Four Top-10 Singles From One Album — Michael Jackson

THE FACT

Until Off The Wall, no solo artist in the history of the Billboard chart had ever placed four top-10 singles from a single album. Michael did it in twelve months. The album that broke the record almost lost the Grammy for Album of the Year to Pink Floyd's The Wall — and was nominated only in the R&B category.

WHAT MOST DON'T KNOW

The four singles: Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough (#1), Rock with You (#1), Off the Wall (#10), and She's Out of My Life (#10). At the time, the industry conventional wisdom was that an album could sustain two hit singles at most; any more cannibalised sales. Off The Wall demolished the assumption. The album sold 8 million copies in its first year and made Michael the first solo artist of any genre to clear a million pre-orders. The Grammy snub — Off The Wall was nominated in only the R&B Male Vocal category and was beaten in album-of-the-year by Christopher Cross's Sailing — privately devastated Michael. He told his sister LaToya that night: 'I'm going to make an album so big that they can't ignore me again.' That album was Thriller, and the rule-changing it caused (the Grammy committee restructured its main categories to be genre-blind for the first time in 1984 specifically because of the Thriller backlash) still stands.

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THE MOMENT

Michael Jackson — Rock with You (Official Video, 1979) — One of the four top-10 singles from Off The Wall.

SOURCES

Off the Wall (album) — Wikipedia ↗