Michael Jackson's "Thriller"

Darkness falls across the land. The podcast hours close to pen. This does come in search of tools. So please subscribe and like real soon. Today's song has the sound of MJ and Quincy Jones getting down. But Rod Temperton played a part, you see. Say Diallo and Luxury. And though you want to hear the stems, your hear things only they could deliver. For no mere mortals could record. The song we know as thriller. [Laughter] Happy Halloween everybody! And so Luxury today's song is from one of the most famous people of the 20th century. And it's the title track on the best selling album of all time. I think to date there are 70 million copies that have been sold. This spooky R&B pop smash from 1983 is certified diamond. And it topped the charts in the US and damn near every country with a record player worldwide. It even pops back on the charts annually during a particular time of year. This song's popularity knows no bounds. You can go to any corner of the world and find somebody who's played this song at some time in their life. Plus its music video redefined what a music video can even be. Right, it's one song and that song is thriller by Michael Jackson. [Music] I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury. AKA the guy who talks about interpolation on the internet. And if you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this episode. And while you're there, please subscribe. All right, let's start. Let's do this. I think it's hilarious the idea of playing a song like this one for someone and then be like, "Oh, this is catchy. Who is this?" I've never heard this before. I've never heard this before. This is our artist. It's really, this is like a mind-bogglingly known song and a mind-bogglingly known performer, but for good reason. Well listen, man, what does thriller Michael Jackson mean to you? When I was a kid, I loved Michael Jackson. When I was a kid, I loved this album thriller. And when I was a kid, I loved this song and this video. So it just reminds me of being a kid and how pop music at that age is so important and so meaningful and shared with everyone you know knew about it. So that's what it brings back to me is just childhood. We're on the same page. Fifth grade memories. Listen, I tried to tap back into that core memory. I went back and listen to the song. And I remember how much it scared me. Yeah. Like this song was legitimate. Honestly, I've been some price part about like ghouls closing into seal your doom. Like when you're a kid, you're just like, why are they like pounding me with this infectious rhythm? And yet they're like trying to scare me at the same time. It was the confluence of those things that like really like I took to heart. And by the way, it still works because my middle kid, I remember I was watching the thriller video with him probably around Halloween. And you know, he's like seven or so in 2018. Yeah. And he was still scared. Like he didn't finish the video. Like he was out of the room. Oh, sad. And I apologize. And I'll never forget. He actually sent to me. I'll watch that video again when I'm 21. Which I would definitely bring up. Legal drinking. Yeah. You'll finally be able to. Yeah, he can vote. He can be able to vote. Yeah. Maybe we're in a car in certain states and watch the Michael Jackson video for thriller. Yeah, that's funny. I made it because I was slightly older when I first saw it. But to me, like the scaryness has always been to me baked in with the campiness and the wink, wink, referentialness. I mean, if you're just having Vincent Price on the track, the scaryness is a little bit like melded with with irony with like this is somebody who was scary before. And you know, since 30 years ago when he was a horror movie star, you know, horror has changed. And therefore having this throwback horror movie laugh even that kind of cackle. Seem it feels like a reference that you're meant to, you know, here as ironic or referential. But not like scary, scary scary scary. I was scared. Michael Jackson turned around with his own around all array and like did that face. Like I can take it in the movie theater. No, I was like, I was like, Mom, you know, why did you show me this? That was a surprise. That was a surprise. The only other thing I want to say about Michael before we get started here is that it's a little annoying to me. Once again, going back to our age because we were similarly ages. It's annoying to me like when pretty much every R&B star, every rap star at some point in their career if they're successful, they're comparing themselves to Michael Jackson. Let me tell you, you might have the sheer stats to be Michael Jackson. But it's hard to explain. And we even have to explain to some people who work on the show because not everybody on this show was was alive in time to see this. Yeah. You don't understand how big Michael Jackson was. This is a time when we have three broadcast networks, the radio plays songs. But you don't have like infinite access because you can't drive around with a record player in your car. Like you just don't have access to everything at all times. And here is a guy who comes along who was already a big star, but like. He's a child star in the 70s already. Big child star. Never want to win an actor in this is a second career for him, basically. This is the beginning of his second act. And I'm telling you, there's just no level. There's no way to sort of describe how in a 1982 world, how big Michael Jackson was. It was just on another level. That's bigger. You know, I try to see. I imagine that the Beatles in the 60s is on this level. But like, this is that level. You're right, all the things we take for granted to about being across media. It's not just music. It's also television, which in the 70s was like this double whammy. But now in the 80s, we have music videos. We have Pepsi commercials, right? We have all kinds of things where it's branching out into other forms of like life touch points. So you're not just hearing another radio a lot, by the way. You're also seeing it in all these other ways. You're seeing it in all these other ways. Before we dive into breaking down thriller, let's talk a little bit about where Michael is in his career at this time. This is the early 80s, after he released his fifth studio album off the wall, which it should be pointed out. It's so 10 million copies. It's already a massive hit. That's the time it was already, I believe Quincy said it was already the biggest black album that had ever been recorded. Like, he's breaking records that nobody thought would be broken. And he wanted to make a bigger. I mean, that's the thing that like kind of follows him through the rest of his life is always trying to exceed the previous smash. Not necessarily to a healthy degree, but like bad had to be better bigger than thriller. And then dangerous, et cetera, et cetera. By the way, every word has to be kind of playing on. I'm even more scary than I was last time. Totally. You know, my other son, who was really into Michael Jackson when he was about five or six. I remember he said, hey, I wrote a Michael Jackson song. And the song that he wrote, the title I'll never forget, it was, you're scared of me. And I was like, you're absolutely on that mic. He went from being a thriller, he was off the wall after thriller, dangerous, dangerous. You know, like it's just that it's interesting. You're right. It sort of goes along this progression. But I love what Questlove said about this. It was in one of his Instagram posts. He sort of wishes that Michael could have been here longer. Yeah. And that he thinks that Michael would have been here longer if he had not enjoyed the success that this album brought along. In Questlove's view, he's like, I wish it had sold a little bit less. So that he wasn't always trying to chase the biggest album of his career every single time. If he had peaked with off the wall and then dipped a little bit, maybe some back and forth, my unhealthy. Yeah. Exactly. I think all artists sort of feel that all artists are sort of like, oh snap, that was such a huge success. How am I ever going to top that again? Michael's case, he actually does top it off the wall should have been almost any other artist's