Michael Jackson's masterpiece still a 'Thriller' - Los Angeles Times

MAMA SE, MAMA SA, MAMACU SA: Hard to believe that Michael Jackson's Thriller is now the subject of a 25th anniversary re-release, and yes, it's damn hard to just listen to the music and ignore everything that's happened since. But as someone who has fond memories of rollerskating to "P.Y.T." at the Palace Roller Rink, this song-by-song LA Times appreciation was a good read:

The dirty stuff is all there. But so is wonder, pure and complex, and some willful forgetting can bring you back to it. Put aside Jacko, the tragic example. Return to Michael, the musical prodigy who filtered a host of cross-cultural and intergenerational influences through his own weird radar to create music as surprising as it was definitive.

Enjoy that Michael, at play in the fields of new technology with producer Quincy Jones and the best team of studio pros since Brian Wilson roped in the Wrecking Crew. At 24, that Michael embodied the vertiginous power of being young -- his love songs were all longing and playful innuendo, his angry songs half bluster and half nightmare. That Michael believed that pop songs could have the effect that classic tales have on kids, coloring their dreams and staying forever in their memories. "Thriller" was the first Neverland he built -- the one he'll never lose in bankruptcy court.

EW's Ken Tucker dissents some: "Here's the thing: Thriller isn't a perfect creation. Quick, can you hum ''The Lady in My Life,'' the album's hookless closer? Didn't think so. The core of Thriller's music was executed by members of Toto, the ultimate L.A. session-hack band (remember their hits ''Hold the Line'' and ''Africa''?), in arrangements that sometimes required Michael's masterfully expressive vocals to mask their mere slickness. And if you ignore the hype and look around at other 1982 releases, Thriller is arguably not even the most-sustained quality album of that year: I could make strong arguments for George Clinton's Computer Games (come on, ''Atomic Dog'' alone influenced more hip-hop than any Michael song ever did), Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, and, yes, Marshall Crenshaw."

So let's take a trip back to the Motown 25 celebration, and one of the few lip-synched performances I can forgive, because it's hard to remember a world before the moonwalk, and it's hard to imagine a future in which any album again dominates the culture the way Thriller did back then.