“Thriller” by Michael Jackson

"Thriller", the title track of Michael Jackson's 1982 album, is a horror movie you can dance to. Rod Temperton wrote it wanting something theatrical to suit Jackson's love of film, and Quincy Jones produced it as disco with the lights switched off: a rubbery synthesizer bassline, sound effects straight out of the fright flicks, Jackson on drum machine, and horns from Jerry Hey, Gary Grant, Bill Reichenbach and Larry Williams jabbing like jump scares. Then the horror actor Vincent Price steps up for a spoken-word passage in his best graveyard voice. Bruce Swedien recorded and mixed it.

Jackson held it back until the album had slipped from the top of the Billboard 200, then made it the seventh and final single, and it became the seventh from the record to reach the Hot 100 top ten. John Landis's video, with Jackson dancing among a horde of zombies, doubled the album's sales, and the song crawls back onto the charts every Halloween.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.