First a disclaimer: Liking MJ’s music has nothing to do with condoning anything else he may or may not have done

MJ was on the radio all the time in Delhi in ’79 (when “Off the Wall” was released) and all through the ‘80s, with gigantic hit after hit keeping us listening and dancing – although, I think ‘ABC’ and other Jackson 5 songs were on Force’s Request before that, but it’s a faded memory, so can’t be sure. His musical catalogue is mind blowing – right from hitting #1 as a 11 year old with the Jackson 5, all the way to ‘Off the Wall’, ‘Thriller’, ‘Bad’ and beyond, MJ was a humongous hit machine. He is the 7th biggest selling artist of all time with over 350M records sales ??, the biggest selling album of all time (Thriller ??), 13 #1s ??, 15 Grammys??. MJ is also the youngest person ever to have a #1 ??– though as a part of Jackson 5 and not as a solo artist. Nidhi also thinks he was one of the cutest looking guys all the way from ABC to Thriller – and I agree! You just have to see 10-year old MJ lead singing ABC. Cute as a button!

‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’ is from the amazing ‘Off The Wall’ album, the start of a long and fantastic collaboration between MJ and Quincy Jones. Apparently MJ wrote this song all by himself at home, recording a demo with younger brother Randy playing the piano and baby sister Janet playing percussion with chopsticks on a glass bottle?. Nobody’s sure if the song was about sex (apparently Mama Jackson was scandalised?!) or dancing, but who cares! That mind-blowing groove is enough to get any party started, even today, 40 years later.  What puts the song over the top is MJ’s dancing – there’ s an innocent exuberance of a teenager to his dancing, with that smile just telling us how much he’s enjoying making us dance with him. And that yowl at the start….

‘Thriller’. He takes it to the next level that none knew existed!! The biggest selling album of all time – over 66M copies sold. 37 weeks at #1. Record setting 8 singles from the album hit the Top 10.  The ‘Billy Jean’ video has 865M views, Thriller has 700M views…Thriller came out three years after “Off The Wall” and in those three years, MJ grew up. Gone was the carefree, exuberant teenager to be replaced by a much more professional hit maker. ‘Billie Jean’ is the BIG song from the album – a fabulous groove – which MJ himself acknowledged he stole from Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That” (listen to the first 15 sec of H&O’s ICGFT, then speed it up..identical). But it was that video on MTV that blew our collective minds. Do you remember MJ dancing and those street slabs lighting up …WOW ?! Now having said that, Nidhi’s favourite track from ‘Thriller’ is not ‘Billy Jean’ but “Thriller”. What a song! The whole story of MJ turning into a werewolf and scaring the living daylights out of his girlfriend could have been very creepy – instead it is a short-film on its own that became a piece of history! That Zombie dance sequence is the most famous music video of all time – and I dare say Nidhi probably knows all the words and the steps to that (I’ve been too scared to ask why for 30 years now !)