One Year Later: Remembering Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson died one year ago today

By Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery

Michael Jackson was one of the greatest performers in American history, perhaps of all time.

I invoke the spirit of the 1980s in the following conversation, but as a tribute to Jacko, I maintain that the greatness of his work—especially the songs from Off the Wall and Thriller—carries the timeless pop sound that will inspire artists and listeners for decades to come.

Remember watching early MTV (as the joke goes, when there was a reason for there to be an "M" in title) and seeing the videos for “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller”? If you were like me, you probably couldn't believe that it was the same kid who scored with the song about the rat named Ben— They don't see you as I do/I wish they would try to/I'm sure they'd think again/If they had a friend like Ben. It really was a song about a rat.

But this new Michael, this showman—this super Michael of 1982—he was a really new kind of performer. And he had it all.

Ushering in the MTV generation of the early 1980s, Jackson was the real deal—singer, dancer, handsome with flash, panache really. . . . When Thriller hit the record stores, it sold and sold. Songs from Thriller saturated the airwaves, and the Jackson experience of the eighties was in full swing as the songs flew off the album and onto the charts—great songs, mostly.

The duet “The Girl Is Mine” with Paul McCartney was the goofiest song on Thriller, and anytime two guys are arguing over a girl, the last thing anyone would ever hear either of them say is “The doggone girl is mine.” Most girls would drop a guy for uttering such foolishness. However, there are moments of driving, intense rock on Thriller that are unrivalled in American music. Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo in "Beat It" is raw and powerful; it is the stuff of guitar gods. Vincent Price's faux-scary rap during the song "Thriller" is almost as faux-frightening and fun as his “Black Widow” tirade on Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare. And if there is a dance club that does not play either "Billie Jean," "Beat It," or "Wanna Be Startin' Something" on an hourly basis, it is probably a lame dance club and you probably want to take your leg warmers somewhere else.

Forty-five million-plus copies and eight Grammy Awards later, Thriller is the greatest-selling album of them all.

This brings us to the question, is Thriller the greatest album of all time? It is one of those questions that begs to establish the criteria before trying to establish the superlative, but it has to be asked. With the advent of album-oriented rock (AOR) in the 1960s (our webmaster Ben believes that Sgt. Pepper is the greatest and most responsible for the phenomenon and that is hard to argue, also), some albums became home runs and others became foul balls. For every Dark Side of the Moon, there is a Mr. Roboto, as it were.

Join us on our NPG Facebook page for a discussion and chime in on our question: What is the best album of all time in the rock era?