Zeros

THRILLER Rises Again : A New Generation Discovers Michael Jackson’s Dark Magic It’s back from the dead — again. Michael Jackson’s Thriller , the album that defined an era and reshaped pop forever, has clawed its way back onto the Billboard charts. Forty-plus years later, the King of Pop’s most iconic creation is dancing with the living once more — and maybe, just maybe, the undead too. Every Halloween , Thriller sneaks out of its tomb and infects the world all over again. The song’s slow-burning synths and Vincent Price’s wicked laugh seem engineered to wake up buried memories — not just of the 1980s, but of a time when music videos could be mini-movies and MTV was the campfire every teenager gathered around. There was nothing family-friendly about it. Thriller was both pop perfection and horror homage — a bold mix of talent, terror, and taboo that no one would dare attempt today. But the surprise this year is who’s listening. Gen Z , raised on algorith...

MTV Finally Goes Dark: A Long-Overdue Obituary So MTV is finally, officially, completely done. And if your reaction is, " Wait, MTV is still on? " congratulations—you're exactly who this eulogy is for. For most of us, MTV died somewhere around 2010, the moment we canceled cable and discovered that YouTube would show us music videos for free, without commercial breaks, and without making us sit through three hours of Teen Mom first. But apparently, the network has been stumbling around like a zombie for another decade and a half, and now it's finally lying down for good. Let's be honest: MTV was already irrelevant by 2000. The channel that defined a generation in the '80s and stayed cool through the '90s had become a parody of itself by the turn of the millennium. Remember when MTV actually stood for Music Television? When the M meant something besides, " Maybe We'll Show Music at 3 AM "? The '80s were MTV's glory days....