king_of_style;4321012 said:
Simple as that. Which songs do you think he would've done awesome covers of in his lifetime or wish he'd been able to do had he lived? The only notable covers that I can think of are "Come Together", "Smile", and "Butterflies" -- although I do know that "Hot Fun In The Summertime" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" exist but remain unreleased.
I honestly think that if Michael Jackson had lived long enough, he would've taken Gotye's 2011 song "Somebody That I Used To Know" and blown it out of the park. I'm talking "I Will Always Love You" and "Hound Dog" level of covering that would make someone forget that it's even a cover of someone else's original. Sometimes I can almost hear in my mind how MJ would have sung the chorus. He already had a resonance and almost an eerie sort of echo to his voice on songs like "Another Day" and "Chicago" that I think would've fit really well.
I'm telling you, guys, us Moonwalkers in this timeline were ROBBED of the awesomeness that would've been Michael Jackson's "Somebody That I Used To Know".
Anyway, what songs do you people wish he had covered?
‘Hot Fun In The Summertime’ exists but in an incomplete state (which is why it did not make the ‘Xscape’ album in 2014, according to L.A. Reid).
Also, Michael Jackson never recorded a cover version of the ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ song, according to certain producers and engineers.
Bill Bottrell is one of them and worked very closely with the singer in the period when that cover song was supposedly recorded, and he stated several times, even on online forums, that Michael Jackson never recorded that cover song.
Bill Bottrell even implied that the only Beatles song that the singer ever recorded was ‘Come Together’:
“
During the Bad sessions, Michael asked me to drive him home to Westwood one night. During the drive, we played lots of Beatles songs he had compiled on a tape, he was pretty interested in my opinion, and I told him we should pick Come Together” (Bill Bottrell)
king_of_style;4321238 said:
It's also unfortunate that Michael never made a Christmas album in his adult career, it's such a fun time of the year and I think that had he not been so tied to his JW upbringing he would've really loved the messaging and good vibes of the Christmas season. If he had lived I could also see him making a Christmas album in like 2014, maybe with a few reprises with his brothers from the Jackson 5 Christmas album.
In this regard, his Jehovah's Witnesses upbringing was not a problem for him after 1987.
After 1987 (when he withdrew from that religion) he was free to record Christmas songs or Christmas albums, or even to celebrate Christmas.
In 1994, he actually entered the studio in order to record a Christmas album (note, he had agreed with Sony in 1991 to deliver also one Christmas album in the following years).
The first Christmas song that he recorded in 1994 for that album was a duet song with his then-wife Lisa Marie Presley, and Michael Jackson was proudly wearing his wedding ring during those recording sessions (Brad Sundberg also confirmed that).
He even started to celebrate Christmas in his Neverland Ranch in the early ‘90s.