Description
This is the fourth installment of our series, examining Michael Jackson’s demos, alternate versions, and unreleased songs in chronological order as much as possible to see how the monster album “Thriller” was made. The first single “The Girl Is Mine” was released on October 23, 1982, prior to the album “Thriller”. The song did not suggest any adventure. It could be said that Michael played it safe by releasing a duet with Paul as the lead single of the album. The B-side song is “Can’t Get Outta The Rain”. This is a re-recording of “You Can’t Win (Part.2)”. “You Can’t Win” was written by Charlie Smalls and produced by Quincy Jones for the musical “The Wiz”, which opened in Baltimore in 1974. However, it was cut from the official opening of the Broadway show and was not performed until the production of the movie “The Wiz” began. During the production of the film, Michael was tasked with singing the song, which was recorded between November ’77 and January ’78, and was used in place of “I Was Born On The Day Before Yesterday” during Michael’s scarecrow performance. After recording the original soundtrack, Michael returned to the studio with Quincy Jones to re-record the song in the summer of ’78 with an Off The Wall-style production. It was finally released as a single on January 11, ’79, and became Michael’s first solo single since leaving Motown. “You Can’t Win” is a two-part song, with the first half featuring proper verses and choruses, and the second half featuring ad-libs and backing vocals (the version featured on the ‘Ultimate Collection’ album in 2004 was a condensed 1/7 version). On October 18, ’82, a re-recorded version of “You Can’t Win” (Part 2), titled “Can’t Get Outta The Rain,” was released as the B-side of the single “The Girl Is Mine.” But it’s basically part 2 of the original song, but the lyrics “you can’t get outta the game” are replaced with “you can’t get outta the rain” and some overdubs are added. And Charlie Smalls is not credited with the songwriting, only Quincy and Michael. When this first single was released and reached number 2 on the charts, the test cut of “Thriller” was completed. In the studio, Larkin Arnold, head of the black music division at Epic Records, was eagerly waiting for the moment to open the champagne and listen. Everyone listened to the master tape. “…It was a complete failure. We had great songs and performances, we mixed it down, everything was perfect, but what we got was 24 carats of sonic shit. The studio was silent. We had added too many elements to the album. Big, fat sounds, grooves, if they were lacking, the sound would inevitably be poor. So we filled each side of the record with 28 minutes of music like that. Smelly said, “Wow, it’s Jerry. It makes you want to dance.” But you have to be realistic about the record. Side A and Side B have to be under 19 minutes. That’s the rule. We were at our wits’ end. Michael said, crying, “What am I supposed to do now?” In the end, we took two days off, and then mixed down one song a day for the next eight days, and finished the album in one go. Rod Temperton removed one verse from “The Lady In My Life,” and Michael agreed to throw away the “Julie” part of the long intro to “Billie Jean.” Then something worked, and Thriller became something more than an album. From Quincy Jones’ autobiography. Here, we have attempted to recreate this roughly 56-minute 24-carat “sound shit” edition of Thriller. First of all, the released album “Thriller” is 42 minutes 19 seconds in total. It is already 4 minutes longer than Quincy’s rule of 19 minutes x 2 = 38 minutes. Now, the released 12-inch version and the full-length version of “The Lady in My Life” make up the basic structure of “Thriller” (the exception will be mentioned later). “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” is not 6 minutes 2 seconds, but 6 minutes 30 seconds on the 12-inch version (the 12-inch version only says “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'”, but it is the long version). There is no long version of “Baby Be Mine” and it is 4 minutes 20 seconds. “The Girl Is Mine” was already a single, so it couldn’t be cut, so it is 3 minutes 41 seconds. And there is a long version of “Thriller”, but it is actually the same version as the album, 5 minutes 57 seconds long. There is a long version of “Billie Jean” on the 12-inch, which is 6 minutes 23 seconds instead of 4 minutes 54 seconds. There are no long versions of “Beat It” and “Human Nature”, which are 4 minutes 18 seconds and 4 minutes 6 seconds, respectively. And “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” (3 minutes 