic pop's solstice. The Zombifide Coder became an annual tradition, a full blown spiritual celebration honoring Jackson's full continuum of showmanship from slick pop virtuoso to dark Sharman Reaper. For kids across the globe, learning Thriller's rhythms and grotesquery was a rite of passage into true pop magic. The video's impact rippled far beyond MTV.

6:20 Its striking imagery, instantly recognizable worldwide apparel, product lines, haunted attractions all were inevitably co opted by Thriller's nulled grasp. For decades to come, an entire occult mythos had blossomed across all commercial forms, all paying tribute to Michael's ultimate pop seance manifesto. More in a moment, nearly thirty five years after those first ghouls crept on mass across the screen. Thriller's masterful synthesis of spooky, funk and avant pop abides as a singular cultural monolith, forever fusing music, dance, cinema, and horror into one perfect phantasmogorical marriage. It stands alone in the annals of popular art as a tootemic supernatural vision manifested by one solitary, multi hyphenate deity operating on an entirely separate creative plane from mere hit singles or music videos. As the Hit Maker Chronicles has illuminated, Michael Jackson's Thriller was far more transcendent than its seven minute compact pop perfection, Grammy acclaim, or record smashing statistics suggest it was the sonic and visual embodiment of one singular artistic visionary's ability to summon eternal, elemental driving forces towards the collective submission we all secretly crave. Within its grooves and undead imagery lies the primal urge to confront our most arcane fears and metaphysically transmute them into euphoric pop ritualism.

7:55 So go ahead, submit to Thriller's eternal Halloween possession once more, lose your in its crimson siren song, summoning dancers and ghouls to thrash in unholy communion. Can you feel an ancient demonic spirit, a forbidden reckoning seeping through the dance floor as the synth stabs penetrate your soul. This is Michael's Knight of the Living Dead, his darkest pop seance, with the unholiest of groove magic fueling each note. As that iconic scream fills the atmosphere. Feel Vincent Price's old world necromancy fuse with Michael's peerless thrashing into an incantation, unleashing your own gravest of terrors. Now let the rapture begin.

8:37 I'm Andrew Irons and this has been another engaging episode of The hit Maker Chronicles. Join us next week as we continue to uncover the stories behind the songs and artists that have left an indelible mark on the world. The Hit Maker Chronicles is a production of Calarogus Shark Media executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott. Portions of this podcast may have been created with the assistance of Ai