Quincy Jones & Michael Jackson: Inside the Thriller Sound

Quincy Jones was already a major figure before he worked with Michael Jackson: a jazz trumpeter and arranger, a record executive, and a film composer. He was the music supervisor on The Wiz, the film version of the Broadway musical, in which Jackson played the Scarecrow. Jackson, who was preparing his first adult solo album for Epic Records, asked Jones to recommend a producer. Jones, as he tells it in his autobiography Q, eventually offered to do it himself.

The label's hesitation is often described as scepticism about a jazz arranger producing a young pop and R&B star. Whatever the exact conversations, the pairing gave Jackson something he had not had at Motown or with the Jacksons: a producer with a deep network of session musicians and arrangers, and the authority to push him.

The records are often described as 'Quincy and Michael', but they were made by a team. Bruce Swedien engineered and mixed all three albums. Rod Temperton, the English keyboardist and songwriter from the band Heatwave, wrote Rock with You, Off the Wall and Burn This Disco Out for the first album, and Thriller, Baby Be Mine and The Lady in My Life for the second. Keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, bassist Louis Johnson and horn arranger Jerry Hey appear across the sessions, along with members of Toto such as Steve Porcaro, Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro on Thriller.

Jackson arrived with songs and very specific ideas. He often demoed parts with his voice, beatboxing drum patterns and singing bass and string lines, and several of his own compositions (Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Billie Jean, Beat It, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin') became the albums' biggest records. Jones's role was to choose songs, assemble players, and decide when a track was finished.

Listen to Off the Wall and Thriller back to back and a few techniques keep appearing. First, layering: Jackson's vocals are stacked and double-tracked, and his backing vocals function almost like a horn section. Second, clarity: Swedien kept instruments separated in the mix so that the bass, the drums and the vocal each had their own space. His book In the Studio with Michael Jackson describes recording choices that aimed for depth rather than loudness. Third, a mix of live players and new technology. Thriller uses synthesizers and drum machines alongside live rhythm sections, so the records sound contemporary without sounding cold.

Beat It is the most famous example of genre-mixing. Jones wanted a rock song on Thriller to reach a wider radio audience, and Eddie Van Halen played the guitar solo. Van Halen said in later interviews that he did it as a favour and was not paid. The result gave Jackson a record that could be played on rock stations as well as pop and R&B stations, at a time when radio formats were sharply divided.

Off the Wall produced two Hot 100 number ones (Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and Rock with You) and four top-ten singles, and won Jackson the Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. Thriller produced seven top-ten singles, including two number ones, and won eight Grammys for Jackson at the February 1984 ceremony, one of which was the Producer of the Year award he shared with Jones. Bad became the first album to produce five Hot 100 number ones, a record later matched by Katy Perry's Teenage Dream in 2011.

Sales figures for these albums are quoted in many different ways, from certified US units to worldwide estimates. Thriller is widely cited, including by Guinness World Records, as the best-selling album of all time. We avoid giving a single exact worldwide total because published estimates vary.

By Bad, Jackson was writing most of the material himself: nine of the eleven songs on the original CD are his. After Bad, he chose to work with new producers, most notably Teddy Riley and Bill Bottrell, for Dangerous (1991). Both men spoke respectfully about the collaboration in later years. Quincy Jones passed away in November 2024.

The lasting legacy is not a single trick but a standard. Pop records after Thriller increasingly aimed for the same combination of groove, detail and crossover reach. When producers today talk about making a record that works on the dancefloor and on headphones, they are describing the brief Jones, Jackson and Swedien set themselves.

To hear the partnership develop, try this order: Rock with You (warm, disco-era groove built on Temperton's chords), Billie Jean (tight, minimal, bass-led), Beat It (the rock crossover), and Man in the Mirror (gospel-influenced, with a choir arriving late in the song). Each track shows a different side of the same team.