The song has been covered and sampled by numerous artists, including Monica, Justin Guarini and Kanye West.
Quincy Jones came up with the original title for the song after his wife, Peggy Lipton, brought lingerie with the words "pretty young thing" on it.
[6] Producer Quincy Jones allowed his long-time sound engineer Bruce Swedien to choose a large-diaphragm Shure SM7 dynamic microphone for Jackson's voice.
For backing vocals, Swedien positioned Jackson at different distances from the microphone to record each track, to get a thicker sound.
[7] James Ingram later described working with Jackson and Jones as being in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
"[8] He noted how Jones would fall asleep on the board, waking up to answer a question.
[8] Two of Jackson's sisters, Janet and La Toya, provided backing vocals in the guise of the P.Y.T.s.
46 on the Hot Black Singles chart, becoming the sixth Top 10 hit from Thriller.
Connelly mentioned that one of Jackson's weaknesses was "a tendency to go for the glitz", and cited the song as one example of this.
[16] Davitt Sigerson, from the same magazine, also agreed with Connelly, calling it one of Thriller's "forgettables".
[18] For Thriller 25, Black Eyed Peas frontman and producer will.i.am remixed the demo version of "P.Y.T.
I grew up in the projects in East Los Angeles and Thriller was filmed about two blocks from my house, but my mother was really strict and she wouldn't let me go to the factories—she didn't care who was filming a video there; but I'm on the 25th anniversary, 25 years later—that's pretty awesome.
[20] They noted that will.i.am "updates the songs' original sound to make them dancefloor-worthy 25 years after their release".