Where Invincible went wrong

[kreen]

I’m convinced kreen hates MJ lmfao.

No, just Invincible.

 

[Kanye East]

Albums can have a theme or not, usually they don't.
MJ albums specially always were just a compilation of hits essentially, AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.
Thriller and Bad are the perfect examples.
If MJ released a million albums every few years like some artists do, and you told me Bad was just a greatest hits comp, i would totally believe you.

I said a cohesive theme or sound. Invincible doesn't have a cohesive sound. Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad all have a cohesive sound in terms of the they're arranged/produced/mixed. Dangerous is half Teddy Riley stuff and half Bottrell/Swedien stuff (and I wish it had been split into two albums of about 10-12 tracks with some of those wonderful outtakes used). HIStory is about the false allegations, with some songs that directly address it (i.e. Money, DS) and some that are more indirectly about the themes of alienation, mistreatment, or societal problems. Come Together is the only song on that album that feels out of place. All of the original songs on BODTF have a "dark" theme to their lyrics, all but the title track are about MJ's personal life.
Invincible sounds like random tracks from 5 or so albums cobbled together haphazardly, and MJ had nothing to do with the writing of most of them.

Wow, you bring up great points there about Invincible! And 10000 bonus points for mentioning FTLOSM........I'm a hardcore Journey fan on the same level as I am of MJ, and never in a million years did I think I'd ever see FTLOSM mentioned on here!

Thanks! FTLOSM is an underrated gem that deserved far more attention/sales/acclaim than it wound up getting. The supporting tour was great, too, based on the unofficial videos I've seen (I wasn't born yet)

Most albums don't.. what's the theme of Bad? Or Thriller? Albums don't need themes

No, but they have a cohesive sound to them in terms of the way they are arranged/produced/mixed. Invincible doesn't have that.

And what's Dangerous' cohesive theme?

That is the other album of his that I feel doesn't hold together as well as a cohesive whole, however, it is split between two different "sounds" (Riley vs Bottrell/Swedien) so it's less disjointed.

 

[Kanye East]

It's possible that MJ had reached the age where, no matter the quality of the music, he was too old-hat to get a hit on youth-oriented charts. But the fact that You Rock My World did make it to the Top 10 rather easily, and that the industry and Sony certainly did expect the album to be a major release, at a time where CDs still moved (that era was coming to a close but it wasn't yet over), means that we can certainly consider the album's ultimate lack of sales and hit singles as a consequence of its lack of quality.

Had the album been great and chock-full of hit material, and had it still stiffed like it did, then it would show MJ had indeed entered the "legacy artist" phase of his career, where one can still sell out tours but no longer chart on the Top 200.

Michael Bolton was big in the 90s when he was in his 40s. The Hot 100 chart isn't just for young people music.

 

[Kanye East]

Well, it can all be true. And all is true. MJ was 40 plus. He wasn't done being the King of Pop, but he was no longer moving like he was 24. He couldn't, he didn't need to. Is Invincible the best version of what a mature, older man, and father could be? Maybe not. But compared to what his peers continually tried post 80s (Stevie, Madonna, Prince off and on again), MJ still wore the suit better to me. To me he never really made a bad song. Except in 1987, he made an entire Bad album.

That's why I mentioned the Steve Perry album in my OP. It's another comeback album by a mid-40s musician who had his commercial peak in the 80s that wound up being the last album they put out for quite some time (for MJ, the last in his life, for Perry, the last for a quarter century). The Perry album (Perry's best album) succeeds as being a more mature, reflective album suiting the artists age while still sounding like it's really his. Invincible (MJ's worst album) doesn't sound much like Michael in terms of the songs, the production, even the vocals - there are so few hee hees and other Michael things. Invincible feels like Michael Jackson singing other people's songs in other people's styles.

 

[BuffaloBill87]

The way I see it, it doesn't matter that he was 43 years old, the issue is that his personal life had become more interesting than his music by 2001. He was considered a 'freak' and a 'weirdo' who liked to share his bed with children.

I don't care how much you butter it up but that's not a good look at all!

MJ was also past his songwriting and creative peak so he has to rely on other people bringing the 'hits' and make him sound modern.

