Is 'Bad' better than 'Thriller'?

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Michael Jackson’s album Thriller was a tough act for even the King of Pop to follow. The album’s 38 million plus copies sold, along with seven top-10 hits, and seven Grammy awards created a lot of pressure on the pop star when he was working on his 1987 album Bad. However, 25-years after-the-fact, with the reissuing of Bad just a few days ago, which features bonus tracks, remixes, and demos, an argument can be made for which was the better album. Salon.com reports:

In a 1987 Rolling Stone cover story, David Handelman and Michael Goldberg observed that Michael Jackson felt immense, self-imposed pressure while crafting “Bad.” Obviously, this stress was understandable: After all, how does someone follow up “Thriller,” a superlative album that featured seven top-10 hits, sold over 38 million copies and netted seven Grammy Awards?

The short answer is, you can’t equal such freakish success. Even Stevie Wonder told Rolling Stone that the King of Pop shouldn’t be too hard on himself: “You can’t think about what people will like; you go crazy doing that. If it’s possible for him to sell 50 million records, let that happen. But if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just records.” Still, that didn’t mean the driven Jackson — whom Martin Scorsese called “a perfectionist” in the same story – couldn’t try.

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