Click here to listen to a clip from Michael Jackson's new single

What would it have been - 30 million, 40 million sales? When exactly did it become obvious that Thriller would be one of those albums celebrated at every anniversary? It probably happened in 1984, when John Landis's video to the title track propelled it to a record-breaking 52 million sales. If the sight of an undead Jackson in prosthetics was unsettling, his fans couldn't have imagined how many more terrifying faces Jackson would go on to wear. Neither could they have imagined that they would grow up while their idol jammed his developmental gearstick into reverse. Indeed, although the story of pop in the 1980s has long since been rewritten by Smiths fans, the fact is that, for the vast majority of adolescents at this time, males didn't come more alpha than Michael Jackson.

To a generation, Thriller's songs were utterly aspirational. If Michael had never seduced a girl, it didn't detract from, say, The Lady in My Life or Human Nature because neither had most of the people who played them while getting ready to go out on a Friday night. You suspect that if 21st-century teenagers listened to Thriller's soppier moments, they would be tickled by their quaint sentiments. Certainly, Jacko and the guesting Paul McCartney struggle to convince as two rutting stags locking antlers on The Girl is Mine.

But, perhaps because it established the template of Justin Timberlake's solo career, Billie Jean still sounds stunning. That Jackson also wrote Beat It and Wanna Be Startin' Something sealed his status as pop god: the brilliantly bonkers lines “You're a buffet/ You're a vegetable/ And they eat off you” on the latter; and, on Beat It, the brittle production that Quincy Jones half-inched from the Knack's My Sharona. Further proof that genius steals comes with a title track whose synth intro was grafted on after Jones heard Prince's 1999. Presumably because you can't improve on perfection, that song hasn't been touched up for this reissue.

Such a rationale, sadly, doesn't extend to the rest of Thriller. You'll want to hear the one rarity - a rerecorded For All Time, even if it's actually a passable Dangerous out-take. But a slew of star remixes range from the futile (Kanye West) to ego-primping folly. Whoever thought it would be a good idea for Black-Eyed Peas will.i.am metaphorically to dose up P.Y.T. and The Girl is Mine with “Jesus juice” ought to be locked in a windowless cell with nothing but those songs on a continuous loop.

If the point was to illustrate how right Jackson and Quincy Jones got it the first time around, then job done. But chances are you were there the first time around - and, if so, you certainly won't need this.

(Epic/Legacy)

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