Michael Jackson • Thriller
Thriller was a lot of things, but one of them was not an audiophile showpiece. Still, when Mobile Fidelity announced that it was adding the title to its One Step series, to celebrate Thriller's fortieth anniversary, I wasn't surprised. Thriller became the best-selling album of all time, with sales of over seventy million copies, and it made Michael Jackson a cultural icon as well as fabulously wealthy. It was a collection of the best post-disco pop/dance music ever made, although calling "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" dance music somewhat undermines their well-crafted lyrics and structures. The promise of One Step, whereby the lacquers are used to create what Mobile Fidelity calls "converts," which are formed into the stampers from which the records are pressed, was to reveal Thriller's audiophile soul, eliminating two processes and two sets of metal parts, putting the stampers two steps closer to the source materials. Mobile Fidelity has promised 40,000 copies -- no quick sellout, à la the earliest One Step releases. I have two original pressings [Epic QE 38112], one of which is considered the first (it's missing the line on the back that identifies Michael Jackson as a co-producer), and both are horribly compressed, dynamically and spatially, as well as congealed and hashy in the treble and light in the bass. Both present a thick wall of sound that's best heard loud, or details of the mix become lost in the music's own grungy noise floor. Perhaps knowing this, or perhaps to capitalize on Thriller's uncommon sales, CBS also released a Mastersound half-speed-mastered version of the album [Epic HE 48112], the process it used for its best classical recordings. This version sounds better than either of the standard-issue LPs, mostly because it restores some of the dynamic range and sense of front-to-back layering. The difference is easy to hear, the standard LPs sounding pretty awful overall, much like bad early digital, and the Mastersound version improved across the board. The subpar sound of the standard releases of Thriller might lead some potential buyers to believe that Mobile Fidelity didn't have much to work with, but that would be dead wrong. The One Step LP improved again on the dynamic range of the half-speed-mastered version, and this opens up the recording in important ways. The bass line is distinct and driving, even powerful, and it better underpins the music, making listening to Thriller a much more thrilling experience. There is more air, which differentiates instrumental lines and especially Jackson's vocals, his faint yips and squeals better emerging from the murk. There is nothing sonically that isn't vastly improved in the One Step pressing, and that fact will be obvious from the first few seconds of listening. Whether this is the best-sounding Thriller, given the many versions there are, is something I can't say, but the One Step significantly betters the original pressings I have and the Mastersound version too. It is the Thriller for audiophiles and others who care about sound. It has also given me new appreciation for this music --
as it is in 2022, not for what it was in 1982. It's refreshing to hear it sound better
than it probably ever will decades removed from the baggage of its phenomenal commercial
success. |
orty years later,
I still struggle to describe the full musical and cultural significance of Michael
Jackson's Thriller, even though I had a front-row seat to it all. I was in
college and working in a shopping mall in 1982, and Thriller was everywhere:
on network TV, on constant play on MTV, on the radio, in the record stores, and in the
clothes many young people wore. The video for the song "Thriller" premiered with
all the hoopla of a feature film. Michael Jackson became the most famous person in the
world, so far and wide was the reach of his album.