sweetdudejim
Proud Member
- Joined
- May 16, 2014
- Messages
- 20
- Points
- 3
Hey there everybody. I'm a long time Michael fan who I will admit has been a bit shaken by the Leaving Neverland documentary. I am not a fanboy who thinks Michael is the Messiah and I will not resort to attacking Mr. Safechuck or Mr. Robson. I am first and foremost a fan of the MUSIC.
And I have a MAJOR, MAJOR problem with the way this joke of an estate has handled Michael's music since we lost him in 2009. Starting with the This Is It collection where we got a version of the song with harmonies from his brothers and extra instrumentation that Michael never asked for. Despite all the pretty much finished great material that is surely still sitting in a vault or a hard drive somewhere, the estate decided that the first unreleased track released would be something that they felt they had to overdub with things that Michael likely never asked for on the track. I highly, highly doubt that if he ever did consider released "This Is It" that he would have had his brothers doing vocals on it. Please remind me friends, which Columbia Records-era MJ solo tracks feature any of his brothers? Yeah that's right. ZERO. But I get it, the song shared a title with the movie and it was just Michael and piano and they likely didn't think they could have released it as is (though I think they were wrong, as I think the stark vocal and piano version might have really touched people so soon after we lost him).
Then we move onto the first *new* posthumous studio album, Michael. And obviously there are the three songs with the impostor vocals. I'm not even gonna get into that here. Instead what I will get into is why didn't the estate either try to piece together a final album using what they knew of Michael's directions? Like use the lists that have leaked online that were apparently found in his house after he died. I assume most of you know the lists I'm speaking of. I tried to post them but for whatever reason I'm having trouble. But the lists contained stuff that we are nearly positive were in a releasable state. Things like:
"The Loser"
"You Were There"
"Gloucestershire"
"Throwing Your Life Away"
which would then also be combined with stuff they actually used like...
"Hold My Hand"
"Hollywood Tonight"
"Best of Joy"
And I'm sure that while some of those songs on those lists may not have been recorded or may have been in the very early stages, surely some of them that we're unsure of probably were close to completion. And therefore, we wouldn't have ended up with things like "Behind the Mask" (Thriller outtake) "Much Too Soon" (HIStory outtake), "Another Day" (Invincible outtake) on Michael's first posthumous album. "Behind the Mask" especially had nothing to do with what Michael was planning in his last few years as far as we know, and obviously would have been much better saved for a set that zeroed in on the Thriller era. Not to mention that the remix that appeared on the Michael album totally changed the song far, far away from what Michael had in mind in the early '80s. But anyways, enough about that album.
I thought the estate did a bit better with Bad 25 and Xscape. Though I thought that only six unreleased songs on Bad 25 was a bit skimpy knowing how much material he recorded for that album. And as far as Xscape I still don't get why they were doing hodgepodges of songs from different eras and basically trying to sell him as an active artist. I think the last time they coulda done that was with what became the Michael album and as above I explain how they blew that. However, even though they did remix the material, I was glad they put out the versions as Michael apparently left them, which in my opinion is truer to his vision.
And then....
Nothing. No new music since then. Bullshit compilations like that nonsense Scream album. And now the documentary comes out. And now that investment Sony made in all that unreleased music doesn't look so good. I bet we probably won't see any kind of archival release of the unreleased material for some time now, if ever. We coulda gotten a Dangerous 25 album or Thriller 35 set or even non-anniversary linked sets. But nope. They ****ed themselves getting into all this other nonsense and now those of us who loved Michael for his music have to pay the price for the horrible, horrible way they ran things. Though to be fair, even Michael after around Invincible didn't seem to keen on giving his fans new music. Though of course he was quite busy from 2001 to 2009 dealing with various issues that we all know of. So perhaps the estate is just doing business as usual.
Yuck.
And I have a MAJOR, MAJOR problem with the way this joke of an estate has handled Michael's music since we lost him in 2009. Starting with the This Is It collection where we got a version of the song with harmonies from his brothers and extra instrumentation that Michael never asked for. Despite all the pretty much finished great material that is surely still sitting in a vault or a hard drive somewhere, the estate decided that the first unreleased track released would be something that they felt they had to overdub with things that Michael likely never asked for on the track. I highly, highly doubt that if he ever did consider released "This Is It" that he would have had his brothers doing vocals on it. Please remind me friends, which Columbia Records-era MJ solo tracks feature any of his brothers? Yeah that's right. ZERO. But I get it, the song shared a title with the movie and it was just Michael and piano and they likely didn't think they could have released it as is (though I think they were wrong, as I think the stark vocal and piano version might have really touched people so soon after we lost him).
Then we move onto the first *new* posthumous studio album, Michael. And obviously there are the three songs with the impostor vocals. I'm not even gonna get into that here. Instead what I will get into is why didn't the estate either try to piece together a final album using what they knew of Michael's directions? Like use the lists that have leaked online that were apparently found in his house after he died. I assume most of you know the lists I'm speaking of. I tried to post them but for whatever reason I'm having trouble. But the lists contained stuff that we are nearly positive were in a releasable state. Things like:
"The Loser"
"You Were There"
"Gloucestershire"
"Throwing Your Life Away"
which would then also be combined with stuff they actually used like...
"Hold My Hand"
"Hollywood Tonight"
"Best of Joy"
And I'm sure that while some of those songs on those lists may not have been recorded or may have been in the very early stages, surely some of them that we're unsure of probably were close to completion. And therefore, we wouldn't have ended up with things like "Behind the Mask" (Thriller outtake) "Much Too Soon" (HIStory outtake), "Another Day" (Invincible outtake) on Michael's first posthumous album. "Behind the Mask" especially had nothing to do with what Michael was planning in his last few years as far as we know, and obviously would have been much better saved for a set that zeroed in on the Thriller era. Not to mention that the remix that appeared on the Michael album totally changed the song far, far away from what Michael had in mind in the early '80s. But anyways, enough about that album.
I thought the estate did a bit better with Bad 25 and Xscape. Though I thought that only six unreleased songs on Bad 25 was a bit skimpy knowing how much material he recorded for that album. And as far as Xscape I still don't get why they were doing hodgepodges of songs from different eras and basically trying to sell him as an active artist. I think the last time they coulda done that was with what became the Michael album and as above I explain how they blew that. However, even though they did remix the material, I was glad they put out the versions as Michael apparently left them, which in my opinion is truer to his vision.
And then....
Nothing. No new music since then. Bullshit compilations like that nonsense Scream album. And now the documentary comes out. And now that investment Sony made in all that unreleased music doesn't look so good. I bet we probably won't see any kind of archival release of the unreleased material for some time now, if ever. We coulda gotten a Dangerous 25 album or Thriller 35 set or even non-anniversary linked sets. But nope. They ****ed themselves getting into all this other nonsense and now those of us who loved Michael for his music have to pay the price for the horrible, horrible way they ran things. Though to be fair, even Michael after around Invincible didn't seem to keen on giving his fans new music. Though of course he was quite busy from 2001 to 2009 dealing with various issues that we all know of. So perhaps the estate is just doing business as usual.
Yuck.
