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It's hard to imagine, but before 'Thriller' was released in 1982, the biggest question was "Can it possibly do as well as Off the Wall?" — and the common response was no. But Off the Wall was the album that made Thriller possible, the album that demonstrated that a former child star had grown into a mature recording artist with an uncanny grasp of modern pop and dance music. And where almost two years of saturation airplay made Thriller sound somewhat stale, the best parts of Off the Wall still resonate with the freshness and ease of an artist hitting his stride.
Because Michael Jackson has worked in an avowedly commercial arena since he was about ten years old, his best work also tends to be his best-selling work, and that's true of Off the Wall. A couple of the ballads are sappy (especially Paul McCartney's "Girlfriend"), but with its gleaming Quincy Jones production, the album is mostly a smooth, state-of-the-art dance record that's both made for dancing and written about dancing, with songs such as "Rock with You," "Get on the Floor" and "Burn This Disco Out." But Jackson made it more than a simple dance record; his querulous vocals turned "Rock with You" into a plea and fashioned a tour de force out of the basic ballad "She's Out of My Life."
It's appropriate that the album came out the week Jackson turned twenty-one, because it was truly a coming-of-age record. It didn't delve into his fears and fantasies as deeply as the best moments on Thriller would, and it didn't quite have the unmistakable personal stamp of that album — but still, it was far more mature than any of his Motown recordings, far more wide ranging than anything he'd done with the Jacksons since their 1976 move to Epic Records. It also united Jackson with some vital collaborators, including Quincy Jones, songwriter Rod Temperton and many of the musicians who would also work on Thriller. And the record did exactly what Jackson wanted it to: the R&B songs worked their magic on the dance floor; "Rock with You" and "She's Out of My Life" became pop hits and helped Off the Wall sell over 5 million copies. And with this breakthrough behind him, Thriller-size success, which once would have seemed unimaginable for Michael Jackson, became almost inevitable.