The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. is the biggest library in the world, and it holds a little bit of everything America has ever made. Each year it does something special. It picks 25 films for the National Film Registry, a list of movies saved forever because they matter to the country’s history and culture.
For years that list was only for movies. Then, on December 30, 2009, that changed.
The Library chose “Michael Jackson’s Thriller” to join the registry. It was the first music video ever picked. The 14-minute short, with Michael turning into a monster under a full moon, now sits in the same vault as the great American films.
Think about what that meant. A short music video, made to sell a record, was now seen as part of America’s story, worth protecting the same way the country guards its most treasured old films. Nothing like it had happened before.
There was no modesty about it, either. The Library called “Thriller” “the most famous music video of all time.”
Plenty of fans know how it was made. Michael teamed up with director John Landis, the same man behind the scary comedy “An American Werewolf in London.” It first played in a theater on November 14, 1983, then hit MTV that December and stayed in people’s heads ever since.
That was part of the point. “Thriller” wasn’t just a singer standing in front of a camera. It had real actors and a story, almost like a tiny horror film. Maybe that’s why it felt right at home on a list built for movies.
What a lot of people don’t know is that “Thriller” wasn’t alone that day. It was announced as part of a class of 25 films, and one of the others has a face every child in America knows.
That film was “The Muppet Movie” from 1979, starring Kermit the Frog.
Yes, the little green frog with the banjo made the very same honor roll as Michael Jackson. Kermit’s road trip out to Hollywood was judged just as worth saving as the most famous music video ever made. Two very different kinds of American joy, chosen together.
So if anyone ever asks what Michael Jackson and a singing frog have in common, now you’ve got an answer that sounds made up but isn’t.
The video below is the one that started all of this. Watch Michael turn an ordinary night into something nobody had seen before, and you’ll see why the Library of Congress decided it had to be kept.
Michael’s full 14-minute “Thriller” video, the one chosen for the National Film Registry
More than 40 years on, it still holds up. Kids who weren’t even born in 1983 learn the moves today, and grown fans still watch it every October. It earned its place on that list, right next to a frog, and it isn’t going anywhere.