Click here to listen to a clip from Michael Jackson's new single
A quarter of a century ago, back when it was only his suit that was white, Michael Jackson released Thriller. He was already famous, of course, and had been for most of his life, first as a member of the Jackson Five, then as a solo artist. But Thriller was something else again. As its birthday is celebrated with the release of an expanded edition of the original album, we will doubtless hear a lot about just how many copies it has sold.
With the former Frank Sinatra arranger/ conductor Quincy Jones behind the mixing desk, Jackson fashioned an album that ranged from a pop duet with Paul McCartney (The Girl Is Mine) to a rock crossover with Eddie Van Halen on guitar (Beat It), alongside soul ballads (Human Nature) and funky R&B (Billie Jean). He then invested heavily (financially and creatively) in the promo videos. If you were setting out a strategy for making the biggest-selling album of all time - and Jackson has since claimed he was - this is how you would do it.
But the sales units aren't what's really important here (unless you're a fading star desperate for royalties on your back catalogue to prop up an extravagant lifestyle). What matters is that Thriller redrew the map of pop. The most effective fusion of white and black popular music since Elvis Presley, Thriller took elements of pop, rock, soul and R&B, and melded them together to create something new. Twenty-five years later, you can still hear the Thriller sound all over the charts, sometimes blatantly, as in the faithful recreations of Justin Timberlake, but, less overtly, in almost all of the chart-dominating music that looks for the middle course between pop and R&B: from Gwen Stefani's whoops on The Sweet Escape to Rihanna's rock guitars on Shut Up and Drive. The collaborators and remixers on the expanded Thriller's new tracks - Akon, Kanye West, Will.i.am - surely aren't there because hooking up with Jackson is a great career move; they're there because they know the debt they owe him.
Perhaps you're thinking that if you sell that many copies, then of course you're going to influence everybody. But take a look at our two tables. The bestselling albums of all time include several that never influenced anybody; our list of the most influential albums contains a few that never troubled the charts. Patti Smith's Horses, the Flying Burrito Brothers' Gilded Palace of Sin, The Velvet Underground & Nico - these were not megasellers, but each has carved out a vital place for themselves over time, as generation after generation of artists looked back to them for inspiration.
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Just a note on our methodology here. Discrepancies between different countries' measurement systems make it hard to get a definitive list of the world's bestselling albums that everyone will agree with (estimates of the global sales for Thriller, for example, vary from 40m to 100m). So, we've taken the American chart and extrapolated it, essentially by removing those acts whose nonUS sales aren't in proportion to their Stateside success - so goodbye, Hootie and the Blow-fish. We've also ditched the greatest-hits sets. Our list of influential albums was compiled by a survey of Culture-section regulars.
There's a scene in the first of the modern Batman movies where the Joker, played by Jack Nicholson, breaks into a museum. As the doors burst open, he says to his hench-men: "Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds." This serves as a good definition of what we mean by "influential" - this list contains the albums that revealed a new world to their listeners and opened up new territory for subsequent musicians. The Velvet Underground & Nico broadened minds in terms of its sound (the mix of distorted guitars, droning viola and minimalist drumming), its unusual lyrical subject matter (from sado-masochism to heroin addiction), its production quality (lo-fi scuzziness) and the band's image (leather, shades, blank expressions). The influential albums are the ones that - on their original release - made people think "How did they do that?" (Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles), "I didn't know you could do that" (Bob Dylan, the Ramones), "What's going on here?" (Kraft-werk, Bowie, Public Enemy), or all three (Velvet Underground).
Pop music has always been about much more than just music; so, in our list, we've taken a broad view of what these albums are influencing. If we had limited ourselves exclusively to musical influence, for example, we might have removed Ziggy Stardust (musicians inspired by glam tend to favour Marc Bolan as a template) and replaced it with Bowie's Low, which sowed the musical seeds for the next decade. But Ziggy was the album that changed our world. It told us that if you didn't like the way you were, you could just reinvent yourself.
