1. Michael JacksonThriller
My family is not a musical family. My mum was a kindergarten teacher, and my dad used to work in a bank – he wasn’t like a big guy, he was just a clerk in a branch in my home town, which is a tiny town [Montargis, 70 miles south of Paris]. I didn’t see any live music until I was, I guess, 18 – there were no concerts where I lived, no cool record shops, and just one music instrument shop, so it was all very limited. I spent most of my teenage years just dreaming about one day going to Paris. Music was very much something other kids from wealthier backgrounds did.
We did have commercial radio on all the time, though, and I distinctly remember making tapes with my brother on a kind of boombox that we had. We would listen afterwards to those tapes on long car trips. This is the first album my parents got me on cassette. I think maybe it’s the first time that I kind of became aware of songs being produced: in my seven-year-old head, I can’t have thought in terms of production, but I remember distinctly listening to distinctive elements of the music, realising they were separate. Hearing the rhythm to ‘Beat It’, being aware of the guitar, and knowing it was kind of cheesy, but also digging into the hook-like ways of ‘Billie Jean’ and its bassline. The power of Michael Jackson’s music at the time was how it would just enter your body and your consciousness, even as a small kid.
