Are The Dr Freeze Sessions Vocally The Best Of MJ's Career?

SmoothCriminal1995

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I was listening to the 3 Dr Freeze produced tracks again and I'm still blown away by how magnificent Mike sounds in them songs. He had everything is those sessions, the power, the depth, his falsetto was effortless and those runs were amazing.
In my opinion this is the best Michael sounded during the Invincible era and probably the best he sounded since the early Dangerous era.

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of Blue Gangsta (I don't hate it just not one of my favourites) I can't help but be floored by Michael's stellar vocals. As for, A Place With No Name and Break Of Dawn they are great songs and again vocally superb.
If I'm really honest I wish Michael was like this vocally throughout Invincible, then the album might have been better by his own incredible standards.

I personally think Michael sounded his best during the Bad era/ Dangerous era but that aside, this is some of his finest vocals we have. What do you guys think?
 
Blue Gangsta is good yeah. I wondered, when I first heard APWNN, if the vocals had been recorded at different times in his life. To me the vocals towards the end of the track don't sound as good as the early verses.

The vocal performance on Break of Dawn is indicative to me of the poor quality of Michael's voice for the Invincible set.
 
I was aboslutely floored the first time i heard Blue Gangsta in its entirety. To me that one of his best vocal peformances ever.
 
Awesome love a place with no name and the whole invincible album no criticism from me it’s my fave after Dangerous
 
I'd love to know if Dr Freeze has any unreleased songs with MJ or did they just work on those 3?
 
Blue Gangsta is good yeah. I wondered, when I first heard APWNN, if the vocals had been recorded at different times in his life. To me the vocals towards the end of the track don't sound as good as the early verses.

The vocal performance on Break of Dawn is indicative to me of the poor quality of Michael's voice for the Invincible set.


Really? I thought Break of Dawn vocals were amazing?
 
I think the only way we can really give DR Freeze the credit for capturing some of Michaels best vocals is by hearing true full acapellas of each song.. just sayin' ;)
 
Really? I thought Break of Dawn vocals were amazing?

If we're judging it relative to the other recordings Michael made in his career then no, it ranks in the bottom third at best.
 
If we're judging it relative to the other recordings Michael made in his career then no, it ranks in the bottom third at best.

And still sounds better than 99% of other performers
 
In general I thought Vince vocals sounded scratchy, strained, and 'thin'. The weakest vocal album of all his albums IMO.
There were some high points though. BOD was mostly good. Butterflies was good.
 
I'd love to know if Dr Freeze has any unreleased songs with MJ or did they just work on those 3?

They apparently worked on a few tracks, one we know of which is meant to be mostly complete is a song called Jungle. It's supposedly similar to Tabloid Junkie, in how the verses are sung fast and low which sounds cool

Loving the feedback on this thread by the way guys. Sorry for the double post
 
130 years

And still sounds better than 99% of other performers
The 1st recordings were released in the 1890s. There's dozens of different genres since then, and thousands of records released every year in many languages. So you're saying that you listened to all of the records that have been released from around a 130 year period to determine that 99% of them are worse than this song. You must have a lot of time on your hands. :rofl:
 
They apparently worked on a few tracks, one we know of which is meant to be mostly complete is a song called Jungle. It's supposedly similar to Tabloid Junkie, in how the verses are sung fast and low which sounds cool

Loving the feedback on this thread by the way guys. Sorry for the double post

How do you know that Jungle is mostly complete. Do you have a Source for that Information?
 
Re: 130 years

The 1st recordings were released in the 1890s. There's dozens of different genres since then, and thousands of records released every year in many languages. So you're saying that you listened to all of the records that have been released from around a 130 year period to determine that 99% of them are worse than this song. You must have a lot of time on your hands. :rofl:

I have a lot of time on my hands yet you took the time to write THAT? What I'm saying is MJ on a lesser known album was better than the other artists albums of the time, p.s, MJ wasn't alive in the 1890s ??
 
How do you know that Jungle is mostly complete. Do you have a Source for that Information?