peak. And yet he tops it with the greatest selling album of all time. So one almost understands why he thought I can do it again. I can speak to that on like the most minuscule level comparison. No, go for it. But in my own, when I put songs out in my life and something does well, the problem is like the next thing you put out if it doesn't do as well, part of you feels a little bit like it affects you. I do something wrong. Then I do something wrong. It's not just the luck of the draw. It's not just the marketing or the video. But then you think about all those things. So there's a little bit of chasing a previous success. Of course. And then you may never, that may have been the most successful thing you overdue for the rest of your life. Which is frightening. I think that's absolutely terrifying when you. So if we feel this way or we have a little insight into it, you can imagine what Michael Jackson. You can imagine the top of the world. All of the lights and all of the press and the entire world watching how much pressure was on him. But yet somehow with the album Thriller and all that pressure, they somehow delivered. And it's important to point out that the album Thriller was recorded in eight weeks. You know, Quincy says we didn't suffer from the paralysis of analysis. He was like, we didn't get in our own way. We did an album. We took off the three worse songs and then we replaced them with three more songs. And then we put those nine songs. And one of those were three replacements, I think, was Billie Jean. Might have been beaten or Billie Jean, but one of the huge smashes from that record. One of the replacements was Beat It. Was Beat It. Okay. That's so crazy to me. And here's a guy who's absolutely chasing all of the greats. Like he's chasing all the greats. You know, when Quincy met Michael for real. Like, you know, not just in passing in an award show. It was while he was working on the wizz. And he saw that Michael had something special. And Michael said, you know, I want you to produce my next album, which was going to be off the wall. I want you to produce it at Epic. And Epic stood in his way. Epic said, no, Quincy's too jazzy. Oh, interesting, right? But he fought for Quincy and eventually got it. And by the way, to hear Quincy say it, black and white execs were like, not Quincy Jones. We have all these other people you could work with. It turns out off the wall proved everybody wrong as Quincy also puts it. He saved everybody's job. Yeah. And Epic. And he was working with a guy who just had a big. view of what he was capable of, in ways that have only recently made sense to me personally. Interesting. I heard this within the last calendar year and it made so much sense. Michael was trying to be Elvis, and Fred Astaire, and James Brown, and everybody all in one. He was like, when I have the dance moves, I'm going to be big as Brown. He was like, I'm going to transcend race, I'm going to transcend, music genre, I'm going to have all of it. The crossover was a big important thing in this record, especially, too, because this is the record where they do crossover into the wide audience. We just mentioned, beat it. It was no accident that they brought Eddie Van Halen, the biggest guitar player. There were even Paul McCartney. One of my favorite pictures from this period is a picture of Michael Jackson, Quincy, Paul McCartney, all these people in the studio. Mike has like the biggest sweater on a T-shirt. It's a huge sweatshirt. I was picturing the sweet sweater, but he's got a huge sweat state on his T-shirt. Quincy says they were dragging engineers in and out of the studio just because they were exhausted. But Mike and Quincy together were chasing perfection. One thing that Quincy does as a producer unlike maybe a modern producer is bringing in dozens and dozens of the best and the brightest across functions. One thing we will be talking about in this. That's what a good producer does, especially like a 70s. You get back then when you have instruments. He has an arrangement background. He has a film scoring background. He has a jazz background. He has an incredible career, just to add to a little bit of what we were saying. One thing he does is he's the orchestrator of this project. He is thinking how can we get to the top? How can I bring in the best songwriters across these, what ends up being nine songs? There are different writers on every song, different instrument players. There is a core team, but there's also specialists. And you also have, you know, I don't want to understand it. You also have the genius of Michael Jackson in the room. I mean, I think obviously everybody knows a few people have that voice, few people have that vision. But when you listen to the early demos before like the lyrics are written on some of these songs, you know, if you go back and listen to the Billie Jean demo, he already knows where things go. He's just scatting and he's like putting in words to mean nothing. But you can hear the song that's eventually Billie Jean coming about. I think that if you think of these two songs, this one and that one, as the ends, the extremes of the spectrum of what Michael is capable of and what he delivers, because that's an perfect example of him sort of bringing everything to the song like from his brain and then it's translated by Quincy and this and the team. This is a case where it's a little bit the other end of the spectrum where he kind of is more of a performer, which as we've talked about on many episodes. On this show, we always have our unsung heroes. We've got three this episode. And like I said before, Quincy is maybe the fourth in the background, but because we have a future episode to focus on him, we will save him and we've given him his flowers a little bit. Today, Rod Temperton deserves some flowers. Now, Rod Temperton is a gentleman from Cleathorpe, England. And he formed a band around 1977 with two American brothers called Heat Wave. One of my favorite groups, always and forever, Boogie Nights, the groove line, which kind of plays in my head all the time by blowing decisions. I mean, like the list could go, I could go on and on about this. Well, let's listen to a little bit of Boogie Nights, which is one of my favorites of theirs. And it becomes relevant in the next part of the story. So Quincy Jones hears this music and he loves it and he gets in touch with Rod Temperton. A little surprise as Temperton explains it to find out that he is a white man from England. He's in a band with two Black American brothers and the three of them for the core of that unit. He's not singing in it, but he is their course songwriter. Quincy loves Heat Wave and he brings him in to start working together as one of his core songwriters in his group. As I mentioned, as we talked about, Quincy assembles the best and the brightest across disciplines to make music. That is one of his major talents. So one of the first songs that Rod turns in is called Rock With You. And here's Rod's demo with him humming the melody so charmingly, and I have to play a snippet for you. So sweet. Listen. Listen. It's a demo. Can we just have a moment to talk about laughter on one song because we need to explain ourselves a little bit. Out of context sometimes, when we're laughing at something, it's not because it's bad. It's because music has humor in it. Music musicians have a sense of humor. Also, he's recording a demo. He doesn't know that this song will later be recorded by one of the greatest singers of all time with all the genius of Quincy Joe. And he's not deluded into thinking that he's nailing it either. But it is later here's somebody saying it is so charming. While this turns into Rock With You, which is on Michael Jackson's Off The Wall record, one thing to point out is how there's a real similarity between Off The Wall and Boogie Knights. They both have that sort of like floaty, jazzy intro. Absolutely. Boom right into that bass line, which is also very similar. But it's okay, because Temperatin's borrowing from himself. So he's interpolish. I was going to have to. I was driving into work today. I was like, can people get sued for basically interpolating themselves? I guess that they don't own their masters. The answer is yes and