ozemouze;4291142 said:
The Jacksons worked very well as a group for years, but... it stopped after some point, when MJ skyrocketed to another level. And I don't only mean his success, but rather that he had his very own vision about the future of his art, which simply couldn't be achieved with his brothers anymore. Not because they weren't talented enough, but because in a giant personal project like this they could only function as instruments in realising MJ's ideas, which wouldn't have been fair towards them. It's nobody's fault really, but it happened.
And I'm a big J5 and Jacksons fan (I actually prefer Destiny and Triumph over Off The Wall), I like Jermaine's mid-80's work, I think the 2300 Jackson Street album is an underappreciated gem, and I love the Victory album which is like showcasing the brothers' individual ideas.
The Jacksons worked very well as a band for years because of Michael Jackson.
Without him, they could not have achieved anything because they were untalented, and the ‘2300 Jackson Street’ album (1989) is one proof for that.
That album (without Michael Jackson’s involvement) went totally unnoticed, and its poor success even made the Epic label end the contract with the band.
And you can spot the lack of talent of his brothers also during the Victory Tour when his brothers resorted to certain things on stage (pantomime, ridiculous costumes, pointless visual effects, etc) in order to hide their lack of any real talent.
Let’s be honest about that: the only two talented siblings from the Jackson family are Michael Jackson and his sister Janet Jackson.
Themidwestcowboy;4291132 said:
I will never understand this argument to be quite honest. You do realize that the Jacksons were a group right? They had every right to want to record, release an album and then later tour to promote it. Their last album was four years prior to Victory coming out. So why shouldn't they want to record a new album? Of course they had to wait on MJ because MJ was the lead singer of the group! If i recall correctly it was even stipulated in MJ's contract pre thriller that there would be a group release in between his solo albums.
At the end of the day MJ was still very involved with the Victory album. It would be naive on his part if he expected the brothers to not want to tour with that album for whatever reason. It wasn't the brothers fault that they didn't promote the Victory Tour with songs from the actual victory album, that was at MJ's behest. I'm sure there are other shady moments were they were pressuring him into doing stuff and all of that jazz but I don't see how Victory was one of them.
Even if his contract specified that, Michael Jackson actually did not want to be a part of the Victory album.
For example, he did not attend along with his brothers the album’s artwork photo shoot because he did not want to be with them, so he asked and got a separate photo shoot only for him.
Even his posture on the ‘Victory’ cover indicates how he wants to distance himself from them.
He also refused to appear on the ‘Torture’ music video with them.
There was also all that known, behind-the-scenes mess-up of the Victory Tour because of Michael Jackson’s serious disagreements with them on many other issues.