In my first Substack live stream I began by talking about Michael Jackson’s album thriller, and the song that actually starts it, though I didn’t know it at the time I have sent looked it up and seeing that wanna be starting something begins the thriller album. Which I think adds credence to my theory that “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” was left over from Off The Wall. It just feels and sounds that way. It’s so different than everything else on the Thriller album. The Thriller album that was maybe the biggest selling album of all time when it was released and maybe it still is the biggest selling album of all time? I don’t know. I’m not gonna look that up. Cause I don’t really care what the biggest selling album of all time is ladies and gentlemen. Sales popularity, any of that never meant shit to me. I am all about the art, the feeling, the sound, arrangements, the poetry of the gift, the blessing, the miracle that is song. That’s all I really care about. I’ve always known what I’ve liked when I liked it. There’s an old trope that says “people like what they know, but they don’t know what they like”’and I have found that to mostly be true. Present company excluded of course, thank you for being here. Thriller may well be the greatest selling album of all time I don’t know. But it’s not my favorite Michael Jackson album. Off The Wall is 30 times better than Thriller. I pulled that number out of my ass. Just like a lot of Thriller feels like Michael Jackson pulled it out of his ass… I kid I kid. But Wanna Be Stettin’ Something” is by far the best song on Thriller. Beat It is cool. It was exciting when it came out because it had Eddie Van Halen playing the solo. It was a melding of rock, R&B and soul at that time. Which was very progressive and I dug it. Billie Jean,and maybe I’ll eat my I’ll eat my words now, is great. But actually it is not a great song as much as it is a great performance of not a very good song. Though to completely undermine my point of this whole diatribe, Wanna Be Startin’ Something is also not a great song. But a great performance. Thriller to me is a genius work of production and arrangement by Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. The material they had to work with is not great. My thinking on this is because Michael Jackson was already a huge star, touring constantly and probably had very little bandwidth, energy or time to write great music and to sit in a studio recording for an extended period of time. This is probably a challenge that any major popstar has. I know in my life, my general musical career, which is very obscure relative to Michael Jackson, even in my musical life, I have very little time, bandwidth or energy to make records. Even though that’s my favorite thing in the world to do is to make recordings of my songs with musicians, there’s very little time and these days and very little money for that endeavor. We spend 90% of our time playing live shows. Which I love live shows too, but I wish I had a better balance between live shows and recording. Like I wish I could release two albums per year and play fewer shows. People often ask me how many shows I play per year and I really have no idea. I’ve never counted them. Anyway I’m gonna post Wanna Be Startin’ Something” here now and then I’m gonna post a song from off the wall. Post your favorite Michael Jackson songs if you can or if you know how lol