anything's possible. But in this case, especially back at the era and the time and the people involved. It was real. It was almost. You can almost picture Quincy saying, I love that song Boogie Knights. And you make me one. And he said, sure, I can make you Boogie Knights. So Rod Temperatin is actually on Off The Wall. He has three tracks on it. He does Rock With You. He does Burn This Disco Out. He also does the title track. He does Off The Wall. Quincy says, I want you to work on everything I'm doing. So he becomes part of the Quincy team, the Q team. So he goes and does a few huge hits like Brothers Johnson's Stomp. Yep. [MUSIC] He does Live In Me by Rubius and Shaka Khan. He does Baby Come To Me, which is Patty Austin and James Ingram, that duet. And he does Love Is In Control, which might be my favorite Donna Summer track. I don't know about you, but that's a big one for me. And he does this one. And just because we have the demo for it, another one of my favorite songs, George Benson's Give Me The Night. But this is the 90's demo with Rod humming so charmingly. Yeah. [MUSIC] So cute. It's so, so very, very charming. So that's Rod. He's part of the core thriller dream team that gets brought in. He writes two other songs for Thriller, actually, and it's the only songs that weren't released to singles. So Rod Temperton wrote The Lady in My Life and Baby Be Mine. We've had many discussions about both of those songs. Both of these songs. If you've got to drop one song from the greatest album of all time, it would probably for me be The Lady in My Life, but you're a lady in my life kind of guy. I'm probably a lady in my life, I know what song I would drop, if I may, if I may, I would tell you right now. The song that I would drop, and I say as the Beatles fan, is easily The Girl Is Mine. [MUSIC] I think it needed to be on Paul's album and Say, Say, Say, which was on Paul's album. Should have been on Taylor. Should have been on. Can you imagine say, say, say, replaces The Girl Is Mine on Thriller? Isn't even better album might make the case, but people overthought it, and they were like, hey, hey, Michael, why don't you give me the soul track, and I'll give you the pop song, like I'm sorry, but you know what, we have a mutual friend with Sir Paul, and if he wants to come on one song and make a case that this was the right decision, we will gladly accept him. Well, hey, we're going to get into how Thriller was made. We're even going to talk about how it began its life as a little song called Starlight. So after the break, we'll be back with The Stims, stick around. Welcome back to One Song, Luxury, walk us through it, tell us how did Thriller get made? >> So, Rod Temperton, so he writes the two songs out of the nine songs on Thriller, seven are singles, and he writes the two that aren't singles, but then he writes, he goes and writes. The title track again, he wrote the title track, and he writes the title track for Thriller, and that song is called Starlight. It's so different with that lyric. Tell us about Starlight. >> Well, here's a deal, Temperton is quoted as saying, look, Michael Jackson, he loves movies, so I came up with the idea that I should write something really theatrical, a really dramatic, you know, melody structure. >> And that is a great word. This is a dramatic-ass song. It's like a Broadway musical-ass song, it's got so much going on. It's like a movie and a musical on one. >> No, you're right, you're right. Quincy, not a big fan of Starlight. >> It's like you can do better, Rod. >> I believe in you, buddy. >> At one point it was called Midnight Man, I think that's a great title. I kind of like Midnight Man, maybe that should be the name of something else. But then, Rod had a better idea. According to an interview that he gave in 2007 to the Sunday Telegraph, he said, I woke up, and I just said this word, something in my head just said, this is the title. You could visualize it on top of the billboard charts. You could see the merchandising for this one word, how it jumped off the page as Thriller. >> Thriller. >> That's the word. >> Yeah, that was the word. >> He found the word. >> He was looking for the word. >> But he found it. >> He felt like it was a really crap word to say. >> It's a weird word to say. >> He was like Thriller. >> That's part of the genius of Michael Jackson. 'cause he steps up to the mic and like try it out see if it works and he made it work. But he, that's like a single ability. - He made that word work. - Let's talk about it for a second. Singability is a real thing. It's probably, I'm sure there's an acting equivalent of like it's on the page that looks great and then you go to say it and just sort of lands flat or it feels weird and the right bounce or rhythm. Same thing with singing. So not everyone necessarily might have made that word thriller work. Jump off the page as it were in the song and set part of Mike's magic in this song. It's making that title work and go to Rod's vision of it being on marquees and merchandising. - Yeah, and he said that once he had the title, the lyrics were written just in a couple of hours. But now let's talk about the lyrics because in a weird way, the thriller, it doesn't technically mean in film language what it means in the song. The song could have been called ♪ Horror, horror film ♪ But you know, somehow they took the word thriller which is usually like, you know, like espionage and like, you know, people like, you know. - Right. - There's a fairs of the right that makes a vibe of that. - Like a thriller technically is like the step before it gets into gore and horror, right? Like it's not, - Yeah, it's not terrifying. - Horror, horror, but try and tell that to anybody, our age and younger. No, a thriller absolutely means horror means Halloween. - Interesting. - There is a really interesting process going here where the demo is its own entity and it's a fully formed song. But then the production is its own fully formed process and then the performance and the final product is its own sort of third thing. So it's similar to how the Peshmoot had Martin gore make these fully formed demos. But then in the studio, Alan Wilder in their heyday, you know, back in this first albums, would take over on the production side largely among the handful of others that we've talked about on those two episodes, go back and listen. But then Dave Gann was the singer who would go in and be the interpreter and bring his character and his personality and his fully formed voice and really own the song. So the song became a Peshmoot song. Very similar thing is happening in this song. So that second unsung person I wanna talk about, Anthony Maranelli is his name. He is a, he does film scores now, but at the time he was known for his synthesizer programming and then the important thing in 1981, '82 when this is all going down, is to know how to work synthesizers. We've alluded to this a little bit on previous episodes. It's still a new thing. And not everybody can turn the right knob, find the right, you know, there's the attack decay. All of the parameters of a synthesizer are still an expert realm. So Anthony Maranelli has a great series, a great podcast and series of videos where they go deep into thriller and the making of thriller. So a lot of the facts on this episode, I wanna get full credit or coming up with it. And from his direct conversations with, we will tip the head. And literally the name of his show is called in the room 'cause they were in the room. So that is such a special thing. And boy, do they nerd out in the most wonderful way. So one way they nerd out is talking about how every single sound was made and every single song. And what we know about the demo, the process of going from demo to production, Greg Philin games himself. And he is our third unsung hero that I'll be talking about momentarily. He is one of only three performers on the song outside of the horn. So everything you hear on the synths. - So you have Michael Jackson. - Yeah, Michael Jackson singing. - Yeah. - Yeah, Greg Philin games on everything that's a keyboard. - Really? - And then we have David Williams on guitar. - David Williams. - Yeah. - And then we have the horn section, no shade on them, they're very