Again, like I said last time. We're really stretching shit thin here in the final days. To that end, we're really going to try and get a couple hundred words out of a 13-minute music video for a spooky pop song. Yes, really. I could try and fill shit up by doing my usual stalling, much like I'm doing right now by extending the point out juuuuust long enough to drag things out. But I won't. Aside from that last sentence. And this one. Well, what can we say about this? Let's leave the song itself alone for now and focus on the actual music video aspect of it, since that's easy enough. I'm no music critic, but I can try. I can also comment on what the man put on screen to accompany his music, and we're going to do that. I oddly get the same vibes from the beginning of this as Stephen King's It. That seems crazy, but hear me out. There's that same 30 year-cycle of nostalgia thing happening for old 50's monster movies. One only needs to look at Michael Jackson in his cool jock letterman jacket, or the way his girlfriend's dressed up, to really see it. And then he turns into a werewolf. We haven't covered John Landis's An American Werewolf In London, but suffice it to say that the movie had some fucked up body horror werewolf transformation in it which made Michael Jackson go "HEY MAN TURN ME INTO A FUCKED UP WEREWOLF FOR MY MUSIC VIDEO". So they did. So they did, and it's just as fucked up and horrifying even though he kind of looks more like a cat. Oops, it was all a horror movie! Yeah, Thriller's got layers. I guess we're in the 80's now and then the music starts up. Pointedly, it's not structured at all like the actual single. You get all the verses from Jackson first as he dances around his girlfriend trying to spook her, then Vincent Price raps, THEN Michael Jackson is a zombie and we get dancing and THAT'S when you get that killer fuckin' chorus of 'CAUSE THIS IS THRILLER. Holy shit. In music video form, they build up to the damn thing. You thought a 90-second buildup in the song itself was enough? Try this on for size.
Yes, let's try and analyze the song. It's very, very good, isn't it? I'm not some weird contrarian on this either, as millions of people seem to agree. I'm fairly sure that Thriller was the best-selling album of all time until recently, when it was dethroned by, of all things, The Eagles' Greatest Hits. Which got spun a shitload in our house back in the 90's, much more than Thriller ever did. I am inclined to frown upon my family's musical tastes for this. Being a pop song, it is of course catchy and absolutely killer. That funky goddamn synthy bass line is what makes it, and when you get to that chorus things just go into full overdrive. With all the spooky werewolf howls and other noises, it's as if the audio itself is haunted as you blast through it. Of course, we have to talk about Vincent Price's bit. It seems wild on paper: "yo what if we got a horror icon to do some spoken word spooky stuff as the climax of the song?". It absolutely should not work, but coupled with those funky tunes and spooky noises? He pulls it off. The whole song pulls it off. Forget your goddamned Monster Mash, this is actually a banger and should be blasted for the Halloween season, as loud as you can without pissing off your family, pets, and/or neighbors. I think that will do it. I'm going to groove out to this song until a spooky Doctor Who episode about spiders airs. It should be entertaining! See you tomorrow for that.
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