Michael: a review
Michael Jackson fans have, for about two decades, existed in a kind of parallel universe, following the events of this more common universe yet creating their own meaning and truths. When Bad was released to some mixed critical reception (as any follow-up to a cultural juggernaut like ‘Thriller’ would inevitably be criticized), fans knew it would be big and important, and it was, with its record-setting five number one singles. Fans were right, they knew the truth. The initially jarring new bad-boy bondage outfits were assimilated into mainstream consciousness, the album earned its place in the pantheon of pop greatness, and all was right with the world.
When Michael Jackson was accused of child molestation, fans knew he was innocent. As the headlines and gossip television shows screamed that he was a freak and a pervert, fans shook their heads and looked into each other’s eyes, proclaiming, sometimes silently and sometimes loudly, We know the truth. We know the truth, we know he’s innocent. And he was. Vindicated in court, he walked away, emotionally battered but free and completely exonerated, and fans all around the world sighed or sobbed in relief and nodded yes, we always knew.
When he announced his comeback concerts, This Is It, and much of the American public laughed at him and wondered how this frail old man could ever hope to pull it off, fans trampled over each other to buy tickets because they knew he could do it, they knew he was still capable of anything he put his incredible talent and mind to. With the posthumous release of his rehearsal footage, the film ‘This Is It’, it was crystal clear to all that he was older but still utterly capable of producing his own brand of incandescent greatness. His death did not save him an embarrassment as some harsher critics supposed but rather denied us all a worthy and beautiful expression of creative will. Michael Jackson fans gathered in movie theaters, dance clubs and living rooms to watch the film, mourning the loss and reassuring each other, Yeah, we knew he could do it, it would have been great, oh yes we knew this, too.
With the release of the new record, ‘Michael,’ we have a new wrinkle in our parallel universe. There are plenty of objectively insane people in the world of Michael Jackson fandom. I’ve encountered people who talk to him like he’s in the room, people who pray for him yet to him and speak of him like some kind of god. This refusal to accept certain realities (e.g. he was human, he’s gone now and you never met the guy and if you did he would have probably been freaked the hell out by your obsession) generally frightens me and I stay away from these people, who I consider pretty unhinged. There are plenty of warring factions who go nearly to blows over discussions whether he faked his own death or not and whether he is hiding in Bahrain or England or wherever. There are those who love their pop idol so much they think they have become one with him and can speak for him – Michael would never have done this, he would have wanted that. The release of ‘Michael’ has pitted man fans against each other as we dissect, discuss and attempt to understand what it means, what he might have wanted us to hear, and what the “truth” might possibly be.
The controversy over the album, and in particular the three so-called Cascio tracks, has been so vicious that it is impossible to ignore when considering the music. The first song ‘Breaking News,’ released to great fan consternation on the official Sony website, almost has to be discounted in any review of the album because of the tidal wave of fan anger and rejection on the grounds that even IF it contains original vocals by Michael Jackson, they are so over-processed and buried in layers of ‘soundalike’ supplemental vocals that MJ is impossible to hear. While Sony claims utter authenticity, I think it almost doesn’t matter. I tend to believe this is a genuine MJ song – there are too many monetary incentives at work that lead me to this belief that I don’t really want to get into here—but the vocals have been so digitally tortured with Melodyne that they sound stretched thin and powerless, leaving me to wonder what the point was. The lyrics are lame, the constant self-referential name-checking strange and out of character. The song sounds more like a petulant journal entry than something meant for public consumption. The themes explored are well-worn and handled with more punch and danceable vigor in the playful ‘Leave Me Alone,’ the biting and aggressive ‘Tabloid Junkie’ and even the snarling and generally underrated Invicible-era track ‘Privacy.’ The signature howls and ‘hee-hees’ come off as having been randomly inserted to add the elusive “MJ seasoning” to this strange brew rather than expressions of emotion. Is this a case of clueless producers cutting and pasting too much? If Michael had released this song during his life, I would have lamented his slipping into un-self-aware parody, his once meaningfully uttered vocalizations reduced to signifiers of himself. Since he’s gone, I’m tempted to blame the producer for these sins and absolve Michael. I want to give the artist that credit. Having not heard the original isolated and un-altered vocal track, though, I have no fucking idea, just regrets and unresolvable hopes.