important. But everything that is in a horn is coming from one of those three people. So Philin games says all the parts came from Rod. He's very differential in the most very respectful way. We added occasional additions, but as Marinelli himself says, we just stylized what Rod did. They both as the main people making the music underlying this song, underlying Michael's voice. And of course he will get his own flowers separately on this episode. They full credit to what was on the demo, just being faithfully reproduced. And so that's a big part of how the song got made. - So because Rod wrote so much of this song, what do the splits look like? Is it like the Martin Gore example, where it's like a hundred percent? I can't imagine that's the case with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones in the room. - 100% Rodney Lynn Temperton is a songwriting credit. Yeah, he is the sole writer of this song. He's also the sole writer of us all. - But that's the publishing. I mean, obviously the, the, well, I guess it would be the master recording. That would be a different kind of split, wouldn't it not? - So the way master in publishing works, really in a real nutshell, is that the ownership of the song is the publishing. And so the ownership is 100% Rod Temperton's estate at this point since he passed on a few years ago. The master is a completely separate thing, right? That's owned by I guess Epic Records. That's its own, if you want to sample the record, you got to go to Rod Temperton, you got to go to Epic Records. Whoever wins that now. - As Michael Jackson goes, like, what is his percentage? Like he does get a percentage of the master. - Michael makes a lot of money. - Of course, and his estate does, what percentage of the master does he make since he's not making publishing on Thriller? - It's a, it is not a one sentence answer. First of all, I don't know the nature of his contract, but I can tell you, he didn't make a dime off of the publishing for the song Thriller. - Okay. - He doesn't make any money off of the song Thriller, except for, of course, the millions he made from the sales of the single because of the master and nature of his contract from that. And, and I'm sure that the, and the album sales, which include the song. So there's lots of ways he benefits from the song financially, but not in the songwriting credits and not in the publishing royalties. - I got it. - All right, we've waited so long. We want to get into the stems. Where do you want to start? - This is interesting. We usually start with drums because we kind of build from the ground up, but this is like a cinematic song and it's got a lot of effects and things. So let's talk about that. The way the song starts with all these intro effects. - Yes. - Another unsung here. There's a lot of people that made this song. What it is. So one of them is the engineer Bruce Wodean, who for the wolf sounds, apparently brought in his great dain, but it didn't work out. The dog was not interested. So apparently it's Michael who's making these sounds. - Michael Jackson. - And you know what? You can kind of hear the bump. It sounds like it is like somebody wearing headphones. Not a dog. So that does, it does pan out. It does make sense that he'd be making these like, woo, pretty, pretty impressive wolf sounds, Mike. It's a very dynamic range. Now that sounds like a dog. - I do believe they use like a sound effects, like record or something, VDC sound effects record. So there's also a door slamming and opening and closing. - Absolutely. That's a big, that starts the song. So what's crazy about that? Oh, did you want to say something? - No, that to me is the opening of the song. - It's the opening. - It's iconic as the rest of the song. - This sound took one day. And apparently I was reading an interview with Swedean who talks about how he rented a bunch of creaking doors from the Universal Lot and then spent a day just recording them opening and closing to get that perfect opening sound and shutting sound 'cause the song ends with it shutting. Let's hear how it ends. (upbeat music) - Okay, I mean, I believe in my all these sound familiar because when you heard the song 100 million times, these sounds stand out. And aside from that barking dog possibly, it is important, they wanted to make new sounds and not just recreate stuff off of records, off of classics. - Exactly. - Courtney sound effects records. - Yeah, you heard it a million times. - Exactly. So there's also this intro sound of a falling synth, which is apparently the one musical contribution that Michael made himself. So you apparently push the button on the Rp2600 to make this falling sound here. (dramatic music) And then you've got the organ that's being played by Greg Villengaine, so we'll get to in a minute. So there's all these effects that start the song and are kind of interspersed throughout. But now let's start with the real backbone of the song and that's that drum machine. This is a Lindrum LM2 and it sounds a little like this. (upbeat music) Sounds like a happy birthday by Stevie Wonder. ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ Happy birthday ♪ (laughing) - I hear that, yeah. I mean, this Lindrum is on, we've talked about the Lindrum on several episodes, this is Prince's main man. Now, by the way, it should be said, going back to Anthony Marinelli, again, if you're as much of a music nerd as we are, I really highly recommend for this record, especially it's the deepest dive, it's hours and hours of content and he talks about how this Lindrum, he opened up the guts of it with drum machines back in the day to get different sounds in the pre software era. You had to go in and rip off the chips and you could put new sounds in. So he actually took an 808 clap and that's what you're hearing. There's a clap on beat four. He found that from an 808 and he soldered it in and he got a snare and a high hat from the LM1. So he's doing all this stuff that in 1982, like you need a guy like this to know how to do it and to be able to do it to make these sounds exist. So this is a hybrid drum machine, pretty special thing. And that's pretty much going through the entire track. That drum beat is pretty much laying in the foundation. The story of the song being written, we mentioned Rod Tempererton, so he's got his drum machine over in Germany. The next thing he did on top of the drum beat was come up with a bass line. So he tells the story. I came up with a core bass line that runs through the piece and then I started building chords on top to grow the tune to its climax. I wanted to build and build a stretching elastic band throughout the tune to heightened suspense. So let's listen to that bass line which was written by Rod, but is played by someone else, the third unsung hero of this episode and we'll talk about him right after this. (upbeat music) That's the best part. (upbeat music) - That was interesting. I don't know that I knew that very last sort of - Yeah. - Yeah. because you're too busy listening to the. - Murengay. - But I just saw it. No, I didn't know the bar. - I didn't know that part. - That was really funny. That's so funny. It's like this little Latin day. - I imagine Bugs Bunny doing his little cha-cha-cha-cha. - That's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it. - So that underlies the entirety of this basically six minute almost song. Let's talk a little bit about Greg Filngayne's. His career begins when he meets a young man called Stevie Wonder, who is already at the peak of his career, I should say. Greg Filngayne's is a young keyboard player. He lands in the studio and is a big part of songs in the key of life, and this is a career launching thing for him, and he ends up being Michael's music director and does a lot of work with him. So that bass is being played on an ARP 2600, which is an older kind of 70's synth, and they brought it in. It just got that, he dialed it in, he got the right sound. Just to drive the point home, we're still in an era where synth sounds are not always appreciated for their own sake. A lot of the time people are using synths sometimes in the avant-garde and kind of the more artsy music, and certainly in synth pop, there's something exciting about new sounds that don't exist. But a lot of musicians are just trying to get it to replicate-- - And they're an actual piano, or something. - An actual piano. - Yeah, I'm totally. - So they are trying to get it to sound like a bass guitar a little bit, that is part of the intent. - And growing up, I definitely thought it was a bass guitar. - Yeah, it does have that feeling to it, but that is in fact the ARP 2600. - It felt a little plucked. - Yeah, yeah, it has a little pluckiness to it, you're right. - All right, how about the synths? 