Michael Jackson: Classic or Dud?

I Want You Back
A.B.C.
The Love You Save
I'll Be There
I Wanna Be Where You Are
We Got a Good Thing Goin'
Shoo Be Do Be Do Da Day
Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)
Don't Stop Til You Get Enough
Rock With You
Off the Wall
Workin' Day and Night
Billie Jean
Wanna Be Startin' Something
P.Y.T.
Thrilller
Bad
The Way You Make Me Feel

(80:54 - chronological, It was difficult to cut "Dancing Machine" since it really shows the midpoint of his voice change. I know there are a lot of great latter day tracks missing here that would be good on a MJ solo stuff only disc).

HIStory and Dangerous are ridiculously underrated. Sure, they're a big departure from Off The Wall and Thriller, but they sounded distinctive and considerably more courageous than a lot of other pop pap out at the time. Forget Black Or White or the execrable Childhood, listen to Jam, She Drives Me Wild, In The Closet, Who Is It, Scream, They Don't Care About Us, Money, Tabloid Junkie, 2Bad, HIStory, even the remix album had high-calibre tracks like Morphine and Ghosts, and none of these sounded remotely like anything else on pop radio at the time. I happen to think they sounded mighty funky.

The most recent album is a total dud though, mostly because (apart from 2000 Watts) it's full of songs that sound like they really really care about being hits, and really really want to sound like all the other songs that have been hits recently. For the first time ever it is Michael Jackson trying desperately to sound like something other than himself, and it fails miserably.

Almost everything else is CLASSIC, CLASSIC, CLASSIC.

Even Off The Wall and Thriller are just PRETTY GOOD despite getting the collective nod from most sides as being the over-exposed weirdo's golden era.

But he's a hands-down classic for his legacy as a freakshow media juggernaut alone, ongoing as it is into it's fourth goddam decade!

Whoever saw such a public spectacle than this ageing, trans-racial, trans-gendered, trans-humanist effigy - shyly, yet boldly parading himself through the media hoisted upon his own shoulders?!?

IMO it was what you call "watering down" that made it better than other R&B.

hey! ageism! and not true for everyone.. alex in nyc is a lot older than that! (yeah?)

And Geir, I don't quite understand your question.

If it's the former, then I don't have much of a view either way, it's not great, but in the spectrum of bad lyrics I think it's insignificant.

If it's the latter, I strongly disagree. I never saw ANYTHING remotely offensive or anti-Semetic about that line - surely it's crystal clear (though it didn't seem to be to the world media) to any person who, er, can read, that it was basically saying "yeah, do whatever the hell you want to me, kick me, call me a kike, I remain unbowed"? The whole controversy was absurd. The fact that he eventually changed the lines (to something stupid like "do me, sue me, kick me, strike me") is even more absurd. He should have stuck to his guns.

I just turned 36. Michael Jackson is, was, and invariably always will be a deplorably overrated side-show freak. Shun him.

via NewsNow this was on the news wire:

The Essential Michael Jackson To Be Released
http://www.undercover.com.au/news/2005/jun05/20050630_michaeljackson.html

Sony-BMG will release the 2CD Michael Jackson compilation, 'The Essential Michael Jackson' on July 15.

Stay tuned...

(almost)

Using the term "Jew" (a noun, an ethnic identifier - NOT A VERB) to connote a negative, stereotyped behavior is totally anti-semitic. gimme a fucking break.

Just bugs me.

It's on-the-nose.

Um, the Stones? McCartney? Robert Plant? Ozzy? (I know, I shouldn't take the bait...)

But let's be honest, he's funkier than those dudes.

in the genitals?

However, he isn't even one hundredth of the Godlike creature that his fanatical fans have turned him into.

i still haven't gotten over the propofol and the doctor who agreed to administer it to him. imagine going under general anaesthesia *every night*
it is beyond the beyond

my head starts spinning when I try to understand the lisa marie presley relationship also. like how much of that was showbiz cover up. 'oh btw he was a virgin'

LL otm. I can't believe the doctor went along with it. just give the guy a nasal CPAP and a saline IV and pretend you're administering propofol, same $$ with much less obvious risk of homicide

The thing that they don’t tell you about Leaving Neverland is how Safechuck (in particular) seems to describe the abuse with the same inflections an descriptions as an adult might recollect their first sexually charged romance (as a teen/young adult, with another teen/young adult). This admission of abuse coupled with a sense of strange wistfulness, the frank retelling of what was going on with no scare quotes or gotchas— just a description of a highly secret and sexual relationship; CSA masked as a romance. Jackson’s personality and agency seemed blinding, and the abuse was so “romantic relationship coded” with so many “we’re just kids” elements of play that it immediately makes the changing testimony of his victims become so much more parseable and Jackson’s guilt so undeniable

that's otm

Absolutely otm.

Seeing the confusion and shame in his face broke my heart.

and not even understanding how someone could take "jew me" as anything but a standard MJ statement against oppression of all forms,

in the next line he says "kike me"

On the ABC News program Prime Time Live, Jackson said: "It's not antisemitic because I'm not a racist person ... I could never be a racist. I love all races."[40] He said some of his closest employees and friends were Jewish.

Well that's settled then

https://i.ibb.co/5xRjg8qj/its-black-its-white-michael-jackson-video.gif

^^^ one of the queerest moments in video of the '90s

This is the greatest video I’ve ever seen. No notes. The lifeless clanker carcass just laying there. No crowd reaction, anything. Just Billie Jean. Until its lifeless shell is shamefully dragged off. Purely amazing. pic.twitter.com/4WSUwZr7nO

— Tatum Turn Up (@tatumturnup) May 20, 2026

wonderful

kind of amazing it stayed up after that first stumble on the stairs tbh. some "detroit become human" pathos going on there

that’s chappie

"I sing the Body Electric!" [Falls over, dies.]

how did nobody in the crowd react to that? what is happening to the human race??

Creepy that the thing is child-sized