Add to that list legendary producer Quincy Jones, already three decades into a wildly varied career that included collaborations with some of history’s greatest singers, like Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. This group included keyboard player Greg Phillinganes, engineer engineer Bruce Swedien, synth player Michael Boddicker, trumpeter Jerry Hey, percussionist Paulinho Da Costa, and the guitarists David Williams and Paul Jackson Jr. Many of the same collaborators that had aided Jackson on Thriller were still in his orbit for Bad, adding to the star’s impetus. To achieve five Number Ones, he suggests an artist requires three key ingredients: “momentum, clarity of vision and chemistry with your collaborators.” With these elements in mind, we look back at Bad in honor of its 30th anniversary. Anokute – now Senior VP of A&R for Epic Records – helped sign Perry to Capitol a decade ago, and he served as an A&R on Teenage Dream. Only one other artist has ever matched Jackson’s feat: Katy Perry, who scored her fifth Number One from Teenage Dream when “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” topped the Hot 100 in 2011. “I never imagined an artist could do that kind of magic.” “It was godlike to watch Michael Jackson’s videos and hear those songs,” he says. When Michael Jackson released Bad in 1987, he accomplished something astonishing: One after another, the singles “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror” and “Dirty Diana” shot to the top of the Hot 100.Ĭhris Anokute, then a kid in New Jersey, was wowed by the hit parade.