'Cause to me, the synths are like a major part of the song. - It's nothing but synths and horns and vocals. Yeah, this is a big thing. So Maranelli talks about-- This is really interesting, I thought. He talks about how he worked with Michael to get some of the sounds that he then dialed in for Greg Philanganes to then play on the keyboards. On the synths. So what they did, he tells the story that before, I think we might have been the night before they were recording, Maranelli was listening-- was with Michael listening to records. So they were putting on Prince records, they were putting on the time. And they were listening for the sounds that were used. And then Michael would raise his hand and go, I wanted to sound like that. I wanted to sound like that. So Greg Philanganes is playing all of the synths that we hear on the song. - Props to Greg. - Props to Greg. He's playing the roads. - We love what you did on the song. - Playing the bass line. Stop it. Do you think he knew how iconic and huge and epic and all that stuff that what he just played was? 'Cause it sounds almost modest. - Right, it is modest. - And that one layer of roads. Now this is stacked and I'm going to play some more of those stacks. - Yes. - So let's add some drama. - Stacks are so important. We haven't said that once this episode. The stacks from the vocals to the synths to everything. The stacks are huge in the song. - Because it's even less the Quincy of it all. - Perfectly. - Knowing how many stacks, is it three layers? Is it eight layers? Like we gotta talk about the stacks. - Because we have a turnaround right at the end of the chorus and we have a bridge. But the rest of the song is a two bar groove on a single bamping on basically two chords but one bass line the whole time. So all of the variation in variety is happening in the vocal, the melody and the synths and the sounds that are swirling in and out. - It's a little right. - Quincy was too jazzy and it turned out no. No. It took a jazz brain to freaking stack this record the way that we know it today. - And wait till we get to the vocals. That's what we're doing. - Oh no, they're coming guys. They're coming. - The jazz really. - I wanna hear some of these synths. - The jazz will be jazzy in a moment. - All right. - So let's hear some more. - I'm trying to say that. (dramatic music) - So let me just talk about this stack. This is includes for sure a Jupiter eight. There's a prophet five and there's probably a Yamaha CS80 and a synchlevere. Some people thought that I said synchlevere. Some people say synchlevere in America and some people say synchlevere in Europe. You know what? We're gonna say synchlevere on this episode. - I'm fully synchlevere. - I'm fully synchlevere but go ahead. - That's in the mix too. - Let's hear all of these layers. Let's hear the synchlevere next. It's this organ sound. (dramatic music) - And I'll, don't worry, I'll play that in the stack that we all wanna hear in a second but one more isolated pad and then you'll hear how it all comes together. (dramatic music) - And you know, one cute thing I heard from this from the Maranelli podcast is that I think, 'cause Greg Philin gains is performing that with two hands so he has no fingers left to make that filter sweep go, "Wear, how the sound changes." So I think Maranelli reached over him in the recording and sort of is fiddling with some of the knobs. It's very cute. And now let's hear the stack. (dramatic music) - Nice. (singing) - It almost feels weird and wrong for us to not then come in with the bass. - Yeah. Well let's bring in the bass. (dramatic music) - Wonderful. - That's wonderful stuff. It's wonderful, wonderful stuff. The synths in the verse are fairly straightforward. I'll play a little bit of that and this is all layered so you can hear all of the different takes that Philin gains has done on the different machines. (dramatic music) - Just lots of long agato pads are happening for the most part, very diverse. - One of my favorite parts is what the synths are doing under my creatures crawling the dance. - Can you play us something from that section? (dramatic music) ♪ My creatures crawling the dance start to walk in the mask ♪ ♪ Rain ♪ - We'll get more vocals later, don't worry. That's just little teas. - Little teas of the vocals on their way. - That bridge is the only harmonically rich complicated section. We had to go somewhere right in the middle of the song 'cause the other, the three minutes on either side are just the vamp. Just vamp, vamp, vamp. - But it's so good. - It's so good. It's so jazz. That was very jazz. It's so, it's so show tunes and jazz and when we get into the vocal stack, it's the jazz singing. - It's also R&B, listen, Quincy says. He's like, we have to do something that sounds post disco and they absolutely accomplished it. I mean, like after this, there's no going back to, you know, the sounds of chic. Even now Rogers is not doing chic anymore, you know? - No one's looking for a single word that describes everything, but like the gospel is in there. The jazz is in there. A lot of Broadway musicalities sort of, I don't know if that beat is still kind of disco. It's not like they did a clean, like it's not the, it's not the black version of the knack. - Yeah. - You know, doing my Shirona. - Yeah. - But he definitely, I think he accomplishes, this is gonna be the sound of the new decade. - Right. So one fun thing that Michael did add to the process, I'll just give one last example of why I think it's a pleasure in Anthony Marinelli's podcast. Because there was this wonderfully long process of getting to the bottom of, where did that frog sound come from? And we all know the frog sound, and if you don't, there's this froggy sound that is especially clear towards the end, I will play for you now. - I know what this is. - I'll play it in the mix. (upbeat music) So wonderfully throughout some of the episodes on his show, they were trying to nail down, where did the sound come from? Somebody had a memory that Michael was in the studio, playing with a little Casio, like a little kids toy. And they finally were able to track it down, and I found the moment where they discovered here it is. - It's not Frogger, is it? - That's it, man. - You know, I'm here. (buzzer) - There you go. - You can hear it well. - It's a video game sound. - I found it. - What video game is it? - It's not a video game, it's a Casio MT60. - Oh my gosh. - It's preset 13, but it's just like little like $50, you know, kids, kids toy from back in the years. - Can we hear it again? Can I just hear it again? (buzzer) (laughing) - It's so perfect though. That's a sort of ominous layer. - That is not it, but it's ominous in this context, but I already used that in another song. That just sounds like some 80s goofiness. - It's a little bit silly too. (laughing) (upbeat music) - But now you know that it's a fraud from the kids toy. - You'd never be able to hear that Casio sound ever again. (laughing) Let's hear a little bit of the guitar stems. - This is David Williams on guitar. (upbeat music) - Now you have heard David Williams guitar part. - By the way, what is the totality? - Cool funky guitarist. By the way, he had his own career. We haven't said a whole bunch about him, but like, you know, he was a guitarist and a singer and a producer, but he was one of these like session guitarists who gets to use a lot and damn, that is a funky guitar. - That's a funky guitar and that's all he's doing throughout the track. - Because he did it right. - Yeah. - As we said about Ringo, sometimes you can do too much and it gets unusable. - I'm gonna build it towards the end in this last sort of two minutes where the outro is and the Vincent Price of it all