“‘We should do a rock version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller,'” Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen recalled to Billboard of producer Mutt Lange’s goals for Hysteria.Īlso contributing to these albums’ extended lifespans was the rise of MTV.
(“Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Love Bites”) becoming the set’s biggest Hot 100 hits, reaching Nos. Tellingly, Def Leppard’s Diamond-selling Pyromania set, released just a couple months after Thriller in 1983, saw only four songs released as singles, but by the time of 1987 follow-up Hysteria, that LP spawned seven singles - with the fourth and fifth single in the U.S. “Because you had all of those songs that were being played on 98 percent of the radio stations in the country, whether it was some lesser singles… as long as they’re in the top 10 or top five, they’re going to have a tremendous impact.”Īfter Thriller, albums that previously would’ve only spun off three or four singles were now increasingly likely to have five, six, even seven songs pulled as A-sides before the artist would move on to a next album. “Having seven top 10 hits was important,” says Larry Stessel, senior VP/marketing for Jackson’s Sony-owned label Epic in the ’80s. The album also set new standards for the number of hit singles that could be pulled from the same record, with seven of its nine tracks becoming top 10 hits on the Hot 100 - a then-record. “When I was at Billboard it was the third Christmas season for Thriller, and it was still one of the records that retailers cited as a traffic builder for them, and that’s unusual.”
“It’s one of those few records I can think of with three meaningful Christmas seasons,” says Mayfield. 1s of its own - “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” - it raised the bar for how long an album’s shelf life could last. Though Thriller managed “only” two Hot 100 No. So how did an album that largely failed to live up to commercial expectation manage to do something no blockbuster album had managed before? A lot of the answer can be found through the album’s surrounding context - in terms of Michael Jackson’s career, in terms of the pop landscape in the late ’80s and in terms of the Billboard charts of the time. For more than two decades, Bad reigned as the lone album to notch five Hot 100-toppers, until Katy Perry finally tied the achievement in 2011 with her fifth No. 1 hits off the same album, initially set in 1978 by the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.Įach of the set’s first five singles - Siedah Garrett ballad duet “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” storming title track “Bad,” strutting love song “The Way You Make Me Feel,” anthemic power ballad “Man in the Mirror” and rock-infused backstage drama “Dirty Diana” - made it all the way to the Hot 100’s apex, breaking the previous record of four No. But despite the lesser sales, Bad did achieve a feat that not only did Thriller not accomplish, but that no album in history ever had before: It spawned five No. by the time the album’s promo cycle finally ended at the close of the ’80s, and was finally certified diamond (for 10 million equivalent album units) by the RIAA earlier this year. Jackson would fall well short of that goal - Bad had topped out at 6-times platinum in the U.S. “I heard was that was carrying around - I can’t remember if it was a quarter and a nickel or three dimes - but he was carrying around 30 cents in his pocket because he wanted to sell ,” says Geoff Mayfield, retail editor at Billboard in 1987.
Undaunted, Jackson and producer Quincy Jones attempted to outdo themselves with Bad, setting their sales goals even higher the next time around. 31, 1987 - Michael Jackson debuted one of the most anticipated albums in the history of pop music: Bad, the follow-up to 1982’s Thriller, which had already been certified 20-times platinum by the RIAA upon its successor’s release, well on its way to becoming the best-selling album of all time.
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