‘Monster,’ another of the controversial Cascio tracks, sounds like a much more straightforward case to me. The vibrato in several places is uncharacteristic and unpleasant, but in a way that can conceivably be explained by too much modern software meddling. The bulk of the vocals sound like Michael Jackson to me; that’s where I’m coming down on the debate so let’s get that issue out of the way first. I think the song is actually pretty good (and I think I’d still enjoy it on its own merit were it sung by someone else). The singing has more energy and soul than that in ‘Breaking News’ and the themes of duplicitous paparazzi and the pain of fame are handled in a much more interesting way. There is a multiplicity in the story of the song, where the word ‘monster’ could refer to the stalking photographers (“he’ll be waiting with his camera”), dishonorable journalists writing tabloid lies, the army of two-faced fans and critics (“why are they never satisfied…you give them your all, they’re watching you fall”), or the celebrity subject himself. The perspective leaps between these angles with nearly every line of the lyrics, keeping pace with the relentless beat: One moment a headline screams, “He’s like an animal!“ and the next moment the trapped celebrity laments that Hollywood is doing such a number on him and screwing with his mind (“too bad Hollywood has got you jumpin’…got you drunk enough to fall”). The horror-movie-esque screams in the background are a bitter joke; the song isn’t a movie fantasy like ‘Thriller,’ and I frankly wish whoever put those screams in there hadn’t felt the need to reference it in that fashion; I think they’re unnecessary. It becomes clear as the song progresses that the ‘Monster’ is the destructive unending web of media, celebrity, fame, gossip and lies – the celebrity-industrial complex that convinces “everybody” to “wanna be a star” while destroying them. MJ did a great live rendition of ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ with Britney Spears in 2001 and it’s hard to avoid remembering their acquaintance and thinking about what the media has done to her, too. My biggest problem with this track comes from the use and abuse of the collaborations: 50 Cent’s rap sounds tacked on and is a totally unnecessary detraction from this driving dance track. Orianthi, the talented, young guitarist who was scheduled to play lead for the This Is It shows, is supposedly playing on this track, but the mix is terrible and her skills are completely wasted. Her presence only really has value on this track as an argument for its authenticity due to her relationship to MJ.
‘Hold My Hand’, the first official single featuring Akon, left me lukewarm with the first few listens, but did grow on me. I don’t care much for Akon, but Michael’s vocals are warm and comforting on this track. At first I was confused by the release of this one as the first single, since I was expecting some kind of pounding dance track to get the tacky posthumous party started, but now I get it. The song has been embraced by fans, the authenticity of the vocals is undeniable, and the message can be interpreted as a simple love song (for the public; “why make our lives harder by fighting love”) or a sweet and comforting goodbye (for the hardcore fans, “nothing can come between us” means death, too). The Estate tells us that Michael intended ‘Hold My Hand’ to be his next lead single, but I’ve read elsewhere that it was originally intended for release on an Akon album, which I find more credible as it features Akon more prominently. This seems to work for the song, but given the circumstances we’re left wondering if that was a true artistic choice, suspicious that they just didn’t have enough quality MJ vocals to do it any other way.
The music video for ‘Hold My Hand’ is not especially exciting, but it, like the song, achieves its tearjerking memorializing purpose, succinctly announcing (via a pastiche of impersonating and celebrating fans, mostly young ones, interspersed with carefully selected clips of MJ in performance) that he’s gone, his like will never be seen again, his symbols and movements are instantly recognizable from the smallest gestures and those things will live for generations in his fans. ‘Blue Gangsta’ (for example, a great melodic dance track that I know many fans would love to see in a proper official release) might be a way sexier and more club-ready song, but it would never have accomplished this message.