The quality of the songs were just not good enough compared to his earlier work. The lack of catchy hooks being one of the biggest issues.

It was an overproduced mess and very bloated.

Michael's heart might have not been fully in it but for him to slate Sony and start this Sony sucks campaign he clearly was unhappy that it was a flop.

It's an album that has been forgotten. People know you rock my world but I bet they have no idea which album it comes from.

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

Invincible doesn't have a cohesive sound. Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad all have a cohesive sound in terms of the they're arranged/produced/mixed. Dangerous is half Teddy Riley stuff and half Bottrell/Swedien stuff (and I wish it had been split into two albums of about 10-12 tracks with some of those wonderful outtakes used). HIStory is about the false allegations, with some songs that directly address it (i.e. Money, DS) and some that are more indirectly about the themes of alienation, mistreatment, or societal problems. Come Together is the only song on that album that feels out of place. All of the original songs on BODTF have a "dark" theme to their lyrics, all but the title track are about MJ's personal life.

Well that's where we disagree I guess. First of all, I see nothing cohesive about thriller at all. As far as "cohesion" goes, it is by far the weakest in his entire career. But that's the strength of it tbh. It's played out like a greatest hits catalog and that was MJ just coming for every genre in a show of domination. Seriously, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin, The Girl is Mine, Beat It, and Billie Jean in the same album? You can never convince me that's "cohesive". It says Quincy "made" it, but it's really either Toto guys, or Bill Wolfer, Greg Phillinhanes, Louis Johnson, and other great session players, in various combinations. And Bruce Swedien as the constant for them all, Which is the case for all MJs latter day stuff as well, so you're right that the mixing is a consistent that never exactly changed.

To me, the most cohesive records MJ made was early in his solo Motown stuff and with the Jackson's; Destiny and Triumph, those are what I feel have a consistent constant sound. Off The Wall and Bad come close, but going from the first 5 OTW tracks to Girlfriend is a bit of a hard pivot, though it's basically consistent. And Dirty Diana is a big outlier on Bad.

While you're right about the other albums, at the end of the day they are all still studio albums officially; MJ did not make concept albums in the objective definition. But you can tell he liked cohesive stuff.

All that is to say is that Invincible is not a conceptual album at all and not really meant to be; I guess the constant theme could be romance and love of all kinds. But it was meant to be songs MJ enjoyed, not a deeper artistic statement, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I can see how it's a turn off and it's not an enjoyable listen through. It's good stuff to weave amidst his other records.

And if Dangerous has the same issue, then I don't see how it's not a double standard to complain about Invincible. It's fair to not like this one, I just don't see this fair for taking points off for. I've said it before anyway, Dangerous is a way bigger pivot in 9 years from Thriller than Invincible in 10 years is from Dangerous.

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

Invincible sounds like random tracks from 5 or so albums cobbled together haphazardly, and MJ had nothing to do with the writing of most of them.

And I don't wanna write any more essays about Invincible, but from a certain perspective, Invincible is just Darkchild, Teddy Riley, a couple self/Buxer compositions, and a Babyface, R.Kelly, Dr.Freeze, and Floetry song thrown together, right? It's actually the same/way less producers then on HIStory: Jam and Lewis, MJ, David Foster, Dallas Austin, R.Kelly, Buxer, Swedien Rene, Bill Bottrell.

HIStory does do way better at tracklisting it though.

Invincible feels like Michael Jackson singing other people's songs in other people's styles.

And a total anecdote, but I actually like hearing people get out of their style. He did it musically, why not vocally? No laurels.

 

[AlwaysThere]

I wouldn’t say that MJ’s post-Quincy albums had a cohesive sound per se; more so that MJ and his collaborators were able to make several disparate genres and styles flow seamlessly. Dangerous in particular is two entirely separate albums living under one roof. HIStory is much the same; nobody would expect to hear “Little Susie” and “Smile” on the same album as “They Don’t Care About Us” and “2 Bad.” Lyrically, they’re even more divergent; every album jumps from topic to topic without a singular discussion point.

