Michael Jackson “Thriller” 1983. Today, August 29th, would have been Michael Jackson’s 60th birthday (b. 1958). “Thriller” was the seventh and final single released from Jackson’s monster smash LP Thriller and it hit #4 in the US and #10 in the UK in early ‘84. (It has re-entered the charts multiple times since its initial release, including after Jackson’s death in 2009, then again in 2014 and 2015). The track was written by Rod Temperton and produced by Quincy Jones (from Wiki: “while Temperton was writing “Thriller” he stated that he’d ‘always envisioned’ a ‘talking section at the end’ on the song, but did not really know what ‘to do with it,’ until deciding ‘to have somebody, a famous voice, in the horror genre, to do this vocal.’ Jones’ then-wife, Peggy Lipton, who knew Vincent Price, suggested Price for the vocal part, which Price agreed to do.”). It is arguably one of the weaker tracks on Thriller: Allmusic says “the ridiculous, late-night house-of-horrors title track is the prime culprit, arriving in the middle of the record and sucking out its momentum,” but it remains ridiculously popular 35 years later. The accompanying video, directed by horror film director John Landis, made its own indelible mark on pop culture history, winning three MTV video music awards in ‘84, becoming the first video selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, and supplying a zombie dance routine that continues to be performed at Halloween parties to this day.