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Imagine if someone told you in 2009..

Dilan

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imagine if someone told you in 2009 that in 13 years into the future we would still have heard NOTHING on the musical direction he was going in, in his final years. Mjs been dead coming up to 15 years and we have not heard a single proper solo post trial song. And best of joy doesn’t count because it’s just a reworking of an older song.
 
Part of the reason for that is that Michael Jackson did not seem eager to record and finish most of his solo, post-trial, new songs.

According to sources close to him, most of these songs have just one verse with his vocals, others have only music on them, and others have just his chorus vocals.

After his 2005 trial, the singer also appeared to be indecisive regarding the musical direction of his new music (this is evidenced by the fact that he kept canceling his upcoming new studio albums, he kept changing his producers, etc).

As Michael Jackson also stated, during the post-trial period he was mainly writing new songs, which strongly implies that for most of them he did not proceed to record them.

But even if a few of these new songs do exist in a complete state, this does not necessarily mean that they can be released due to various reasons (not good enough songs for release, production/songwriting conflicting royalties among the Estate and producers, etc).
 
There are tons of songs from his later years, doesn't matter if they are not fully finished or not. At least the fans could hear his ideas and new directions as Dilan describes.

I would not believe it if I had been told that in 2009. In 2010, after the Michael album, however...

It's all a joke, sadly. If I had the money, time and possibility, I'd travel to the US and listen to these demos in that copyrights library place where you can listen to them, not sure what it is called
 
The Estate have already stated they have no interest or appreciation for MJ's unfinished demos. If they cannot be remixed it's a no go.
 
There's not a big difference between post-trial recording and the recording for MJ's other albums.

The best example being Dangerous, look at how different the sound direction changed.
 
I recently had an idea, and while it would certainly be controversial, I also think it would be a great way to give fans a taste of where MJ’s musical palate was in his final years.

For those who don’t know, there’s a beloved Broadway composer named Jonathan Larson. He passed away in the 1990s, but he was incredibly prolific. A few years ago, they took a bunch of his unreleased demos, orchestrated them, recorded them with a handful of contemporary Broadway singers, and released it as an album.

I’d love to see something similar happen with the MJ material that can’t be properly “finished.” Call up Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Gaga, and any other artists MJ admired and/or wanted to work with.
 
This is something that makes me SO sad and angry to think about, it's a tease to hear that songs like Dark Lady could've been hits and knowing we'll never get to hear it is infuriating, imagine the songs, clips, films, choreographies, collaborations we would get had he lived.

Sadly it's something that will only be in our imagination...
 
Pentum said:
I'd travel to the US and listen to these demos in that copyrights library place where you can listen to them, not sure what it is called
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what? is this really possible?
I'm actually interested in that, for my next trip to US somewhen in the future.
 
We already have an idea. In his final years, he worked with will.i.am, Akon, Neyo and RedOne. "Hold My Hand" is the only one of the songs that he made with them to be released, but really, we can just look to the music they did for themselves or other artists to get an idea of what the unreleased songs would have been like. There's also the beats MJ worked on with will.i.am on Access Hollywood in 2007.

Honestly, I wouldn't really be interested in hearing those songs, because I don't think any of the people he was said to work with in this period were even that good producers or songwriters. I don't need to listen to these songs to know that they're generic mid/late 2000s pop fluff; I couldn't care less about hearing MJ sing to production better suited for the Black Eyed Peas. The thing with MJ is that he didn't have much faith in his own songwriting and production abilities, which is why he kept leaping from whatever producers were relevant at the moment after Bad.
 
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Spaceship said:
We already have an idea. In his final years, he worked with will.i.am, Akon, Neyo and RedOne. "Hold My Hand" is the only one of the songs that he made with them to be released, but really, we can just look to the music they did for themselves or other artists to get an idea of what the unreleased songs would have been like. There's also the beats MJ worked on with will.i.am on Access Hollywood in 2007.

Honestly, I wouldn't really be interested in hearing those songs, because I don't think any of the people he was said to work with in this period were even that good producers or songwriters. I don't need to listen to these songs to know that they're generic mid/late 2000s pop fluff; I couldn't care less about hearing MJ sing to production better suited for the Black Eyed Peas.
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Not exactly, While MJ probably didn't have as much creative control in the Akon/RedOne/Will.I.Am sessions there's no way the songs he made with Brad Buxer/Michael Prince sound generic, people that heard it describes the sound as "out of this world", rock/goth inspired and that there's no sound that exists to this day, there are certainly gems from that time period.
 
"Hold My Hand" wasn't anything special. Nor were the beats will.i.am worked on with MJ on Access Hollywood.

