NMuzakNSoul said:

ViintageJunkiie said:

Hey... I was responding to babybuz who said the album (without Rod imput) would have been like Destiny and Triumph, I'm assuming commercial success. I replied imo it would have surpassed those albums because of BILLIE JEAN Motown25. Since THAT performance (to anyone who's old enough knows) is what sent MJ into orbit. Following that came the hoopla of the glove, fedora, videos, MTV, etc. Record sales skyrocked.
The Thriller video was not even mentioned until the end of my post And that was to make a point.
Re. your question - Thriller was NOT considered the best track on the album. So without it, the album still would have been awesome with Beat It, WBSS, etc. I assume another song would have been in it's place with a fabulous video. But it was included and for that I'm thankful. It sent Michael even further into orbit. But without MJ, Michael peters, MJ's vision of the Thriller video, it would have been just another good song.
[Edited 12/2/09 11:38am]

mimi07 said:

My first time seeing that. Hurts.

mimi07 said:

Yep Stevie feels what so many of us are going through still.

Timmy84 said:

you could still hear MJ's vocals at the very end of siedah's version.

too cute!


[Edited 12/2/09 13:22pm]

The Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder project.....

Songs for the project

Buttercup
You're Supposed To Keep Your Love For Me
A Pretty Face Is



songs that may have been recorded
No News Is Good News
Bumblebee Of Love
Sky Blue Afternoon
The Future
If Your Mama Could See You Now
Would I Live For You, Would I Die For You

mrsnet said:

I agree, Thriller was NOT the best track on the album, but do you think the album would be the biggest selling album ever if Rod didn't pen the title track? We know the actual Thriller video is what sent that album sky rocketing.

bboy87 said:

This is what confuses me. Some people say it was a J5 album produced entirely by Stevie, then people say it was an MJ project produced by Stevie. Which is it?

ViintageJunkiie said:

It was Motown 25....


I’m not denying the impact of the thriller short film, it was after Motown 25 people start to buy the album like crazy.

For me, Billie jean made thriller what it is..
[Edited 12/2/09 15:03pm]

ViintageJunkiie said:

It's a Jackson 5 album from what I can gather with Michael on lead vocals for a majority of the tracks

ViintageJunkiie said:

Nah, Thriller was already huge by the time the short film came out. Thriller went to #1 about 10 weeks after it came out right around the time Beat it was released and Motown 25 aired. When the video came out in December '83, the album was starting to slip down the charts (but still holding steady in the top 3)

seeingvoices12 said:

i agree with seeing. speaking as someone who was there at the time, it was motown 25 that sent thriller through the roof. motown 25 aired in the spring of 1983, march or may. the billie jean video was barely being shown on mtv. mj insisted he had to perform billie jean on the program or he wouldn't perform at all. singing i want you back, etc. with his brothers was one thing, but he had an album to promote and he (and other black artists) was being denied an important promotion vehicle due to the racism of the day.

it was that performance that sent that album selling and selling. when the american music awards aired in january 1984 (when they used to air), they mentioned repeatedly how much the album had sold the previous year. everybody was talking about it. i remember someone interviewing jeffrey osbourne before the grammys aired because i think he was nominated in a category with mj, and he said he didn't think he would win b/c 'you can't argue with 40 million albums'.

since the thriller video wasn't released in december 1983, it couldn't have been the reason so many albums were sold. it was the reason the album continued to sell.

kibbles said:

Don't get me wrong, the Motown performance was amazing! I loved it. I guess to me, watching the Thriller video is what made me more interested in the album.

bboy87 said:

but the Thriller video boosted those sales back once it started slipping off the charts?

4 Jackson brothers reunite for A&E miniseries
By FRAZIER MOORE (AP) – 2 hours ago



NEW YORK — As the old saying goes, "If you like this kind of thing, you'll like this."

Mirroring too many other celeb-reality shows that come pledging a personal glimpse at their subjects, "The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty" is stagey, self-conscious and, most of all, self-serving on the part of its participants.

But if you're a fan of Michael Jackson (always offstage but seldom out of mind), or even the observable members of the Jackson 5 — Marlon, Tito, Jackie and Jermaine — you might enjoy this time spent with them.

The six-hour A&E series premieres at 9 p.m. EST, Sunday, Dec. 13, with back-to-back episodes. The high point of those first two hours comes when Jermaine Jackson cries.

Tearfully, he recalls the dark days of 1976, when the rest of the group leaped to CBS Records while only he stayed behind at Motown, being loyal, he says, "to where we started."

