artist and Jones as its co-producer,
and a Best Pop Vocal Performance,
Male, award for Jackson. "Beat It"
won Record of the Year, with Jackson
as artist and Jones as co-producer, and
a Best Rock Vocal Performance,
Male, award for Jackson. "Billie Jean"
won Jackson two Grammy awards,
Best R&B Song, with Jackson as its
songwriter, and Best R&B Vocal
Performance, Male, as its
artist. Thriller also won another
Grammy for Best Engineered
Recording – Non Classical in 1984,
awarding Bruce Swedien for his work
on the album. The AMA Awards for
1984 provided Jackson with an Award
of Merit and AMAs for Favorite Male
Artist, Soul/R&B, and Favorite Male
Artist, Pop/Rock. "Beat It" won
Jackson AMAs for Favorite Video,
Soul/R&B, Favorite Video,
Pop/Rock, and Favorite Single,
Pop/Rock. Thriller won him AMAs
for Favorite Album, Soul/R&B, and
Favorite Album, Pop/Rock.
In addition to the award-winning
album, Jackson released "Thriller", a
fourteen-minute music video short
directed by John Landis, in 1983. It
"defined music videos and broke
racial barriers" on the Music
Television Channel (MTV), a
fledgling entertainment television
channel at the time. In December
2009, the Library of
Congress selected the music video for
"Thriller" for inclusion in the National
Film Registry. It was one of twenty-
five films named that year as "works
of enduring importance to American
culture" that would be "preserved for
all time." The zombie-themed
"Thriller" is the first and, as of 2009,
the only music video to be inducted
into the registry.
Jackson's attorney John Branca noted
that Jackson had the highest royalty
rate in the music industry at that
point: approximately $2 for every
album sold. He was also making
record-breaking profits from sales of
his recordings. The videocassette of
the documentary The Making of
Michael Jackson's Thriller sold over
350,000 copies in a few months. The
era saw the arrival of novelties like
dolls modeled after Michael Jackson,
which appeared in stores in May 1984
at a price of $12. Biographer J. Randy
Taraborrelli writes that,
"Thriller stopped selling like a leisure
item—like a magazine, a toy, tickets
to a hit movie—and started selling
like a household staple." In 1985, The
Making of Michael Jackson's
Thrillerwon a Grammy for Best
Music Video, Longform.
Time described Jackson's influence at
that point as "Star of records, radio,
rock video. A one-man rescue team
for the music business. A songwriter
who sets the beat for a decade. A
dancer with the fanciest feet on the
street. A singer who cuts across all
boundaries of taste and style and color
too".The New York Times wrote that,
"in the world of pop music, there is