In 1982, Jackson issued his second Epic album, Thriller. The most commercially successful album of all time remained in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 for 80 consecutive weeks and for 37 of those weeks, it remained at the peak position. It was the first album to have seven Billboard Hot 100 top 10 singles, including "Billie Jean", "Beat It," and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." Worldwide sales have exceeded 110 million copies.
Despite the light pop flavor of these two records, Thriller, more so than Off the Wall, displayed foreshadowings of the contradictory thematic elements that would come to characterize Jackson's later work. With Thriller, Jackson would begin his association with the subliminal theme of paranoia and darker imagery. This is evident on the songs "Billie Jean", "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Thriller". The album cemented Jackson's status as one of the predominant pop stars of the late 20th century, and enabled him to break down racial barriers via his appearances on MTV. In fact, promotion through music video is believed to have helped double the sale of the album.
The album "Bad" was released in August, 1987. On August the 8th of that year, the song "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" first came out as as single. The love tune collaboration with singer Siedah Garret did extremely well on the music billboard. When the whole album came out on August the 31st, CBS aired a TV feature about Michael Jackson, which included the 17-minute music video of the song Bad, a creation directed by renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Bad became the second best-selling album next to Thriller. The Bad World Tour began on September 12 that year, finishing on January 14, 1989. In Japan alone, the tour had 14 sellouts and drew 570,000 people, nearly tripling the previous record of 200,000 in a single tour. He broke a Guinness World Record when 504,000 people attended seven sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium. He performed a total of 123 concerts to an audience of 4.4 million people, and gained a further Guinness World Record when the tour grossed 125-million US dollars.