is. He's playing that and I'll build in some of the other elements one at a time so you can hear how all of these parts are so many things that are interweaving. (upbeat music) - Ooh. - Let it keep right, let it right. Love it. - Happy Halloween everybody. - One song, thriller. We're getting into it. Bring it to the drums. (laughing) - In the second half of that, it gets a little more intense. - We have the Thereman coming. (upbeat music) - That's a Thereman, it's a Thereman. - It's a Thereman sound. - It's not an actual Thereman. is for like how it looks when it's being played and all that kind of stuff. But you rarely hear it on any song of note, but I didn't know it was on Thriller. It's not a Theraman literally. It's a Theraman sound being used by one of those synths that I mentioned. But I just love how that stack has so much going on. And when you break down all the little elements like this little Wubba Wubba, here's the plucky thing by itself. So I play the guitar by itself, here's the little plucky thing. Remember we talked about funky pockets on the Stevie Wonder, right? On its own, that sounds kind of crazy, but listen to the beat. Suddenly makes sense when you have that groove underneath it. It's important to point out. David Williams is, he's responsible for the minimalist solo that famously anchors Billy Jean and so many of these songs. So like, we've got to give David his props. He's on bad, dirty Diana, smooth criminal. So many songs. There's a reason why Quincy keeps bringing them back to you. Absolutely. Quincy ain't breaking back his little slouch. He brings it. Just a couple more really quick fun sounds and then the horn. So here is what I have labeled the Wubwub, which is happening on the Mini Mogue. That's a little fun moment too, by the way. It is fun. Yeah. Yeah, it's got its own melody. It's satisfying on its own. I love that. Bah, bah, bah, bah. Speaking of bah, bah, bah, bah. Bah, bah, bah, bah. Should we hear those horns? Yeah, let's go to the horns. All right. Because the horns, I've long said that the last great decade of saxophone on pop records is the 80s. There's a great horn section here. I think there's a flugal horn. There's a trumpet. Tell us more about these horns. Yeah, that's what I found too. We got this horn arrangement is by Jerry Hay. And him and Gary Grant are on trumpet and flugal horn along with Larry Williams saxophone and flute, but I don't hear a flute near, but I guess it's credited. And then Bill Reichinbach is credited on trombone. I heard that the horn section on these sessions is also the horn section on duck tails. The theme song to the cartoon. I love that. I love that. And let's hear some of the brass parts which really make the entire thing come to life. Especially that all those synth sounds get this added dimension when the brass is added to the mix. Let's hear that crucial moment at the top of the song where they come in at the top of that build. I love when they fall. I'll give that to you in the stack. So they add a lot of brightness, right? Because there's a lot of sort of the synths are a little bit darker. And then there's these little punctuated moments like this. That's part of the genius of temperatins arrangement of this song is that in his demo, he has added all of these little ideas to all of these little pockets. So they're all in there and they're just being translated. I use the word just very loosely. They're being excellently and expertly translated by all these musicians. But all of these little melodic ideas were actually right there in the demo. So there's a little spot where there isn't singing. Let's put some horns in there doing a little punctuated, syncopated thing. I'll play that again because I do love that part. We have more of a legato thing. I'll play it for you and then I'll add some instruments back. It is jazz, right? It's Quincy Jones. It's Quincy Jones with his jazz arrangement history. And some pop. This is a scoring history. This is a film that is a jazz musical pop rock funk disco horror song. I think this is good a point is any to bring up the fact that this is actually the last single off of the album. Seven singles. The first single is the first song on the album. In my humble opinion, it's the girl's mind. It did nothing. Billie Jean came out and really sold this album. That's the second single. The seventh single. Yeah. Is Thriller. That's crazy to me. They will take care of this later. It doesn't even come out of Halloween. Right before Halloween, they bring out pretty young thing. Because they're like we got a really good, you know, that September money. But it's not until December in November and the video came out in December, I want to say. Thriller, it's just, it speaks to this album that they were able to sit on this song as long as they did. And then it gave it a whole new life. Like this song, I mean, this album I should say sits on the top of the chart for something like 37 weeks. That's almost a whole year, you know. And this is a time when people are buying records. The lifespan from first single to the last single leaving the charts, which was Thriller is almost 18 months, which is unheard of. A life span that long. That's a year and a half. We could not do an episode about a Michael Jackson song without talking about his amazing vocals. As somebody has heard this song a million times, like I was just like, holy smokes there. He's singing like five, six, sometimes eight different parts to like one note. So Blake, I will give you the floor. But can you play us some vocals from this song? Yeah, so I've got this beautiful harmony stack where there's about 14 voices. And we're going to break it down. Let's listen to some of these most beautifully stacked harmonies that humans have ever heard. Okay, sure. So he doubles himself perfectly by the way it should be. Yeah, I mean, the perfection and key is insane. Let's hear some jazzy extensions. Oh my god, it's so good. All right, let's add another harmony to that or a harmony to that. Oh my god. My music theory is not, I don't have perfect pitch, but that might have been like a tritone harmony. It's insane. Let's add another one. That was the low and the lead. And here's the mid. I mean, it makes sense. He used to sing in the Jackson five. He used to have to like, you know, they said when he was on the set of the Wiz, he knew his lines, but he knew everybody else's lines. And I have to believe that how many parts in the Jackson five, he knew his party, new Tito's party, new Marlon's part, like you knew all the parts. And here he's just singing all of the parts through the studio magic of Quincy Jones at the board. Yes, it's insane. Oh, there's more to come. I know, there's more stacks. Let's go. There's actually four more. I'll just give you all at once so we can get to all 14 voices on the jazziest stack in a pop record. I think perhaps ever made. Oh, my God. This is one of those moments. This happens maybe not every episode, but certainly on a lot of them where we listen to something. And I just don't have anything to say because it just renders the speech list. What could you say? Can you play us just the low ones? Like how about the four that were at the bottom that we didn't hear by themselves? Like just the fact that he found that note. When I don't really hear that note in the mix, but I know that it's there because it helps create that perfect tonal quality. To me, that's that's I used to be in a duop group in college. And sometimes as an outro, they would give me a note to hit and I'd be like, I just don't, where's that note coming from? But in his, I mean, he's been singing since he was a child. You get this, it's probably just second nature to him that he knows exactly what note. And he can break that in between him and the people in the room. They can break that note into like eight parts, ten parts. Yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if part of it is sort of a back and forth with fill in gains, kind of helping find the note. Because that does sort of help set up his fingers are used to these spicy chords like 9/11 and 13th and crazy stuff. Suspensions. Here's another note. Yes. You need that note to hit the note that we all hear in our ears. And yet that, you don't even know