In a similar way, many of the albums on that list essentially announced the arrival of a new generation. "You don't have to do it that way any more, you can do it like this" is the message implicit in Never Mind the Bollocks and Nevermind, in Revolver and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
A list of influential albums isn't the same as a list of influential artists. Elvis - who kicked the doors open before anyone - isn't here because his influence came through a series of singles. It's also worth mentioning that, while we tended to favour older works (it takes a while for an album's influence to be truly felt), a couple of brave, and perhaps prescient, souls put forward Radiohead's In Rainbows, on the basis that it will dramatically influence the way music is distributed in the future.
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The 20 bestselling albums
1 Michael Jackson, Thriller As thrilling today as it ever was.
2 Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV Still worth a listen? Ask the millions who fought for tickets last year.
3 Pink Floyd, The Wall The alienation of the modern world? Yup, still relevant.
4 AC/DC, Back in Black A great guitar riff never really goes out of fashion.
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5 Shania Twain, Come on Over Er, actually, we're kind of busy right now . . .
6 The Beatles, The Beatles (White Album) Its eclectic brilliance is still the target that ambitious bands aim for.
7 Fleetwood Mac, Rumours You can still feel the intra-band heartbreak behind the smooth pop songs.
8 Whitney Houston, Bodyguard OST You may think you've heard that song enough now.
9 Boston, Boston Has found its rightful home on classic rock stations.
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10 Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill We thought it was going to be the beginning of a brilliant career. Oh, well.
11 Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti Many people's favourite Zep album.
12 Eagles, Hotel California Overexposed, and soon to be over here again.
13 Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon The album that shot the Floyd into the super league.
14 Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA Far from his best work (try Nebraska), but still capable of setting off those "fist pumping in the air" reflexes.
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15 Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever OST Silly hair, silly voices, yet somehow magnificent.
16 Guns N' Roses, Appetite for Destruction It certainly sounds dated now; mind you, it sounded dated even then.
17 Santana, Supernatural A remarkable resurgence late in his career, but head instead for the early albums.
18 Meat Loaf, Bat out of Hell More is more.
19 Britney Spears, Baby One More Time Back when she was a singer, not an increasingly distressing news story.
20 Prince, Purple Rain Before the squiggles and record-company wrangles, he was capable of timeless genius.
The 20 most influential albums
1 The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground & Nico Hardly anybody bought it, as the saying goes, but everyone who did formed a band.
2 Beatles, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Created the idea of using the recording studio as an instrument.
3 David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars The arrival of postmodernism in rock's most glamorous self-fulfilling prophecy.
4 Patti Smith, Horses Pioneered vast new territories for women in popular music.
5 Beach Boys, Pet Sounds The instrumentation, the harmonies, the arrangements, the sheer ambition.
6 Beatles, Revolver Goodbye "pop group", hello "rock band".
7 The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced? Shaped our sonic world - the template for guitar heroes everywhere.
8 Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited How does it feel? Like a whole new world just opened up.
9 Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back Hip-hop comes of age.
10 Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks... Rendered the rock dinosaurs extinct (for a while).
11 Kraftwerk, Trans-Europe Express It sounded like the future then; eerily, it still does now.
12 Michael Jackson, Thriller The last quarter of a century of R&B starts here.
13 Nirvana, Nevermind Rendered the rock dinosaurs extinct (again).
14 NWA, Straight Outta Compton Created the template for gangsta rap.
15 Aretha Franklin, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You A soul masterpiece, and an album whose anthems radiated out into the wider culture.
16 Ramones, Ramones Rock's ultimate palate-cleanser. Generations of punks started here.
17 Marvin Gaye, What's Going On Motown finds its social conscience.
18 The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Gilded Palace of Sin It was largely ignored at the time, but where would alt-country be without it?
19 Bob Marley and the Wailers, Live! Reggae goes global.
20 Joni Mitchell, Blue Searching for sensitive singer-songwriters? Here's the source.
Thanks to our panel: Stephen Armstrong, Tony Barrell, Dan Cairns, Garth Cartwright, Richard Clayton, Adrienne Connors, Tim Cooper, Matthew Davis, Robin Eggar, Helen Hawkins, Katharine Hibbert, Stewart Lee, Bernard MacMahon, David Mills, Patricia Nicol, Jeff Potter, Robert Sandall, Paul Sexton, Lisa Verrico