“I thought ‘Billie Jean’ was one of the greatest records of all time before I saw Michael on ‘Motown 25,'” says Antonio “LA” Reid, former boss of Island/Def Jam. “But the way he glided across the stage was like an earthquake. I was constantly around break dancers who tried things like that, but no one ever succeeded. It looked like he was a robot.” Before that television appearance on Motown’s 25th anniversary on May 16, 1983, Jackson had called his management office with a request: “Get me a hat, a cool fedora like that – something a secret agent would wear would wear.”
Jackson wanted to release “Billie Jean,” which had been number one on the singles charts for several weeks. He had been rehearsing for weeks, but the night before the recording he went down to the kitchen of his villa, put on the cool hat, turned up the stereo and started practicing new dance steps. He later said he was trying to perfect “a breakdance move, some popping thing” that some hip-hop kids had taught him. “I just knew that I wanted to run forward and backward at the same time in bridge. Like someone walking on the moon.” Jackson’s choreography for “Billie Jean” is one of the most exciting dance routines in the history of television, but it was actually just a prelude to the few seconds in which he introduced the “moonwalk” to the world . Jackson later said that Fred Astaire called him the next day and said, “You’re an amazing dancer.”
Astaire even videotaped the show and carefully analyzed Jackson’s steps. Jackson’s “Thriller,” released in December 1982, was already breaking sales records, and the accompanying videos had opened the doors to other black musicians like Prince on MTV. But the appearance on “Motown 25” turned the hit into a phenomenon: five more number one singles followed, and the album stayed at the top of the US charts for 37 weeks.
To date, “Thriller” has sold 40 million worldwide, earning Jackson an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. “At some point,” claims Walter Yetnikoff, then head of Jackson’s record company CBS, “the Smithsonian Museum thought about opening its own section for Michael Jackson. This young man set the world on fire with ‘Thriller.’