Had Bad come out only a year or two after Thriller, the obvious redundancies probably could have been chalked up as an artist building upon proven strengths. Also on "Dirty Diana," Jackson revisited the theme of conniving women, done much better on the superior "Billie Jean" and on the Jackson's "The Place Hotel" (originally titled, "Heartbreak Hotel"). As for Eddie Van Halen's snarling rock-guitar solo on "Beat It," that spectacle was transferred to the spiteful rocker "Dirty Diana," this time with Steve Stevens grinding the forceful solo. The parallels continued with the second single "Bad." The splendidly filmed, acted, and danced video picked up some of the sentiments from Thriller's "Beat It" as Jackson reprised his role of a dancing, urban warrior in a West Side Story framework.
1 on the charts, it never shared the heavy rotation of some of Jackson's other hits. So instead of Paul McCartney on Thriller's "The Girl Is Mine," Jackson crooned alongside Siedah Garrett on "I Just Can't Stop Loving You," a listless pop confection that Jackson had originally intended to sing with either Whitney Houston or Barbara Streisand. Both albums were preceded by anodyne ballad duets as the first singles. Similarities between the strategies for Bad and Thriller were glaring from the start. And very much like how many filmmakers of blockbusters beef up defining fight scenes and plotlines, Jackson conspicuously restaged and amplified Thriller's signature moments with perfectionist's precision, making Bad sound sterile in too many places. Unlike his major rival, Prince, who followed up his career-defining 1984 LP, Purple Rain, by taking a hard left with the soul-psychedelic romp on Around the World in a Day, Jackson in interviews more often expressed Olympian commercial goals of breaking the sales records of his previous album than he did of pursuing new musical territory. Jackson fueled much of that letdown himself, though. Jackson also delivered some of the best music videos in history with Bad, specifically the Martin Scorsese-directed long-form cinematic piece for the title track, the noir-ish "Smooth Criminal" directed by Colin Chilvers, and the self-aware, middle-finger fantasia "Leave Me Alone," directed by Jim Blashfield and Paul Diener.īut for all of Bad's explosive power, it inevitably disappointed because it didn't equal or surpassed the magic of Thriller.
And he proactively looked for ways to push his sound to the then-cutting edge of mainstream pop and R&B mainly through the use of the synclavier, other synthesizers, and drum programming, resulting in a sleeker, sometimes sinister soundscapes that were far more aggressive-sounding than the analog grooves on Thriller and Off the Wall. The album showed Jackson's growing confidence as a songwriter and as a co-producer he wrote nine of the 11 songs on the album by himself.
It produce five consecutive No.1 singles, debuted at the top of the Billboard charts and held that position for six weeks, and became the fifth-most-selling album in history. That's not to say you can dismiss Bad as a flop. Jackson conspicuously restaged and amplified Thriller's signature moments with perfectionist's precision, making Bad sound sterile in too many places. For all of Jackson's bionic upgrades, Bad was bigger and bolder, but not better. In Rolling Stone, Davitt Sigerson wrote that, "Comparisons with Thriller are unimportant, except this one: even without a milestone recording like 'Billie Jean,' Bad is a better record." And USA Today's Edna Gundersen argued that Bad was Jackson's "most polished effort to date." But after having the luxury of 25 years to re-evaluate the impact and enduring power of Bad in relation to his previous two LPs, I'd argue the album is more Wachowskis than Lucas. While common wisdom in 1987 said that outshining Thriller would be nearly impossible, Bad, to a lot of ears, lived up to the task.
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If we compare the three albums Quincy Jones produced for Michael Jackson to the standard Hollywood movie trilogy, how should we view Jackson's 1987 LP, Bad-reissued this week with a deluxe 25th anniversary commemorative packaging? With it following the spectacular, record-breaking success of Thriller, did Bad rise to occasion like Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith, the two grand finales in George Lucas's respective Star Wars trilogy and prequel? Or did Jackson's final collaboration with Jones fail to meet high expectations, like the Wachowskis' The Matrix Revolutions?
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