 

[SmoothCriminal1995]

I wouldn’t say that MJ’s post-Quincy albums had a cohesive sound per se; more so that MJ and his collaborators were able to make several disparate genres and styles flow seamlessly. Dangerous in particular is two entirely separate albums living under one roof. HIStory is much the same; nobody would expect to hear “Little Susie” and “Smile” on the same album as “They Don’t Care About Us” and “2 Bad.” Lyrically, they’re even more divergent; every album jumps from topic to topic without a singular discussion point.

I really like that about Dangerous and HIStory in particular. It shows Michael's range and versatility as a singer/songwriter

 

[DuranDuran]

But anyway, I'm glad he didn't make a jazz album, even though I'd kinda like that, or transition over to re-singing his old songs.

Rod Stewart resurrected his recording career by doing a series of Great American Songbook albums, They were a big success in the USA, then others started doing similar albums like Michael McDonald's album of Motown songs. Lionel Richie re-recorded Commodores & solo songs with current at the time country singers. Lionel was on the Home Shopping Network selling that album, which became his biggest selling album since his heyday in the 1980s. Then he got on American Idol as a judge.

And I don't wanna write any more essays about Invincible, but from a certain perspective, Invincible is just Darkchild, Teddy Riley, a couple self/Buxer compositions, and a Babyface, R.Kelly, Dr.Freeze, and Floetry song thrown together, right?

Well with more current hits, some will have like 15 credited writers for 1 song, lol. Baby by Justin Bieber has 5 or 6 writers. It doesn't have any samples either. Modern popular albums are also likely to be full of features, usually a rapper. Mariah Carey is well known for doing collabos with whatever rapper is popular at the moment. When albums decades ago might have had a duet or 2 (The Girl Is Mine). In the 1990s, there was the popularity of those Frank Sinatra & Ray Charles duets albums & Natalie Cole's duets album with her deceased father Nat.

 

[DuranDuran]

I wouldn’t say that MJ’s post-Quincy albums had a cohesive sound per se; more so that MJ and his collaborators were able to make several disparate genres and styles flow seamlessly.

There's The Beatles self-titled album. I don't think Honey Pie, Revolution 9, Helter Skelter, Piggies, & Good Night have much to do with each other as a sound. That album only had 1 producer (George Martin) and came out in the 1960s. Even with Sgt. Pepper, which is said to be one of the first concept albums, the songs aren't really related. The only real theme is that the songs are not supposed to be by The Beatles but a band called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The title song is like their theme song, similar to "Hey hey we're The Monkees". I think the only band member actually named is Billy Shears.

 

[SmoothCriminal1995]

I love Whatever Happens, but like a lot of Invincible, I wish Mike had recorded it in 1998 when he sounded so good. His vocals on the Dr Freeze tracks are phenomenal.

If his voice had sounded that strong throughout Invincible, I think I'd enjoy the album and most of the tracks even more

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

I love Whatever Happens, but like a lot of Invincible, I wish Mike had recorded it in 1998 when he sounded so good. His vocals on the Dr Freeze tracks are phenomenal.

If his voice had sounded that strong throughout Invincible, I think I'd enjoy the album and most of the tracks even more

Blue Gangsta's vocals are phenomenal, I will give you that.

I guess I don't personally mind Invincible's vocal takes because MJ always sounds good in the studio to me; I actually... Hate how his voice sounds live. Sometimes anyway. He'll never sound HIStory tour take bad but even when he was good, the mics just never got him right like Bruce Swedien in the studio did.

I should probably post this in the heretical thread. This is a huge realization for me.

 

[BuffaloBill87]

Do you think that he was a poor live singer?

 

[Salami]

Do you think that he was a poor live singer?

Yes I do.

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

Do you think that he was a poor live singer?

No. But he was past his prime. His prime being when he was a teenager. The fact he was still doing it well at like 30 just shows how high up on the standards people are.

 

[BuffaloBill87]

For years I thought that he was a great live singer but when you listen back he's actually quite sloppy and sometimes out of tune.

I do think that vocals came second to the dancing on tour, he was electric and put on a great show but dancing the way he did It was to be expected his voice wasn't 100% perfect live.

Perhaps I've been listening too much to Elvis recently and am spoiled due to how amazing his live vocals were.

 

[Salami]

For years I thought that he was a great live singer but when you listen back he's actually quite sloppy and sometimes out of tune.

