not guilty: michael jackson

Hey, remember those "Not Guilty" posts?  We didn't think so.  But we warned you they might turn up again sometime - you know, like a bad penny.

Anyway, we'd be remiss if we didn't make some mention this week of the twenty-fifth anniversary of "Thriller."  We were nine years old in December of 1982.  These were heady times.  We were navigating our way through our waning interest in cartoons and Scratch & Sniff stickers and our waxing interest in pop music and video games and Thursday night roller-skating - set against the inevitable backdrop of increased homework and the still relatively new insight into how babies were made and how this information affected the gender dynamic in the fourth grade in general and at the roller rink in particular - so we might be excused for failing to notice at the time that we were, in fact, witnessing history being made down at the Ches-A-Rena.

Well, maybe not the Ches-A-Rena specifically, but at roller rinks and similar youth hangouts nation- nay, worldwide.  At some point, yes, we realized that "Thriller" was huge.  More huge, even, than the other records of the day.  But it wasn't until we got it into our head yesterday that we might try to find a few words to say about this landmark album that we realized the enormity of this moment in music history.  A few months ago, we heard a segment on Tony Kornheiser's radio show in which he asked of Washington Post television critic Lisa de Moraes why successful recording artist Gwen Stefani would deign to appear on "American Idol."  Her answer seemed at once both simple and profound: the threshold for success in music is much, much lower than that for television.  Maybe it's because we are more attuned to the peculiarities of the recording industry than those of television, but that simple fact had never occurred to us before.  Numbers that would indicate an enormously successful record - a platinum record (one million copies sold) - would probably result in cancellation for a television show.  A good, gold record probably wouldn't make it past the pilot.  We shudder to think what might have happened if the guys in Beulah - who spent their entire career toiling for independent labels - had pursued instead a career in the television industry.

What we learned yesterday literally floored us.  Like we said, we knew "Thriller" was huge.  We even knew it was the biggest selling record of all time.  But we didn't realize it had sold one hundred four million copies worldwide, forty million of which moved in the initial pressing.  It spent eighty weeks on the Billboard Top Ten, including thirty-seven weeks - January to about mid-October for those keeping score at home - at number one.  It was the best selling record of both 1983 and 1984, competing both critically and commercially against such acclaimed releases as Van Halen's "1984," Def Leppard's "Pyromania," Cyndi Lauper's "She's So Unusual," Madonna's "Like A Virgin," Duran Duran's "Rio," Bryan Adams' "Reckless," John Cougar Mellencamp's "Uh-Huh," Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," and Prince's "Purple Rain."  "Thriller" was bigger than everything.  Put together.  And what's more, this record was - and still is - really fucking good.

Perhaps the most damning evidence of "Thriller's" pervasiveness was that even though we never had MTV until we went to college, the Michael Jackson videos were old hat by the time we got to junior high school.  And speaking of those videos, we're not actually going to show one here.  Instead we humbly present Michael Jackson performing on the Motown Twenty-Fifth Anniversary special.  This was the appearance that launched him to superstardom, and it's fitting that it is his finest song.  Which - considering some of the other tunes with which he has been involved - is among the highest praise imaginable.