I remember reading it in Damien Shields book Xscape origins, he mentions they worked on a few songs.
Also I remember hearing from a well placed MJ friend in 2014 that Jungle was considered for the next release, it was around the same time he told me the album would be only 8 tracks (before the world press heard the album)
I'm sure Jungle was written on Michael's list of songs to finish as well. I'm only going on what I've heard
 
mjfan_93;4252023 said:
How do you know that Jungle is mostly complete. Do you have a Source for that Information?

SmoothCriminal1995;4252069 said:
I remember reading it in Damien Shields book Xscape origins, he mentions they worked on a few songs.
Also I remember hearing from a well placed MJ friend in 2014 that Jungle was considered for the next release, it was around the same time he told me the album would be only 8 tracks (before the world press heard the album)
I'm sure Jungle was written on Michael's list of songs to finish as well. I'm only going on what I've heard

The exact stage of completion of the ‘Jungle’ song remains unknown.

What we know for sure is that ‘Jungle’ is an incomplete song by Dr. Freeze which was worked (in the early sessions) for a possible inclusion on the ‘Invincible’ album.

We know also that ‘Jungle’ is an up-tempo song, with a rap oriented style, & it has a social theme about world’s problems & corruption.

People who heard the song have described it as a mixture of ‘Tabloid Junkie’ & ‘Why You Wanna Trip on Me’.

It is still unclear why ‘Jungle’ did not eventually make the ‘Invincible’ album.

Personally, I am extremely curious to hear it.
 
I talked to somebody who heard Jungle Slave in Paris where Michael Durham Prince played the song for them and he said that it's fully complete
 
I have no clue how Jungle sounds, I'm only going on what I heard from a friend 5 years ago and the description given in Xscape Origins (I think it was the Blue Gangsta chapter). Hopefully we hear it one day, given the other songs in the sessions it'll be worth hearing. It will be nice to hear something even more uptempo from their work together, no doubt Mike will sound cool on it
 
I personally think Michael sounded his best during the Bad era/ Dangerous era but that aside, this is some of his finest vocals we have. What do you guys think?

I always thought that the Dr. Freeze sessions were the sessions in which Michael sounded best during the Invincible era.

Blue Gangsta is good yeah. I wondered, when I first heard APWNN, if the vocals had been recorded at different times in his life. To me the vocals towards the end of the track don't sound as good as the early verses.

Well, lead vocals were recorded on September 8th and October 16th 1998.
 
APWNN and Blue Gangsta, I agree. They are some of Michael’s best vocal performances. But I feel that Break of Dawn features really weak vocals from Michael, much like most of Invincible.
 
Nite Line;4276402 said:
APWNN and Blue Gangsta, I agree. They are some of Michael’s best vocal performances. But I feel that Break of Dawn features really weak vocals from Michael, much like most of Invincible.

Weak in what way?
 
I agree with that. It sounds like he is screaming instead of singing. Imo I wish MJ stopped with that aggressive gritty vocal delivery. It got too repetitive and just sounded too strained in his later years.
 
Themidwestcowboy;4276502 said:
I agree with that. It sounds like he is screaming instead of singing. Imo I wish MJ stopped with that aggressive gritty vocal delivery. It got too repetitive and just sounded too strained in his later years.

I don’t share this feeling. I love his angry and gritty voice. To me it’s classic Michael Jackson.
 
IMWhizzle;4276508 said:
I don’t share this feeling. I love his angry and gritty voice. To me it’s classic Michael Jackson.

I loved it when he did it in Dangerous and History and Bad. He did it tactfully without it completely taking over the songs. Look at Who Is It or Black or White or Come Together. It's gritty raw and funky without it being overused and shouty and straight up strained. Now look at Invincible

Unbreakable
Heartbreaker
Invincible
Break Of Dawn
Heaven Can Wait

That's five songs back to back where he screams almost through every track. It gets repetitive after a while. The previous albums had a good mix of this imo. In the Thriller days he was also singing aggressive without sounding gritty or harsh
 
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