‘Best of Joy’ is an unexpected gem, completely new to me and a great gift amidst the controversies. From what I’ve read, Michael recorded this toward the end of his life during his preparations for ‘This Is It.’ You’d never guess it at first listen, though. Musically, it’s closer to his sweet, soulful sound in the 70s and early 80s, before his delivery was so often laced with clenched-teeth acid aggression and chopped up military-esque beats. It’s a warm, beautiful and crystal clear reminder of the optimistic, boyish voice the world fell in love with decades ago. The lyrics border on insipid (“I am the moonlight, you are the spring / our lives a sacred thing / you’ll know I always will love you…I was the only one around when things would hurt you”). Some lines recall that staple of dentist offices and middle-aged Christian women’s desk art, that god awful ‘footprints’ poem about being carried in hard times by God. And then you realize that MJ hasn’t written a schmaltzy love song about a girl, because none of his seeming love songs are just about a girl—he’s written a hymn to the healing power of music and the redeeming power of creative acts. The words are imbued with gravity and love by his earnest and flawless voice. When he sings, “I am forever,” a line that is incredibly bold in its naked simplicity and extravagant ego, it is wholly believable, true and unironic. He’s speaking about his own music and its power to heal its deeply flawed and tormented creator. It is gorgeously honest, welcoming and welcomed, and real.
It pains me to no end that in my discussion of each of these songs, I’ve had to start with an assessment of its authenticity, its “real MJ vocals” quotient. The MJ fan parallel world has finally broken off into a place I can’t follow. Now, after being unpopular but right for so long, about so many things, significant numbers of fans are looking at each other and saying, That’s not him, that’s not his voice, we know the truth. And those who disagree are shouted down. But what if this time you’re wrong? I want to ask. What if this time your mind is clouded by sadness at the unfairness of his untimely death, by anger at the mishandling of his estate, by disappointment at what are just some sub-par songs? To say that MJ had nothing to do with ‘Breaking News’ is just denial, but to get to that you have to recognize that he was human and capable of lame songs sometimes. I can easily see how it happened, through an overuse of modern technology and too many “supporting vocals” to finish a track that everyone in the studio really wanted to create. It’s the sonic equivalent of an overworked canvas, but that doesn’t mean Michael’s not buried under there.
What IS certainly fake is any marketing attempt to call ‘Michael’ an album. An “album” is a cohesive collection of thematically or musically related material. I would have called this a b-side or rarity collection but never a “new album.” ‘Michael’ contains some great modern and recent songs, but also some that were recorded decades ago: ‘Behind the Mask’ was recorded in the 80s and ‘(I Like) The Way You Love Me’ could have come from the ‘Off The Wall’ era for all I know (and is also sort of a weird choice for inclusion in an “all-new” record as it was released on 2004’s ‘Ultimate Collection’ box set already). ‘Breaking News’ (or some finished version of it that wasn’t over-produced to sound like shit), ‘Monster’ and the Invincible-era ‘Hollywood Tonight’ sound like they do belong together on an (actual) album of (actual) new material, but the rest feels like another project or historical box set. The collection shows a nice range of styles and reminds us how Michael could stretch musically, but frustratingly, it never quite comes together.
This is not an insurmountably bad thing, it’s just unfortunate, a wasted opportunity, something with which Michael’s life was occasionally peppered. As an addition to MJ’s oeuvre, I don’t think he’d be particularly happy with this, but he has little to be embarrassed about; there is legitimately great work here, just not up to his finished album standards. I’m not too worried about this record tarnishing his legacy as an artist; that legacy has survived much worse and will survive still.
The real heartbreaking tragedy of this record is what it has done to the fans. It has divided them completely, it has torn out their hearts and poisoned their goodwill and trust. It has sealed off the parallel universe of MJ fandom and made the authenticity of every subsequent release a focal subject for debate. This is a PR disaster, totally avoidable and unforgivable. One of the few positive things to come out of Michael’s death was the sudden interest in his music – his actual artistic product was again elevated above the cult of personality and years of controversy. With this authenticity debacle, the debate and gossip has overshadowed the music again, for the most unlikely group of people: Michael’s biggest fans, who were previously able to keep media circuses in perspective through trial after trial.
I meant to end this diatribe as a record review, with a single rating, but I can’t. I have no rating that would encompass my feelings on the matter. I love some of the new music. Yet I cannot feel elevated by it, yet. I do not feel like dancing. I feel tired and sad. Soon I may be able to just enjoy the songs I like for what they are and no more, but today I can barely hear them through the subtext of so many debates, and I am already looking forward to looking back.
