(First published June 25, 2017).

June 25th marks the eighth Anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death. Most of us likely still remember exactly where we were when first receiving the news of his cardiac arrest and the several hours that unfolded as the media continuously covered his ultimate passing.

Throughout his lifetime, The King of Pop gave us many great moments in pop music history, including iconic videos, great dance moves and, of course, the music itself.

Arguably his greatest contribution is the album that celebrates its 35th anniversary later this year, Thriller, which is still the biggest selling album of all time in both the U.S. and worldwide with reported sales of between 65 and 100 million copies (32 million in the U.S. alone).

To commemorate the King and his landmark album, djrobblog thought it’d be fitting to revisit all nine of its songs – as reimagined by other artists – in the order that they were sequenced on the original album.

As a refresher, seven of Thriller’s nine tracks were released as singles (vinyl 45s) back in the day and all seven of those reached the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first of still only a handful of albums that have accomplished that feat.

Thriller’s famous track list went like this (with the songs that were released as singles designated by an asterisk):

Side A :

1. “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'”*

2. “Baby Be Mine”

3. “The Girl Is Mine” (w/ Paul McCartney)*

4. “Thriller”*

Side B :

5. “Beat It”*

6. “Billie Jean”*

7. “Human Nature”*

8. “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”*

9. “The Lady In My Life”

(For the vinyl-challenged, the Side-A and Side-B references denote both sides of a 12-inch vinyl album.)

As I searched the internet and Spotify looking for covers of those songs, I expected to find several versions of the bigger hits, like the Number One singles “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.” The tunes I didn’t expect to find many – if any – versions of were songs like “Baby Be Mine,” “The Lady In My Life” and “Thriller” – the first two because they were never officially released (although “Lady” is still one of Michael’s most famous ballads), and the latter because, well, despite its immense popularity, “Thriller” is such a campy song that I didn’t think there’d be many artists who would take it on.

I was wrong on many counts.

The truth is, there are multiple cover versions of all nine of the songs on Thriller; and very few of them are confined to the post-disco, dance-oriented pop vision Michael had for the originals – with many taking on totally different arrangements in a variety of genres, including jazz, rock, soul, EDM… even death metal and classical.

Based on the number of hits in the search results, we could have put together several different “Thrillers Revisited” using completely different covers on each collection.

For brevity’s sake, djrobblog picked just one interesting set of cover versions and placed them in order of the original album sequence, which you can hear both on the playlist below and in the audio/video countdown (with editorial commentary) further down.

The nine artists featured in this “Thriller Revisited” are the Filthy Six, Quadron, Thor, Simply Three, Raintime, Alex Goot and the more familiar names of Chris Cornell, Miles Davis and Lou Rawls.

In fact, let’s just get right to it. Check out “Thriller Revisited” and see what you think.

When you finish scrolling through the songs, leave a comment either at the bottom of this article or on the blog’s Facebook page. Maybe you think the ones I’ve picked would have MJ rolling over in his tomb (yes, he was entombed in Glendale, CA), or maybe you’ve heard some better covers that you think belong in the set. Either way, let me know something.

And may the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, continue to rest in harmony.

DJRob

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