that that note is hiding in there. It's crazy. This is a talented man. Oh, my God. It's crazy. I could do this all day. Can I hear my own personal favorite? Sure. One of my personal favorite. Yes, please. You close your eyes. I want to hear this. I want to hear how he builds this. Let's hear a bunch of clues right. rises. You close your eyes. Let's build on the close your eyes, right? Yeah. This one's lower actually next. So that was the mid. Here's the low. You close your eyes. How many parts is that? Is that like three? We have two different notes being sung by four takes. Wow. So two, two takes per note. So he's doing two notes, but he's doubling each note. That's right. That's how we get to these high numbers. And now here is, now this will be six Michael's singing three notes. Hey, the Jackson six. You close your eyes. So smooth. So gorgeous. Can I hear his vocals on nine creatures crawling? Nine creatures calling the dead start to walk in the masquerade. Yeah. This is the end of your life. Oh, I've never heard that line. And then of course, this is the weekend notes. And then the horns do this. That's the jazziest death anyone's ever experienced. If you got to go out, death by jazzy with a funk of 40,000 years, death by flugal horn. I never knew he said night creatures. I thought he said nine creatures. So you know, just, but, uh, mysteries being unraveled. I want to hear, um, you start to freeze. I want to hear that stack. You start to freeze. The way he holds that note is really. He holds it. Just like straight, no, no wobbling. Just like, eh, with this is important because when you're building these stacks, it would disturb what you're stacking would start to fall apart a little bit. So he just keeps it consistent and smooth. And then he adds this low. I guess is it you start to free. You start to do it. I can't do it. You start to freeze. Yes, I do. You start to freeze. Makes no sense by itself, but in that stack, it's perfect. You start to freeze. Yes, a different note. And then there's a fourth note. And then I'll play them all together. You start to free. That's the one you kind of hear. You're right. That is the lady. That's the one you hear, but it sounds better because you start to freeze. You're right. You know what? That's actually freeze. And the you start to freeze. No, you've got to hit all all of them in the stack. You're right. There's actually four of those. And there's only two harmony notes. I thought there was like a fourth harmony note. But here's everything together. You start to. Again, you know, it takes me back to the to the hauling notes. Episode, they start to do it. I think there's something about knowing the different parts that you can really make those notes really freaking sugary sweet. I don't know how else to describe it. Jazz. I know better word for it. Jazz. I know it's also gospel. I know it's awesome. And blues. That's all part of us are killing me horror disco song. Can we hear a little bit of just a verse? You can choose whichever verse. I just want to hear it because those stacks come in at chosen points. They're not always there. Let's start from the top. It's close to midnight. Something evil is lurking in the dark. That growl. I mean, with no stack, it's a killer no pudding. It's a killer thriller performing. It doesn't even sound comped. That sounds like one take. That just sounds like one take. Yeah. It might become. And then he does it, but you try to scream like all of a sudden you're like a whole snap. Yeah. No, it's interesting hearing that after we heard the stack because I could hear how him kind of having singing the lead differently differentiates it from the backing vocal. He's not trying to blend into the stack in that moment when he does that you try to breathe even even bending it down like that, dropping it down like that. The thing I like about our show is that when you actually take something even seemingly untouchable classics, I imagine that he's saying you know some form of it, you know, a couple of takes through the song and then went back and added in those stacks. Right. It just makes it seem like, you know, art as wonderful it is. It's not, it actually isn't magic. It just takes time and practice. It's iterative. At some point you've done the back to what you add to it, you subtract, right? And you know, Quincy says everybody goes to the studio thinking that at some point they're creating the greatest album of all time. Yeah, you kind of have to have that delusion in order to just kind of have to all the work that it takes to do. And he said he says in almost every single time you come out of that studio and it's not the greatest and you wonder why more people weren't, you know, didn't discover it, didn't listen it. But but I love the fact that we're able to break down how these classics got made. Exactly. One other fact what I love about this song and we should play a little bit is how've been surprised since up on this song. Like basically, you know, there were these lyrics that were like written very last minute by Rod in the taxi on the way to the studio. I love that story. Yeah. Yeah. And you forgot he had a meeting that morning and he promised that he would write them and he was like, oh damn, he was meeting Rand late. So he dashed him off in the cab. And Quincy's like, I need somebody noteworthy to say these crazy like horror theme lyrics. And his wife at the time is Peggy Lipton, mother of Kadada and Rashida Jones. And she makes it like, I can get you Vincent Price, which is a good guy to get on the phone. Perfect. And then Vincent Price does his part in two takes. His part used to scare me immensely as a kid, but he does two takes. And if you listen to this, we have, we have some snippets of what he did. And you'll hear some lines that didn't make the final cut, but I think they're very fun. The demons squeal in sheer delight. It's you, they spy. So plump, so right. For though the groove is hard to beat, it's still you stand with frozen feet. You try to run, you try to scream. But no more sun, you'll ever see. I mean, like this so much, I would, I would play the whole thing. But I also want to play the beginning where you can hear them talking to Vincent in the studio. Let's play a little bit of that. Hi, this is Michael Jackson. This is Vincent Price. Michael Jackson is the thriller. Oh, do we both say it? Say it together. I love that they're just working this out in the in the booth. Yeah, I'm going to play a little bit. Michael trying to sound scary. I think so. But that's you. Is that frightening enough? But apparently, like, legendarily, he kind of has like a famously actually low voice. Yes, he doesn't talk like that in regular. Why isn't he employed? I think it's the same way like you didn't roll up in the studio wearing sweatpants. You know, he's got to be Michael Jackson. He has to be Michael Jackson all the time. Let's listen to the variant of it. Can you dig it? I love that. It's camp. He's got his fingers up here the whole time, like, like twirling his mustache, like a cartoon. And I think you have a hot take. Where are you going to say? Well, no, just when he said, like, the can you dig it? I think I should have left that in. They should have left that in. Maybe it was an issue with the warriors. I don't know. I think that really trend. The campiness just goes over the top of that point. That's just like clearly. Guys, it's not a comedy trend. Very unserious at this point. Dastardly devil that he is. Such a historic day in the studio. I'm so glad that we had these parts. Yes. Well, so famously, Vincent, he goes on Johnny Carson and he talks about like how much money he got paid. So apparently he was given a choice between either $20,000 up front or you can get a percentage on the album thriller. Oh, no. And what did he choose? He took the 20K, according to legend, according to these interviews. And so he goes on the night show and Carson says he could have made millions out the royalties and price goes, oh, well, I can't do his voice. Well, I know. This can't be deep voice, but he had such a crazy exit considering the man is from St. Louis, Missouri. But that was the arrow where everyone was talking in that mid-Atlantic, whatever movie voice. Absolutely. Absolutely. But