Only These 3 Michael Jackson Albums Are Perfect

2 days ago 6

Off the Wall - album cover - Michael Jackson

Published May 6, 2026, 8:17 PM EDT

Jeremy has more than 2500 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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There is a movie out, at the time of writing, called Michael, and, to put it mildly, it has been doing quite well, since people like Michael Jackson and his music. Maybe that’s about as simple as it gets. He was the King of Pop, after all, and he pretty much dominated pop culture throughout the 1980s, and then quite a bit into the 1990s, too. Even then, that’s underselling Jackson, since his earliest solo albums came out in the 1970s (at least one of which was a classic), and he was also a member of The Jackson 5, alongside his brothers, and that group’s successes go back as far as the 1960s. Michael Jackson’s legacy has been more complicated in the 21st century, as he only released one album in the early 2000s, then had a particularly large amount of media scrutiny on him (largely related to allegations first made in the 1990s) throughout the rest of the decade, all before passing away suddenly at the age of just 50 in 2009, at a time when he was mounting a comeback tour dubbed This Is It, with rehearsals for that tour being documented in the documentary (also from 2009) Michael Jackson's This Is It.

Anyway, that’s all the stuff you have to get out of the way when you talk about Michael Jackson, because his legacy is complicated and you have to address some of the bad (or the alleged bad) if you want to talk about the good. And there is a lot of good here, music-wise, because there are a handful of Michael Jackson albums that are pretty much perfect, to the extent where it feels almost a little obvious to outline them. But that’s what all the stuff below intends to do. There are great Michael Jackson songs found outside these three albums, but if you want a consistent listening experience, or 40-ish-minute-long chunks of music that really showcase Jackson at his best – and help establish why he was such a big deal while active – then these are the ones most worth checking out.

3 'Bad' (1987)

There was a seeming need, on Michael Jackson’s part, to keep getting bigger and better throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, and it led to diminishing returns, at a point. Oh, things certainly got bigger, in terms of album length, but better? Not so much. There are still high points to be found on the massive albums that ended up being Jackson’s final three, but there are also enough low points to make them a little challenging to listen to – and fully enjoy – in a single sitting. With Bad, though, he seemed mostly willing to just do what had worked so well for him before. Bad really is a sequel to Thriller, and it’s not as good as Thriller, which is inevitably going to rank higher than Bad on any ranking like this, but almost was good enough.

The album still feels close to perfect because of the stuff that works, with the title track and “The Way You Make Me Feel” kicking the whole album off impressively, and then “Dirty Diana” and “Smooth Criminal” right at the end finishing things on a high.

Like, “almost as good as Thriller” is still amazing. Bad has a similar level of ambition and a comparable eclectic quality, in the sense of various songs offering something different, and plenty of genres tackled throughout. Hell, both albums have lowlight duets with other legendary musicians (Thriller has one with Paul McCartney, and Bad has “Just Good Friends” with Stevie Wonder). Bad starts and ends amazingly, which makes the odd underwhelming track around the middle easy to overlook. The album still feels close to perfect because of the stuff that works, with the title track and “The Way You Make Me Feel” kicking the whole album off impressively, and then “Dirty Diana” and “Smooth Criminal” right at the end finishing things on a high… unless you count “Leave Me Alone” as the final track, which was the last one on the CD release of Bad. It’s not as great a song as “Smooth Criminal,” but what it’s going for lyrically makes it arguably a stronger closing track, like, thematically.

2 'Off the Wall' (1979)

The solo albums Michael Jackson released before Off the Wall bleed together to the extent that you'd be forgiven for thinking that this 1979 release was his first solo one. Like, some might think there was The Jackson 5, and then there was Off the Wall, but Jackson had four Jackson 5-less albums before Off the Wall, though they did largely sound like the kind of music he made with his family band. Off the Wall had a bit more of a bombastic style to it, possibly more disco in sound than anything he’d done before that point, but also not “just” disco. That has to be stressed, since disco is a bit of a dirty word, to some. If you don’t like disco, you might still like Off the Wall. It’s just that good, and it’s further helped (in a way) by being pop-heavy on top of having that disco sound, with a little by way of funk and R&B thrown in for good measure.

There’s maybe one track on Thriller that could be called a dud, and one or two on Bad that might be comparatively underwhelming, but it’s harder to single out flawed tracks on Off the Wall. This moves at a fantastic pace right from the jump, so “Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough” works wonders in letting you know what you're in for. It’s an all-time great opening track, and the first half of the album is especially great. From the opening track to the also recognizable “Rock with You,” and then “Workin' Day and Night” followed by “Get on the Floor” and then after that, the title track… it’s almost overwhelming. You're kind of spoiled, for good music. After that point, maybe things drop down in energy ever so slightly, but the comedown could be intentional. Five tracks of relentless hype and energy, and then another five pretty great tracks, some of them just a little mellower. The first half’s the most impressive, but still, taking Off the Wall as a whole, the entirety of it remains impressive, compelling, and seemingly unwilling to age or date itself as the years/decades go on.

1 'Thriller' (1982)

Well, obviously. The music on Thriller could’ve been terrible and it would still be one of the most significant things of its decade, pop culture-wise, just because of all the music videos Michael Jackson was in for various songs from this album released as singles. Oh, well, that’s most of the songs. Almost every song on Thriller was released as a single, and there’s an argument to be made that they all deserved to be released as singles. There aren’t too many albums that can be genuinely said for… like, maybe Purple Rain, by Prince? All those individual songs work on their own, and as part of one massive pop/rock album. And that goes for Thriller and all its songs. The title track is great as an album centerpiece, of course, but you can hear it on its own, out in public, and if you’ve only heard it 200 times, rather than 2000 times, you'll probably be happy to hear it.

Maybe even after 2000 times, you won’t mind. “Thriller” (as in the song), “Billie Jean,” and “Beat It” sure are everywhere, even today, and must've been – somehow – even more everywhere back in the 1980s, when Thriller represented contemporary music. “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'” is almost as iconic, and deservedly so, since it feels like the 2.0 version of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” That was a perfect opener for Off the Wall, and somehow, Jackson delivered an even more perfect opener for Thriller, with “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” You can get the hype from this album alone, and you'll understand it even better if you watch a handful of music videos made for the songs of Thriller. This was, potentially, the album of the 1980s, and so singling it out as Jackson’s masterpiece feels like a no-brainer. Almost too obvious. Sorry for taking 1300 words to tell you what you already knew. Anyway, PSA time: listen to Thriller again, even if it’s for the 20,000th time. It still slaps.