Jackson wins the Grammy in 1980

Some people gripe from time to time that we don't have enough cultural based AH. Here is one:

Michael Jackson's album Off the Wall was a released in late 1979 and sold 20 million albums. It was considered a commercial and critical success by many. However, when the time came for the Grammy's, the album didn't win either record of the year or album of the year, like he hoped. He did win Best Male R&B performance for Don't Stop till you get enough. This devastated Jackson so much, that he was determined to show the world and the industry that he could make an album that would prove them wrong. That album was Thriller, which has become the best selling album of all time with sales estimates of 300 million copies sold, garnered him a record 8 Grammys and made him a pop cultural icon in music, videos and radio. The album was credited for helping pull the music industry out of a slump after the crash from the end of the disco era. He was the first black artist to be put into heavy rotation on MTV. He changed how music videos were produced and used to promote music. He helped change how music was produced and how top selling artists were paid. He influenced his contemporaries a great deal, forcing them to work harder to get their music out there and influenced dozens of artists that followed him.

So, it's February 27th, 1980 and the Grammy's for record and/or album of the year go to Michael Jackson. What changes for him? What changes for the world?

Torqumada
 
I know nothing about this, but this sounds interesting, so I'll bump it.

What specific awards are you looking for? Album, Song or Record of the Year? or just a large collection of them?

Looking at the wikipedia history, if he had been nominated for one or more of those three, he would have been up against the likes of the Doobie Brothers (actually Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald), Kenny Rogers, Donna Summer, Streisand/Diamond, and Earth, Wind and Fire. Formiddable odds, but not completely implausible.

The problem was he wasn't nominated. I don't know enough about how the Grammy nominations work-- or specifically how close Jackson's work was to being nominated. How many people's opinions have to be changed to do it?
 
It's not if he can win the awards or how, but that he does and what effect does that have later. It was the fact that he didn't win the awards he thought he should, that pushed him to make Thriller. Would he have done the same if he had won? What would the world be like without the album and it's effects? That's what I am looking at.

Torqumada
 
This is a interesting POD. Thriller was the second record I ever purchased.

I think even if Michael Jackson wins the Grammy he still does Thriller. He was simply too good of an artist to not do a huge follow up record to his first solo album. The problem then becomes just like IOTL, he spends the rest of his career trying to match the success of Thriller and fighting his unstable personality and dead beat family. Maybe it ends better for him in TTL but I doubt it. Maybe him dying after the album BAD or maybe Dangerous would be better.
 
But how he wins the Grammys in 1980 is going to have an effect on what he does later.

If he just happens to win one more award, say best R&B Song, because he happened to be lucky enough to get one more person to add him to the nomination list for that award, I wouldn't see it changing much of anything.

If he wins one or more of the big three awards, or four or five of the others, then it's probably not just one more person liking him, it probably requires a different album to get there. In this case, something like Mad MO said, he tries to match the success of that album instead, and he may decide to go a completely different direction on the next album than he would have with Thriller.
 
Jackson is still going to go through the personal life changes he did ITTL even if he wins more awards. That album was nota large enough hit to change the music industries treatment of Jackson. He was a very insecure person, 1 more award isn't enough to change most of his feelings of being snubbed. Even if its only by the music media. He still is going to have the professional relationship with Quincy Jones. I guess something very much like Thriller gets made.
 
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