he always seemed to, I feel like he walks around the world talking with reverb on himself too. You know what? I actually have him with that reverb. You want to just hear a little bit of that? Yes, I'd like to hear. He sounds still sounds spooky, but a little bit less so. The foulest stenches in the air, the funk of 40,000 years and grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom. Okay, that's still creepy. I take it back. No, no. That man needs no reverb. Just scare me. We've been talking about the music video for Thriller, perhaps the most famous music video of all time. I mean, it really is a short film. It clocks in at 14 minutes. It was directed by John Lannis, who, listen, I know about the Twilight Zone movie, I get it. But when you think about this man did the Blues Brothers. Yeah, he does. American Wheel of the Lennon. He does coming to America, which is arguably one of my favorite comps, just great of comedy of all time. Not counting a few as big a venture. So John Lannis, we're just having a run. It was the most expensive video at the time that it was made. The production value was incredible. The wardrobe, the iconic red jacket, the zombie dance. I mean, this, this to this day, the choreography of the zombie dance is done all around the world. Just put choreography and music videos on a different level. Michael, turning into that wear cat. Not to be confused with the wear wolf. Not to be confused. This transformation was the height of special effects, movie special effects of the time. I actually have a fun story associated with, so it's 14 minute video, right? So back in the day, the song's only five and a half minutes long. So they needed 12 more minutes of music to sort of pat out the video. They needed, basically, the multi-track stems, which we now have. At the time though, Quincy, for whatever reason, wasn't letting Landis, the director, get access to them. So he tells this story, Michael and I went to the recording studio at three in the morning. We walk past the guard, hi, Michael, hi, hi, and they put the tracks in a big suitcase and walked out with them, drove across Hollywood, duped them, and then drove them back again. So they stuck into the studio to get the master taste. Oh, that's great. That's great. I mean, the impact of that music video can't really be overstated. I mean, like a couple of things. One, music videos is film. We've stayed at that. Two, MTV wasn't playing a lot of black artists at the time. Rick James famously begged them to play Super Freak, and they were a little bit reticent to play it. After Michael Jackson's thriller, not only does it open the door for, you know, a lot more black artists, but also one can make the case of many have that MTV and Michael Jackson sort of rose together and that because he brought this, you know, this crossover and this team that was like cinematic, it brought some artistic seriousness to MTV. Sure, but there's also conscious effort to crossover. We mentioned before, like having Eddie Van Halen on beat it. There was a conscious effort to have more of some of this sound like Van Halen, up the Van Halen as well. You guys like guitars, huh? All right. I'll put some guitars on my record. Right. Absolutely. All right, as we wrap up this episode, what is the legacy in your opinion of Michael Jackson's thriller? We want to make it clear. Michael is a musical genius, even outside of just being the guy who sings the song. He's in some ways telling his producer, you know, hey, I want it produced like this and I want it to sound like that. And I think that that's an important thing to point out. I totally agree with you. In some sense, one of the things that the story of this song, when we get this deep into it, I hope translates to other people is that the mystery of creativity. I think sometimes we overly ascribe this kind of like total creative genius that came from a single person's brain and nobody else was a part of it. Michael's genius, Quincy's genius, Rod's genius, Marinelli's genius, all of these people participated in making this final product, which required it'd be like pulling a part of movie and saying this is one person's movie. Sure. And sometimes you like every now and then like somebody's like, oh, that movie was written by so and so. And but I do think it's important to say that even though the, you know, Quincy's job title is producer, Michael Jackson's title is performer, Rod is songwriter. These guys are all sort of like stepping into each other. She was a little bit to help push off this thing. Absolutely. It's a collaborative effort. It's overlap. But it's in the studio like your job title, it doesn't go away by any means, but like, especially with these truly classic albums and truly classic performers, everybody's sort of like pushing each other to do something that they haven't done with their other stuff. Because Quincy Jones produces a lot of R&B albums and Rod Timberton writes for a lot of people and very few things come together quite the way that Thriller came together. Perfectly put. I mean, I don't think it can really be overstated. It's a song that has its own holiday in ways that I mean, like there are a lot of songs about Halloween. Yeah. I mean, this is the song that sort of owns Halloween. If you do a Halloween party as a DJ and I know this and you don't play Thriller, you will get some angry looks. No shade on Monster Mash, but this is the one. This is the one. This is the one. Yeah. No shade on some of the songs that have come since. I mean, look, there's, this is Halloween from the night before Christmas. Okay. There is Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo. There's post to death by the faint. I mean, like, there's so many. I would argue that love cats by the cure and a lot of songs by the cure often get played at Halloween parties nowadays. I can say this is a DJ who basically made his living and trying to, you know, get a couple of $100 for doing parties, but there is no song quite like Thriller, which again, technically has nothing to do with Halloween. There are few songs like Thriller that can, you can say, own their holiday. Okay. And I think that's one of the legacies. I also think, obviously, the legacy. This is the title song of the biggest album of all time. It is a song that helps put a nail, no pun intended in the coffin of the R&B of the 70s. And it is the music video that opened up MTV to Black Music in a whole new way. First music video in the Library of Congress, actually. That is. 2009. Not surprising. Not surprising, yeah. Okay. Luxury, it's time for one more song. There's a segment where we share a deep cut or hidden gem with you, the one song nation, and with each other sometimes for the first time. Do you want to go first? Sure. I mean, look, I one of my favorite Quincy Jones songs is actually on his solo record. This is called, I'm called The Dude, and this is The Lead Off Track. Love The Dude. The song is called I Know Carita, and I love this song so much. So Quincy Jones. It's so Quincy Jones. Lewis Johnson on bass. I think that's Charles Maye singing one of my favorite songs of all time. Well, actually, Mr. Diololo. Today, my one more song is from a band that really turned me on to a new type of sound in my early 20s. It's a Mission of Burma, and this song is called Academy Fight Song. Wow. It's one of those bands that I just love that I feel like still don't get enough shine outside of our music nerd circles. Yeah. No man is Roger Miller. As always, if you have a song for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and Tiktok. You can find me on Instagram @Diolo and on Tiktok @DioloRiddle. And you can find me on Instagram @LuxuryLUXXURIY and on Tiktok @LuxuryXX. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube right now. Just search One Song Podcast. We'd love it if you hit like and subscribe. And if you made it this far, I think it means you like the podcast, so please don't forget to give us five stars, leave a review, and please share it with someone that you think might like the show. It really helps keep the show going. Luxury help us in this thing. I'm producer DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ DioloRiddle. And this is One Song. We will see you next week.