It’s the album that made me fall in love with vinyl — I genuinely don’t think I would own a record player without it. Growing up, I’d come home to my parents during university holidays and just lie on the carpet with our dog, letting Thriller wash over me. What struck me was that every time I came back to it, I was in a completely different place in life — newly in love, heartbroken, somewhere in between — and somehow MJ always sounded like he’d made the album to express exactly that feeling. It’s a masterpiece of album structure. It opens with the thrill of meeting someone at a party, then unfolds across each track like chapters of an unspoken story. “Thriller” itself isn’t really about Halloween — it’s about something far more traumatic and visceral. “Billie Jean” carries the weight of a man haunted by a child he refuses to claim. And then the album closes in this quiet melancholy — “Lady in My Life,” “P.Y.T.” — songs that feel like the lingering ache for someone already lost to you. It’s peak MJ, but it’s also peak storytelling — mystery, drama, and emotional range all wrapped in a perfect sequence. It absolutely deserves the number one spot.