Akon, will.i.am, Redone and Neyo have never been good producers or songwriters, IMHO. I wouldn't have minded MJ to have continued working with Darkchild if he wanted to stay relevant. Timbaland and the Neptunes/Pharrell would have also been fine, although the latter wasn't that relevant in the late 2000s.
 
Spaceship said:
"Hold My Hand" wasn't anything special. Nor were the beats will.i.am worked on with MJ on Access Hollywood.

Akon, will.i.am, Redone and Neyo have never been good producers or songwriters, IMHO. I wouldn't have minded MJ to have continued working with Darkchild if he wanted to stay relevant. Timbaland and the Neptunes/Pharrell would have also been fine, although the latter wasn't that relevant in the late 2000s.
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I think it's unfair to generalize because we don't know what Michael's imput could've been like, it could be very different from the songs they created.

While I do agree that Hold My Hand and the snippets on the Access Hollywood interview don't sound very interesting they were clearly rough demos that we weren't meant to hear, so who knows how the finalized material could've sounded like.
 
American producer Ne-Yo in 2008 shed some light into how Michael Jackson used to work with his external producers/songwriters in his final years.

In many cases, Michael Jackson was not even working with them in the same studio, but a lot of work was done from a distance.

For example, he stated that he would submit to Michael Jackson songs in the form of MP3s via e-mail.

Then, Michael Jackson would call him back and say that he liked this song or that song, or say that the hook could be stronger on a certain song, or say that a change should be made on this verse or on that verse.

So, Ne-Yo would make all these changes and would send the songs again back to him.

This suggests that in essence what Michael Jackson mostly did in his final years (for his new studio album) was to receive nearly complete songs from his collaborators and the only thing that he had to add was to record his vocals on them.
 
Had Michael been further along in the process, perhaps we'd have more than Best Of Joy and Hold My Hand. But if most are choruses and scratch vocals, it's tough to sell that as a direction he was heading toward unfortunately. A few members who've been fortunate enough to hear some of the last tracks, have said they're incredible, if not incomplete

The other thing is, whatever post trial tracks that are complete the Estate do have left, they must be slim to none, so perhaps they are holding onto them for the right project. At least that's what I tell myself

Personally I'd rather hear more tracks from the Bad and Dangerous era but I'm in the minority there I know
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
Had Michael been further along in the process, perhaps we'd have more than Best Of Joy and Hold My Hand.
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If Hold My Hand didn't leak we'd have a bit more songs for sure, after the leak he would only record vocals when the song was finished.
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
The other thing is, whatever post trial tracks that are complete the Estate do have left, they must be slim to none, so perhaps they are holding onto them for the right project. At least that's what I tell myself
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I don't think we'll ever get any post-trial song other than I Was The Loser, it's the most completed song from that era and was even considered for Xscape.
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
Personally I'd rather hear more tracks from the Bad and Dangerous era but I'm in the minority there I know
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I understand lol, Throwing Your Life Away and Ghost of Another Lover are the best leaks.
 
I’m mostly interested in unreleased music of the mid 70s to mid 80s.
AChanceToDance said:
people that heard it describes the sound as "out of this world", rock/goth inspired and that there's no sound that exists to this day, there are certainly gems from that time period.
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I heard that too but I have no idea what a goth sound is supposed to be, sounds rather cold and depressing to me.
Anyway I remember people talking about how the invincible tracks were so good but once I got the leaked files I was rather disappointed. So what i’m saying is, words like that don’t hype me much anymore.
 
When I think of "rock and goth", I just think of rock music with horror themes. Is that supposed to be like Kiss or Marilyn Manson? MJ was never a proper rock musician, but he had some elements of the genre in songs such as "Beat It", "Dirty Diana", "Give in to Me", "D.S.", "Morphine", "Shout", "We've Had Enough", "Privacy", etc. If that was the sort of music he was working on in his final years, then that's fine, but I don't think he was working with the right producers for that.

I read before that some of the songs MJ did were will.i.am were completed? One of them was called "The Future". I doubt they were good, but I'd actually be interested in hearing them someday; I'm guessing they were the only songs that MJ recorded and completed from 2006-2009? Pretty scummy that will.i.am refused to release for the Michael and Xscape albums, but wanted to put them out for his own album in 2013, btw.

I'd love to hear more of the stuff he made with Brad Buxer. I like "I Am the Loser", which was recorded in 2003, before it was slightly reworked into "I Was the Loser" in 2008. Although it was never completed, I also liked "Days in Gloucestershire"; it was recorded in 2004 and you can tell it was made at a difficult period in MJ's life.
 
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