adamschoales
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This for me is one of the standouts of the Michael Album. It's such a classic Jackson track that's infectious beat and rhythm makes you want to get up and dance.
It was also considered to be one of the greatest unreleased tracks prior to its release on michael:
http://www.metafilter.com/82928/Behind-the-Mask-Michael-Jacksons-rarest-recording
My questions are these (bearing in mind I doubt anyone will have definitive answers):
1) how complete was the track prior to McClain's "finishing" of the track. I'm going to assume he made the silly decision of adding the live element to the track but there are other additions I'm assuming he's made
which leads me to
2) one of the biggest complaints my girlfriend has with the song is all the "hee-ee-ee-hee- hee"s in the track. She said after her first listen "it's like they just added those all afterwords and someone got a little too liberal with the copy/paste button" and I am inclined to agree. In fact an article from the time the album came out made note of it being the song to feature "the largest number of jackson's trademark hee-hee". And it's true. It's an absurd number. Do we really think Michael would have had that many in there? I would imagine a couple here and there and that McClain just kept adding more and more... either way its distracting and I think lets the song down a little
3) anyone know what the "demo" actually sounded like? how much filling out did this need? Is it safe to assume it was a well produced and more or less finished demo (along the lines of the invincible demos on The Ultimate Collection - more like an OUTTAKE than a demo) along the lines of Fly Away: fully complete ready to present to the artist (this is of course presuming that the version of Fly Away included on Bad SE wasn't remixed/cleaned up/finished by Michael FOR the SE release)? I'd be interested to see what state the track was in prior to McClain stepping in. Somehow I have a feeling he simply added the Live aspect and a few other little touches, but I'm not sure.
4) How different is the track ORIGINALLY from the Philiganes version? You compare the Philiganes version to the Jackson version and they are VERY different. The Philiganes version is MUCH MORE 80s. Do we think that Michael's original version was the same and McClain simply pulled the vocal track and created a new musical arrangement based on the original track, or is the musical arrangement we're hearing on the Michael version the way Michael intended it and Philiganes was the one who changed the arrangement for HIS version? (I hope I'm making sense here). It stands to reason that the demo version and the final version by Philiganes would change quite a bit. Go back to "Fly Away". Michael's version and Rebbie's eventually released version differ quite a lot. Then again, take "Fall Again" - the Glen Lewis version sounds very similar to michael's demo (granted Michael didn't write the song) with more instrumentation over top (for me this is how I feel the Behind the Mask track went: Michael's original demo and then just a little more production was added for the final release). But again, I don't know.
Okay. Chew on those for a bit. Hopefully someone will know...
It was also considered to be one of the greatest unreleased tracks prior to its release on michael:
http://www.metafilter.com/82928/Behind-the-Mask-Michael-Jacksons-rarest-recording
My questions are these (bearing in mind I doubt anyone will have definitive answers):
1) how complete was the track prior to McClain's "finishing" of the track. I'm going to assume he made the silly decision of adding the live element to the track but there are other additions I'm assuming he's made
which leads me to
2) one of the biggest complaints my girlfriend has with the song is all the "hee-ee-ee-hee- hee"s in the track. She said after her first listen "it's like they just added those all afterwords and someone got a little too liberal with the copy/paste button" and I am inclined to agree. In fact an article from the time the album came out made note of it being the song to feature "the largest number of jackson's trademark hee-hee". And it's true. It's an absurd number. Do we really think Michael would have had that many in there? I would imagine a couple here and there and that McClain just kept adding more and more... either way its distracting and I think lets the song down a little
3) anyone know what the "demo" actually sounded like? how much filling out did this need? Is it safe to assume it was a well produced and more or less finished demo (along the lines of the invincible demos on The Ultimate Collection - more like an OUTTAKE than a demo) along the lines of Fly Away: fully complete ready to present to the artist (this is of course presuming that the version of Fly Away included on Bad SE wasn't remixed/cleaned up/finished by Michael FOR the SE release)? I'd be interested to see what state the track was in prior to McClain stepping in. Somehow I have a feeling he simply added the Live aspect and a few other little touches, but I'm not sure.
4) How different is the track ORIGINALLY from the Philiganes version? You compare the Philiganes version to the Jackson version and they are VERY different. The Philiganes version is MUCH MORE 80s. Do we think that Michael's original version was the same and McClain simply pulled the vocal track and created a new musical arrangement based on the original track, or is the musical arrangement we're hearing on the Michael version the way Michael intended it and Philiganes was the one who changed the arrangement for HIS version? (I hope I'm making sense here). It stands to reason that the demo version and the final version by Philiganes would change quite a bit. Go back to "Fly Away". Michael's version and Rebbie's eventually released version differ quite a lot. Then again, take "Fall Again" - the Glen Lewis version sounds very similar to michael's demo (granted Michael didn't write the song) with more instrumentation over top (for me this is how I feel the Behind the Mask track went: Michael's original demo and then just a little more production was added for the final release). But again, I don't know.
Okay. Chew on those for a bit. Hopefully someone will know...