"Cud it da twilla, twilla night!"

Music video channel The Box says that out of 7,000 votes, Mikey's 'Thriller' video is the favorite music video of all time here. Some of my fave memories of it include: The then-Jehovah's Witness Mikey's disclaimer at the beginning ("Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult." Wha?); the impish playfulness Mikey displayed with director John Landis (the tickling! squealing!); the Vincent Price "rap" ("...the funk of 40,000 years...); the speech impediment-sounding way Mikey sang the chorus (see title of this post); the choreography during the big zombie dance number (always good for a laugh at parties); the giddy discomfort Mikey showed whenever he was close to "romantic" interest, Ola Ray (a full-blooded woman next to Mikey's pubescent goofball); the transformation scene (accompanied by existentially-pained screams). The absolutely most telling and resonant moment comes when Mikey says to a bewildered Ola, "I'm not like other guys," and "I'm different"... Even then I remember thinking, "Oh, yeah ...you got that right!" Of course, at that time we didn't know just how not like other guys Mikey was, or just how different he would become from how he looked then. Who could've known?! '

Thriller' is not my personal fave video of all time, that's probably reserved for something by Madonna or Bjork. It's not even the most memorable Mikey video in my mind either. That's reserved for his 1993 "I am not a criminal" video when he was first accused of pedophilia. That video concretized in my mind just how "different" he really had become, a transformation that would never be reversed and was far scarier than any achieved through Hollywood trickery.