I do think that vocals came second to the dancing on tour, he was electric and put on a great show but dancing the way he did It was to be expected his voice wasn't 100% perfect live.

Perhaps I've been listening too much to Elvis recently and am spoiled due to how amazing his live vocals were.

I don’t think you can realistically have both. I prefer to have the dancing so I’m fine with miming.

 

[BuffaloBill87]

I don’t think you can realistically have both. I prefer to have the dancing so I’m fine with miming.

Age obviously caught up with him and he couldn't do both to the same level. He wasn't fit enough to dance the way he did without being out of breath. Through in the laryngitis too.

He was late 30's during the History tour and could still dance his ass off but he was visibly slower than the Dangerous and Bad tours.

 

[AlwaysThere]

I really like that about Dangerous and HIStory in particular. It shows Michael's range and versatility as a singer/songwriter

I completely agree! They’re ingenious albums. I just think they work against the idea that MJ’s albums were traditionally “cohesive” or easy to categorize.

Do you think that he was a poor live singer?

Not in the slightest. From the J5 to the first leg and a half of the Bad tour, and even through a fair amount of the Dangerous tour, he was phenomenal. From then on, he struggled.

I think his vocal technique was terrible and he didn’t take proper precautions to preserve his abilities. Listen to the 1989 LA show—he sounds exhausted. Pair that with age, drugs, and the general wear and tear his choreography had on the body, and he was doomed to start failing.

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

Like I said. The mic just never got him right. That's what I mean. In shows like You Were There and Gone Too Soon live, it just sounds much crisper. It's the studio quality microphones isn't it? That doesn't change the aging that obviously happened in Invincible, but overall it just sounds way crisper on CDs than on a stage, obviously. That's why MJ preferred lip-sync, that studio range. I'm sure in This Is It that also would've been remedied, technology advanced a lot.

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

Michael was immunocompromised. He really did well in spite of it, not because of it, obviously.

 

[Loneman1]

Thanks! FTLOSM is an underrated gem that deserved far more attention/sales/acclaim than it wound up getting. The supporting tour was great, too, based on the unofficial videos I've seen (I wasn't born yet)

Not to detrail this topic, but I jumped on the Journey obsessed fan bandwagon around 1995-96 when I was about 15, just after the FTLOSM era and going into the Journey reunion and "Trial By Fire". I was lucky enough to get in contact with some gracious people that started my bootleg collection, and the Beacon Theater in New York '94 VHS bootleg concert was among the first items I was gifted and is still probably the best quality show of the ones floating around out there. Perry himself has said in the past that there is no professionally recorded audio nor video from the tour which is very unfortunate. I agree wholeheartedly, FTLOSM never did get the recognition it deserved, and Perry all but forgets about it nowadays......during his return to music a few years ago with the album "Traces", the media blitz he did to promote it basically made it sound like he was 100% retired since '87 after leaving Journey. Kinda crappy since he actually had a decent amount of stuff like FTLOSM recorded in the interim, alot of which has still never seen the light of day in official releases and only from leaks and whatnot. Revisionist history for sure since he never mentions Trial By Fire either.......its truly unfortunate the mid to late 90's seem to have never existed for him.

Ok, now back to Invincible! lol

 

[Kanye East]

Well that's where we disagree I guess. First of all, I see nothing cohesive about thriller at all. As far as "cohesion" goes, it is by far the weakest in his entire career. But that's the strength of it tbh. It's played out like a greatest hits catalog and that was MJ just coming for every genre in a show of domination. Seriously, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin, The Girl is Mine, Beat It, and Billie Jean in the same album? You can never convince me that's "cohesive". It says Quincy "made" it, but it's really either Toto guys, or Bill Wolfer, Greg Phillinhanes, Louis Johnson, and other great session players, in various combinations. And Bruce Swedien as the constant for them all, Which is the case for all MJs latter day stuff as well, so you're right that the mixing is a consistent that never exactly changed.

A lot of the players are consistent on different Thriller tracks, same/similar synths used on various tracks, similar drum sounds, etc..
And all the vocals on Thriller sound the "same" in terms of recording and mixing (with the exception of sparingly used effects, i.e. the chipmunk voice on PYT). The way the vocals are mixed/effects used on various Invincible tracks alone destroys cohesion. I want to know WTF Teddy Riley did to MJ's voice on Whatever Happens and 2000 Watts.

