Michael Jackson - Thriller

You could reel off the stats: the record-breaking eight Grammy Awards; the seven American Music Awards; the estimated 109 million copies sold worldwide to date. There's also that 3/4 of a million dollar recording budget. You could also consider how Thriller changed culture: "Billie Jean" was the first video by a black artist to receive regular airplay on MTV which in turn helped to bring music from African-American artists back onto mainstream radio in America for the first time since the Motown heyday of the mid-1970s.

You could also mention how Thriller made fantasy and the suspension of disbelief – concepts previously associated with the movies - an integral part of popular music. And yes, you could talk about that video. Everybody saw it, everybody knew it, everybody was stunned by it. And what about the otherworldliness of Jacko's jaw-dropping moonwalk? Everybody saw it, everybody knew it, everybody tried it. And let's not forget those countless anecdotes - like Sri Lankan electro-pop poster girl M.I.A's story of arriving in London with three English words in her vocab: "mango," "elephant" and "Michael Jackson."

Ulltimately though, it's the music that makes Thriller so seminal. Released on November 30, 1982, this follow-up to his 1979 hit album Off the Wall shows a young disco soul punk with loads of promise finally becoming Pop's biggest star. After more than a decade in the game, Michael was ready for success. Hell at 21 and finally free from his dad's oppressive managerial clutches he wanted it bad. And you can hear it. Gone is the carefree, boyish call onto the disco dance floor of 1979's "Can't Stop Til You Get Enough". In its place is a set of super slick, pop fantasies about picking up girls, getting laid, and living life large.

Legend has it that Michael was so obsessed with every song on the album being a hit that he almost drove producer Quincy Jones to distraction by culling down a whopping 300 song shortlist to the final 9 track selection. But he came close. His perfectionism paid dividends. Seven singles peaked in the Billboard Hot 100's Top 10. The album's genre  shattering fusion of audacious electro funk ("Wanna" Be Startin' Somethin'", "Billie Jean"), sublime disco rock alchemy ("Beat It" and its demonically addictive guitar riff courtesy of Eddie Van Halen), soulful pop simplicity ("The Girl is Mine" with Paul McCartney no less), B-movie soundtrack spectacle ("Thriller") and edgy R&B ("P.Y.T.") became the chart-topping template for successive generations of pop megastars to come. Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Usher, Britney and Rihanna all borrowed more than just a dance move from the pages of Thriller's urban pop blueprint, while super-producers Timbaland and Pharrell Williams funnelled more than a lick or spliced sample into their own future funky hit recipes.

Finally though,Thriller’s appeal pivots around the emotions it evokes. It's about being spun around only to go "ow!" in a high-pitched voice because you've smacked straight into the primal power of pop music at its most mercurial: Michael at his most scandalous ("P.Y.T."), his most funky ("Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"), his most vulnerable ("Human Nature"), his cheekiest ("Beat It"), his breathiest, most achingly sexy and paranoid ("Billie Jean"), and of course, his most thrilling ("Thriller").