59 seconds) is also supposed to have no long version, but there is an instrumental that ends with a fade-out (5 minutes 40 seconds), and there is a fan-made version of the multi-track Nick Long Version (5 minutes 41 seconds) that is almost the same as the backing. It is quite authentic for a fan-made version, and I included it for the “Sound Shit Edition” as an exception. And the last song, “The Lady In My Life”, is 6 minutes 30 seconds long, which is much longer than the album version of 3 minutes 58 seconds (it includes some silence). This makes the total 47 minutes 16 seconds (45 minutes 47 seconds if “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” is the album version of 3 minutes 59 seconds). It is more than 9 minutes (10 minutes) shorter than 56 minutes. It is said that one verse of “The Lady In My Life” was omitted, but it is much more cut down compared to the full version. And as you can hear from the previous releases of “Thriller Complete Sessions” Vol.1 to Vol.3, there are longer versions, but they are all demos and not perfect versions made to be included in the album. The only exception is the demo of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'”, which seems to have room for editing, but I don’t think it was put on the album as it is. In fact, there is a 12-inch version that is about 30 seconds longer, so I think that is for the sound shit edition. Therefore, the “sound shit” of the approximately 56-minute “Thriller” 24 carat cannot be reproduced from the existing sound source. However, the 47-minute edition was recorded first. From here on, it is a hypothesis. Quincy miscalculated and the 47-minute version is actually the sound shit. I think it is possible. The 46-minute version is already long enough. I don’t think either of them would fit on a 46-minute cassette tape. The limit for one side of an album is 30 minutes (Queen’s “Greatest Hits” is 30 minutes 4 seconds on side A and 30 minutes 58 seconds on side B, and there is an LP with Karajan’s “Pastoral” at 37 minutes 43 seconds). So it is possible to fit 28 minutes on one side of an LP. The album was mixed down at a pace of one song per day for eight days, and completed in one go, which means that the eight songs other than “The Girl Is Mine” were mixed down. Excluding the 89 seconds of “Billie Jean” and the approximately 2 and a half minutes of “The Lady in My Life” that were definitely cut, to make “Thriller” 42 minutes 19 seconds, it would take about two minutes of editing on average for each song. In fact, in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'”, they did something like that, and managed to cut just under 30 seconds by picking various parts from the song. You can hear the amazing editing that was done when you listen to it. Even the fact that these 30 seconds were done in a day seems like a small miracle. But it’s still 30 seconds, a quarter of the average cut time. If they had done more editing on the other songs, it would have been pretty magical (unless they had just cut the latter half and faded out the rest of the song, which was a rough job). To cut 28 minutes on one side to 19 minutes would have meant cutting one or two songs completely. So I added “Carousel”, which was not included in “Human Nature”, to the shitty sound. This still makes a total of 50 minutes 56 seconds (49 minutes 13 seconds). Then I added “Can’t Get Outta The Rain”, and finally it’s 55 minutes 1 second (53 minutes 18 seconds). If Part 1 of “Can’t Get Outta The Rain” was also made, it would have added another 3 minutes or more, making it more than 56 minutes. Well, at this point it’s no longer like “Thriller” (which is why “You Can’t Win” was not included). Additionally, the album includes instrumental versions of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'”, “Billie Jean”, and “Thriller” that are featured on the 12-inch, and “P.Y.T.” is a long instrumental version rather than the album version featured on the 12-inch. 1.Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ (12″ Version) 6:30 2.Baby Be Mine 4:20 3.The Girl Is Mine 3:42 4.Thriller 5:57 5.Beat It 4:18 6.Billie Jean (Long Version) 6:19 7.Human Nature 4:05 8.P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) 5:41 9.The Lady In My Life (Full Version #2 Edit) 6:24 10.Carousel 3:40 11.Can’t Get Outta The Rain 4:05 12.Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ (Instrumental) 6:33 13.Thriller (Instrumental) 6:00 14.Billie Jean (Instrumental Version) 6:19 15.P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) (Instrumental Long Version) 5:40
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