• DOWNLOAD | NEW END ORIGINAL “Better Than This” Thriller, 2001

The first thing anyone ever said when I told them the name of our first album was, “But you can’t do that!”

Or, “That would be like naming your album Dark Side of The Moon!”

But it wasn’t, I argued. Dark Side of The Moon is a concept; Pink Floyd owns that. “Thriller” is not a concept; it’s a word — a common word, in fact, that is used in film, in literature, in the dictionary. Michael Jackson does not own it any more than he owns the words “bad” or “history.”

It actually wasn’t too difficult a decision to make. We just showed up to practice one day and Jonah said, “I have the name for the album.”

There wasn’t even a discussion. We just said, “Awesome, yes, Thriller,” and plugged in our guitars — just like that.

I don’t really have a heartfelt eulogy to give for Michael Jackson. He came, he saw, he conquered, and then he kind of fell apart. But I’ve always had an empathetic heart towards Michael: the plastic surgery, the pet monkey, the Peter Pan syndrome — for better or for worse, the man was acting out. The world stood in judgment, as if we knew that any of us could have handled becoming a worldwide superstar at age 11 any better. As if we really believed that having all the money and fans in the world could heal the broken heart of a child.

The worst thing about Michael Jackson’s death is that he never seemed genuinely at peace with himself in life. He was a brilliant singer and dancer and entertainer — a genius, perhaps, in the same way that Van Gogh was a genius even though he cut off his own ear as a gift to a prostitute — the best of which, I believe, often happened subconsciously. Near the end of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin,’” for example, right before the fade-out, Michael famously ad-libs:

So lift your head up high
And scream out to the world, “I know I’m someone!”
And let the truth unfurl.
No one can hurt you know, cos you know what’s true.
So I’ll believe in me
And you believe in you.

It was the least self-conscious verse that Michael ever sang. New End Original used these words for our Thriller — in homage, on a song called “Better Than This” — but we left them off the lyric sheet. Because, you know, that might be stealing.