FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
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ONE can argue…
IN THIS PHOTO: Michael Jackson in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Schultz
which Michael Jackson is the best. Some would say it is 1982’s Thriller. I am a big fan of 1987’s Bad and 1991’s Dangerous. It is impossible to ignore the importance of 1979’s Off the Wall. One of the best-selling albums ever, it is also considered among the best albums ever. Not as commercially successful as Thriller, many critics have named Off the Wall as Michael Jackson’s defining album. It was Jackson's first album released through Epic Records, the label he recorded under until his death in 2009, and the first produced by Quincy Jones, whom he met while working on the 1978 film, The Wiz. The mix of sounds - Disco, Pop, Funk, R&B, Soft Rock and ballads – fuses with Its lyrical themes include escapism, liberation, loneliness, hedonism and romance. Off the Wall is the sound of Jackson breaking away from The Jackson 5. This is an artist liberated and striding out alone. With song contributions from the likes of Rod Temperton and Paul McCartney, there is not a weak or wasted moment on Off the Wall. Jackson wrote two of the album’s best tracks: Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and Workin’ Day and Night. If you do not own the album on vinyl, it is one that you should definitely buy. Off the Wall possesses so many terrific songs. Jackson is so committed and astonishing throughout. In 1979, there was praise for a breakthrough album by Jackson. I feel there were some who were not sold or did not give Off the Wall the huge acclaim it deserved. Retrospective reviews have boasted the album’s profile and recognised its freshness - and how it was this major Disco record that would go on to influence legions of other artists.
There are a couple of glowing reviews that I want to source. It shows how critics have reacted to the Michael Jackson masterpiece in the years after its release. This is AllMusic’s take on one of the finest albums of the 1970s:
“Michael Jackson had recorded solo prior to the release of Off the Wall in 1979, but this was his breakthrough, the album that established him as an artist of astonishing talent and a bright star in his own right. This was a visionary album, a record that found a way to break disco wide open into a new world where the beat was undeniable, but not the primary focus -- it was part of a colorful tapestry of lush ballads and strings, smooth soul and pop, soft rock, and alluring funk. Its roots hearken back to the Jacksons' huge mid-'70s hit "Dancing Machine," but this is an enormously fresh record, one that remains vibrant and giddily exciting years after its release. This is certainly due to Jackson's emergence as a blindingly gifted vocalist, equally skilled with overwrought ballads as "She's Out of My Life" as driving dancefloor shakers as "Working Day and Night" and "Get on the Floor," where his asides are as gripping as his delivery on the verses. It's also due to the brilliant songwriting, an intoxicating blend of strong melodies, rhythmic hooks, and indelible construction. Most of all, its success is due to the sound constructed by Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, a dazzling array of disco beats, funk guitars, clean mainstream pop, and unashamed (and therefore affecting) schmaltz that is utterly thrilling in its utter joy. This is highly professional, highly crafted music, and its details are evident, but the overall effect is nothing but pure pleasure. Jackson and Jones expanded this approach on the blockbuster Thriller, often with equally stunning results, but they never bettered it”.
I am going to wrap up in a bit. Pitchfork examined Off the Wall in 2016. It is amazing to think of the Michael Jackson who created that album in the 1970s. Compare that to how his career would explode and how his life (tragically) would end:
“Off the Wall is the sound of that liberation. And he knew exactly what he was doing. On November 6, 1979, just as the album was starting to take off, Michael wrote a note to himself on the back of a tour itinerary, a proclamation of self so ambitious it could make Kanye blush. "MJ will be my new name, no more Michael Jackson. I want a whole new character, a whole new look, I should be a totally different person. People should never think of me as the kid who sang ‘ABC’ [and] ‘I Want You Back,’" he jotted down. "I should be a new incredible actor singer dancer that will shock the world. I will do no interviews. I will be magic. I will be a perfectionist, a researcher, a trainer, a masterer… I will study and look back on the whole world of entertainment and perfect it. Take it steps further from where the greats left off."
Those words were eerily prescient in many ways, of course, but they also highlight one of Michael’s most important dualities: He wanted to be magical—to defy expectation and reality—but he knew that such skills could not materialize from thin air. He understood that exceptionalism took hard work. Growing up in the Motown system, he would often sit in on sessions, soaking up lessons from the greats: Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations. He studied the way James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., and Fred Astaire moved their feet onstage, in movies, and on TV. At 17, he counted hallowed masters like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington among his favorite songwriters. He had released four solo albums in the early ’70s, but Off the Wall, which came out when he was 21, finally allowed him to flex all those hours of research into something that was his.
It also marked a moment of idealism. Around the time of Off the Wall, Michael’s musical and physical changes felt natural—joyous extensions of the black American experience. Disco was overwhelmingly popular, breaking down color lines and radio formats while offering utopia on the dancefloor. Coming from the segregated, working-class city of Gary, Ind., Jackson's achievements and acceptance represented a rosy view of the country’s future. But 1979 was scarred by the beginning of the quasi-racist "disco sucks" backlash; Michael also got his first nose job that year, narrowing his nostrils. And though he would become even more successful in the '80s, those astronomical heights sometimes catered to white tastes—in both appearance and sound—in a way that could seem effortful, cynical, and sad.
So part of the reason why Off the Wall remains so unabashedly fun to return to involves that lack of baggage. For 41 minutes, we can live in the eternally young Neverland Michael longed for, a universe largely without consequence or death. This lasting affection is reiterated by a new Spike Lee documentary, Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall, which is included in this CD/DVD reissue and finds Jackson family members and associates, along with more modern stars like the Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye, ?uestlove, and Pharrell, paying tribute to Michael’s earliest incarnations. "Off the Wall was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing," says Tesfaye in the doc, which was in part produced by executors of Michael’s estate and barely mentions anything about the artist’s life after Off the Wall.
The album was released toward the tail end of the disco era and it managed to encompass much of what made that style so infectious while also pushing out its edges. "Our underlying plan was to take disco out. That was the bottom line," the record’s producer, Quincy Jones, once said. "I admired disco, don’t get me wrong. I just thought it had gone far enough." Jones, a calm, jazzy Zen master who had worked with Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, and Count Basie, helped Michael flesh out his own songs as well as tracks written by others, putting forth a record that is at once beautifully simple and sneakily complex”.
An enormously important album, there is no doubt that Off the Wall is one of the best ever. So many classic tracks and amazing production from Quincy Jones. Over forty years after its release, I don’t think there has been another album quite like it. From Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough to Burn the Disco Down, Off the Wall is ten tracks of…
PURE perfection.