Introduction
Michael Jackson is one of the world’s most famous singer and artist. Starting off as an ordinary American recording artist, he had a couple of breaks. He was later on discovered as the world’s King of Pop because of the types of songs he usually includes in his music albums. Michael Jackson is often referred to by his fans MJ.
Jackson did not become famous just because he has a relatively good or unique singing voice. His unique and usually hard-to-copy dance moves were actually equally contributory to his success as an entertainer, a recording artist, and even a businessman. This man certainly rocked the world. Born in the U.S. particularly in Indiana in the 29th of August 1958 and died in the same state—particularly in Los Angeles California, Michael Jackson definitely left a huge legacy both to his fans and to all the people he had helped.
The objective of this paper is to be able to present a good comparison between the two of his most popular and successful albums: “Dangerous” and “Thriller.” Overall, Michael produced 10 music albums. However, for the purpose of discussion, we will only focus on the two mentioned albums.
Dangerous
This could only mean one thing, really. Christopher Lynch works as a music reviewer. He listens to a wide range of artists’ music; he also watches their music videos and then creates a review of each one of them. He spends most of his free time doing the same thing. He is, so far, an incredible and reliable author of music reviews.
Released in the year 1991, Dangerous is Michael Jackson’s eighth music album. The album contains a total of 9 singles—Black or White, Remember the Time, In the Closet, Jam, Who is It, Heal the World, Give in to me, Will You Be There, and Gone too Soon. Critics during that time reasonably gave Michael Jackson, the contents of that album, and his overall performance a good rating, probably more or less than a grade of 7/10 based on the different reviews we have retrieved and read.
We are currently in the 21st century. Several years have passed since Michael Jackson’s death and of all the songs in this album, there is probably only one song that the current generation of casual music listeners and enthusiasts would recognize—heal the World. Not even half of the songs in this album are popular these days except for the one we just mentioned. However, Dangerous still continues to be recognized as one of MJ’s most successful albums, both in terms of sales and its impact on the entertainer’s career. This could be attributed to the context used in the one and only youth-friendly song in this album. Heal the World’s message and music video got the people’s attention and affection. The song is good and is also somewhat melodramatic. Understanding the message of the song and the video used for the MTV, we could safely say that it carried the album. The rest of the songs in the album are very classic-Michael Jackson . The current generation of music listeners would probably see this as an album that contains stereotypical Michael Jackson music. But nonetheless, the album is still considered as one of the greatest hits in the history of Pop Music.
Thriller
Michael’s entertainment career is not characterized purely by ups because if he had been greatly honored by some of his best-performing albums—in terms of sales and performance, it would be safe to say that he had also been disgraced by those that did not do well in terms of sales and performance. Michael’s latest album before Thriller was Off the Wall. Though this album was greatly admired by majority of Michael’s fans and was also a commercial success, it “received strong critical reviews from a lot of music experts and enthusiasts”.
However, the good thing is that despite those criticisms, Michael was able to absorb what his critics told about him, and perhaps his performance. From those negativities, he was able to make a better plan and do a lot better on his next album release.
That next album was Thriller. It is considered as one of the top selling music albums of all time. The album contains only 7 songs—The Girl is Mine, Billie Jean, Beat It, Wanna be Startin’ Somethin’, Human Nature, Pretty Young Thing, and Thriller. 3 of these songs are one of the people’s all-time favorite hits of Michael Jackson—Billie Jean, Beat it, and Thriller. In fact, we can still hear people playing these songs in their music player—a very good indicative sign that Michael’s legacy still lives.
Sources estimate that somewhere between 65 to 110 million copies of this album were sold; making it the best-selling album of all time during that time and until today. This is the album that enabled Michael to finally wreck down the racial barriers and other sociocultural issues concerning his stage performance and his whole career. This is by far his most successful album. The current generation of music listeners who are most likely exposed to all sorts of the latest generation music is actually playing MJ songs from this album which is quite surprising considering the number of years that has passed since the album’s official release.
References
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia 6th Edition. (2011). Michael Joseph Jackson. Columbia Entertainment.
Ebony Magazine. (2007, December). Michael: 25 Years After Thriller. Ebony Publishing Inc.
Harrington, R. (2007). Prince and Michael Jackson: Two Paths to the Top of Pop. The Washington Post.
Lynch, C. (2001). Ritual Transformation through Michael Jackson's Music Video. Journal of Communication Inquiry.