To me, the most cohesive records MJ made was early in his solo Motown stuff and with the Jackson's; Destiny and Triumph, those are what I feel have a consistent constant sound. Off The Wall and Bad come close, but going from the first 5 OTW tracks to Girlfriend is a bit of a hard pivot, though it's basically consistent. And Dirty Diana is a big outlier on Bad.

Girlfriend isn't really that different in terms of instrumental timbres/mixing, Dirty Diana still sounds like the other Bad tracks in terms of the "sound" (distinct from the arrangement, more like the EQ, compression, etc...)

While you're right about the other albums, at the end of the day they are all still studio albums officially; MJ did not make concept albums in the objective definition. But you can tell he liked cohesive stuff.

Off-topic, but I wish this forum had a way to quote multiple posts without having to manually cut and paste them all.

All that is to say is that Invincible is not a conceptual album at all and not really meant to be; I guess the constant theme could be romance and love of all kinds. But it was meant to be songs MJ enjoyed, not a deeper artistic statement, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I can see how it's a turn off and it's not an enjoyable listen through. It's good stuff to weave amidst his other records.

It has some good songs, I don't think it works as a whole album though. I'm the kind of guy who likes to listen to albums all the way through a lot of the time. That's never what I do with Invincible, although I sometimes listen to individual songs fromi t.

And if Dangerous has the same issue, then I don't see how it's not a double standard to complain about Invincible. It's fair to not like this one, I just don't see this fair for taking points off for. I've said it before anyway, Dangerous is a way bigger pivot in 9 years from Thriller than Invincible in 10 years is from Dangerous.

It's less extreme with Dangerous. Half of it's Teddy's stuff, the other half is more "conventionally MJ" stuff.

 

[Kanye East]

I wouldn’t say that MJ’s post-Quincy albums had a cohesive sound per se; more so that MJ and his collaborators were able to make several disparate genres and styles flow seamlessly. Dangerous in particular is two entirely separate albums living under one roof. HIStory is much the same; nobody would expect to hear “Little Susie” and “Smile” on the same album as “They Don’t Care About Us” and “2 Bad.” Lyrically, they’re even more divergent; every album jumps from topic to topic without a singular discussion point.

HIStory (except Come Together) is held together by being about the false allegations, whether directly (Money, etc...) or indirectly (Little Susie, which I think is a metaphor for himself), and the songs that aren't about the allegations still touch on the same general themes of alienation, loneliness, or societal issues. It has a consistent emotional theme - negative emotions like anger and sadness. Even "You Are Not Alone" sounds, at least to me and some music critic I read years ago, like he's singing it to himself, trying to reassure himself that he is not alone. I always found it a very bittersweet song.

And I don't wanna write any more essays about Invincible, but from a certain perspective, Invincible is just Darkchild, Teddy Riley, a couple self/Buxer compositions, and a Babyface, R.Kelly, Dr.Freeze, and Floetry song thrown together, right? It's actually the same/way less producers then on HIStory: Jam and Lewis, MJ, David Foster, Dallas Austin, R.Kelly, Buxer, Swedien Rene, Bill Bottrell.

But HIStory is more consistent emotionally/topically.

HIStory does do way better at tracklisting it though.

Agreed. Honestly, I'd just cut Come Together, use the radio edit of History, the 20 seconds of rain sounds at the beginning of Stranger in Moscow, and cut the long intro from Little Susie. I'd also use the version of You Are Not Alone from the Ultimate Collection with 15 more seconds of adlibs. History would then be a 67-68 minute album with a much better flow. The long-ass intros of random noises and stuff was one of the things I liked least about his post-Quincy work.

And a total anecdote, but I actually like hearing people get out of their style. He did it musically, why not vocally? No laurels.

Because I liked his MJ style and everything uniquely MJ that made him MJ. I liked the hee hees, the aaaows, the oohs, the hiccup thing he did. It doesn't even sound like him on 2000 Watts and Whatever Happens. I don't care what Teddy says, those vocals are obviously digitally altered in some way.

