Westlake Recording Studios — Thriller sessions

Westlake Recording Studios at 8447 Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood is where Michael Jackson and producer Quincy Jones recorded Thriller in 1982 — the album that became the best-selling record of all time, with estimated worldwide sales in excess of 70 million copies. The sessions for Thriller, engineered by Bruce Swedien, took place primarily in Studio A and produced a body of recordings whose commercial and cultural impact was without precedent: 'Billie Jean', 'Beat It', 'Thriller', 'Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'' — seven of the album's nine tracks released as singles, an achievement that has never been equalled.

Westlake had been a premier Los Angeles recording facility since the 1970s and the sessions for Thriller represented its most significant moment. Jones and Jackson used the studio's capabilities and Swedien's recording methods to create a sound that was simultaneously more elaborate and more physical than what pop production had previously achieved: the bass frequencies of 'Billie Jean', the Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on 'Beat It', the horror-movie theatrics of 'Thriller'. The studio had also hosted recording sessions for Off the Wall, the 1979 Jackson/Jones collaboration that had already established both men as forces in the industry.

Westlake Recording Studios remains an operational professional facility on Beverly Boulevard. It has hosted recordings by a vast range of artists across its history and offers tours of the Studio A space where Thriller was recorded. The studio represents the professional infrastructure of the Los Angeles music industry at its peak commercial moment — a period when a single album, made in one room by one producer and one artist, could sell more copies than any record before it.