"Do you know what it is to be alone? Just to be alone?" says Jermaine, choking up. "I'm out in the streets and kids are saying, 'We don't want your autograph, 'cause you're the one that broke the group up.'"

"When you came back to the group, it was one of the best, favorable memories of my life," says Tito as the foursome shares hugs all around.

It's hard to believe this is really the first time Jermaine has ever expressed his hurt from that rift with his brothers, as he claims. And it's hard to overlook the fact that, during this scene of high emotion, all of them seem carefully arranged on their sectional sofa for maximum visual effect.

Even so, there's something real going on here. It's a nice break from all the canned, rote stuff.

The premise of the miniseries (at least when filming started last January) seems to center on the Jackson 5, including Michael, reuniting for their 40th anniversary.

The other four brothers start planning a tour and a new album — "the best album we ever made!" Jackie crows.

They exchange lots of stock dialogue like, "I think we owe it to the fans" and, "We're family. We'll be the Jackson 5 till the day we die."

They make self-pitying remarks about the way the media abuse them, for example, "Your fans will be there for you. You have that marriage with them from day one. It's the media that tries to come between that."

That darn marriage-wrecking media!

They also get on each other's nerves. In the studio last May, Jermaine records a vocal track, then heads off to lunch. Jackie decides it's unacceptable and erases it.

"You won't believe what happened in the studio today," Jermaine tells his wife back at home. "I did these vocals, I was very excited about them, and the next thing I know, they were erased."

The first hour (which includes a sentimental, staged-for-TV journey to their childhood home in Gary, Ind.) ends with the news of Michael's death in late June.

Even before his shocking death, it's hard to discern from the miniseries what Michael thought about his brothers' plans for the reunion. His involvement is apparently assumed. But he is only seen in archival footage and heard singing on the soundtrack.

And he's regularly mentioned.

"Your brother was the biggest artist in the world," the Jacksons' attorney, Virgil Roberts, tells them in the second episode, a month after Michael has died. "It's put a special spotlight on you. You're the living legacy."

As Roberts speaks, the Jacksons' album and tour seem to still be in the picture, at least for the sake of justifying this miniseries.

But Jermaine isn't in the image (and his commitment to the group is called into question) when he misses the official photo shoot. He later tells his brothers he had an eye infection.

Some reunion. And four more episodes to fill.

On the Net:
http://www.aetv.com
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

ViintageJunkiie said:

Yeah. The album had already been number one for about 19 non consecutive weeks and was still in the Top 3 when the video premiered

dag said:

Why don't the journalist just come out and ask him if MJ is gay, instead of beating around the bush because the journalist asked Joe if he would like his son with men or women and the other dude checked him. Not to say that he is gay.

Moonwalkbjrain said:

Read the lyrics closely, and you can see he's talking about Tom Sneddon that district attorney. He recorded this song already on the History album, but with lyrical changes. It's called D.S.

mrsnet said:

Oh I agree with you on some points , he could have did motown 25 and still be big I do agree.

nice tribute by shanice....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPoTs3DARgo

lmfaooo I told my mom the price of the opus she look like hell no

dag said:

I think Joe actually handled himself and the answers pretty damn well all things considered.

The extended trailer for 'The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty,' which premieres Dec. 13th:

http://www.aetv.com/the-j...2296302001

silverchild said:

Probably watch the first two episodes but I doubt I will be watching religiously.I like marlon though lol

babybugz said:

i just ordered mine

wait...u had to ask ur mom? how old are u?

mimi07 said:

I'm 22 , I have my own money I was just telling her the price and she was like WTH lol.I might have to wait till that price go down though

bboy87 said:

I think the Thriller video came out just as the album sales were starting to slip.There had been a big wave of sales after Motown 25 -- which alone would have made the album a gigantic seller-- and then 7 months later the Thriller video came out and that brought a second big wave of people buying the album.The timing was right because if the Thriller video had come out right after Motown 25, it could have been too much at once.And each new release showed sides of Michael that were new to the public. No one had seen or expected a performance like Billie Jean. Then with Beat It, no one had seen Michael do a guitar-rock video with formation dancing choreography. All this happened at once. I think the Beat It video was so important for its time though it is usually overshadowed by Thriller. Then the Thriller video was unlike anything that anyone was doing on MTV. It amazes me to see Michael performing with The Jacksons the following year as if they were really still a group. By that point he had far surpassed them and could have gotten out of doing the tour if Katherine had not persuaded him. He could have done anything he wanted to at this point.