(It’s a 6.) For Michael Jackson, those were flop numbers. Victory went double platinum, and its lead single, the Michael/Mick Jagger duet “ State Of Shock,” peaked at #3. After intense pressure from his family, Jackson had consented to reunite with his brothers for the Jacksons’ 1984 Victory album and its surrounding tour. In those years, Jackson had a lot going on. Jackson’s reticence from the spotlight wasn’t just over the success of Thriller.

But it was also a big deal when Jackson did his old label boss Berry Gordy a favor and sang uncredited but instantly identifiable backup vocals on “ Somebody’s Watching Me,” a song from Gordy’s son Rockwell. It was a big deal, of course, when Jackson co-wrote and sang on “ We Are The World” in 1985. When Jackson would resurface, it was a big deal. Jackson mostly stayed away from the pop-music grind for a long time. By 1984, Jackson might’ve been the most famous person on the planet, or he might’ve been second only to one of his acquaintances, fellow cloistered celebrity Ronald Reagan. The album’s success granted Michael Jackson a centrality to popular culture that only a couple of musicians - maybe the Beatles, maybe Elvis Presley - had ever reached. Thriller sold in absurd, baffling numbers, and it utterly changed the math on what a record could do.

Thriller, released at the end of 1982, was not just a hit album. In 1983, Jackson had changed the course of popular music. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.Īll through the mid-’80s, Michael Jackson was an absent overlord.

Who sings keep on loving you