 

[Kanye East]

There's The Beatles self-titled album. I don't think Honey Pie, Revolution 9, Helter Skelter, Piggies, & Good Night have much to do with each other as a sound. That album only had 1 producer (George Martin) and came out in the 1960s. Even with Sgt. Pepper, which is said to be one of the first concept albums, the songs aren't really related. The only real theme is that the songs are not supposed to be by The Beatles but a band called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The title song is like their theme song, similar to "Hey hey we're The Monkees". I think the only band member actually named is Billy Shears.

I don't care for those albums either. My father loves them, though.

 

[Kanye East]

Like I said. The mic just never got him right. That's what I mean. In shows like You Were There and Gone Too Soon live, it just sounds much crisper. It's the studio quality microphones isn't it? That doesn't change the aging that obviously happened in Invincible, but overall it just sounds way crisper on CDs than on a stage, obviously. That's why MJ preferred lip-sync, that studio range. I'm sure in This Is It that also would've been remedied, technology advanced a lot.

Everything on Invincible is pitch-corrected, just like virtually all pop/rock/RnB/country music released since pitch correction was invented in 1997. Even a lot of Broadway soundtracks are pitch corrected now.

I love Whatever Happens, but like a lot of Invincible, I wish Mike had recorded it in 1998 when he sounded so good. His vocals on the Dr Freeze tracks are phenomenal.

I wish he had used more of those instead of some of what we got.

If his voice had sounded that strong throughout Invincible, I think I'd enjoy the album and most of the tracks even more

Teddy did something to MJ's vocals on the tracks he produced for Invincible.

 

[Kanye East]

Not to detrail this topic, but I jumped on the Journey obsessed fan bandwagon around 1995-96 when I was about 15, just after the FTLOSM era and going into the Journey reunion and "Trial By Fire".

I know that Perry didn't want to tour for TBF, and then hurt his hip (I've seen some people question if the injury was real or just an excuse, but I've seen no reason to disbelieve Perry), but I don't see why Journey didn't do an Unplugged show and release a live album from it in 96/97, seeing as it would have been easier on Perry both vocally and physically and Unplugged CDs/DVDs were really popular at the time. I kind of wonder if Perry didn't want recordings of him singing the songs in lower keys, since he also didn't have any of the FTLOSM shows recorded, except for the one "Missing You" live performance. Weirdly, it is in B even though the studio was in Bb. All of the bootlegs of the tour I've heard have Missing You in Bb live, and all the other songs performed a half step below their original key. I almost wonder if the live version of Missing You on the FTLOSM remaster was sped up, or if for that one show, they played in standard tuning (which would put Missing You in B).

I was lucky enough to get in contact with some gracious people that started my bootleg collection, and the Beacon Theater in New York '94 VHS bootleg concert was among the first items I was gifted and is still probably the best quality show of the ones floating around out there.

This one has the best sound quality, but I don't think it was his best performance of the tour vocally.

Perry himself has said in the past that there is no professionally recorded audio nor video from the tour which is very unfortunate.

I read that he had all of the rehearsals taped. Maybe he could release the dress rehearsal, or splice together a bunch of different rehearsals for the best performance of each song. I saw a very short snippet of his band rehearsing for the tour years ago on YouTube as part of some video about the tour, and they were playing in standard tuning, even though the entire tour was tuned down. I wonder if maybe he tried to do it in standard tuning but couldn't get through an entire show's worth of songs in standard tuning, hence the tour being in Eb. When Perry performed with Journey for a one-off thing in 1991, they were tuned to D. I read somewhere that when Journey was jamming with old songs while making TBF, they had to tune down for Perry.

I agree wholeheartedly, FTLOSM never did get the recognition it deserved, and Perry all but forgets about it nowadays......during his return to music a few years ago with the album "Traces", the media blitz he did to promote it basically made it sound like he was 100% retired since '87 after leaving Journey. Kinda crappy since he actually had a decent amount of stuff like FTLOSM recorded in the interim, alot of which has still never seen the light of day in official releases and only from leaks and whatnot. Revisionist history for sure since he never mentions Trial By Fire either.......its truly unfortunate the mid to late 90's seem to have never existed for him.

I wonder why he ignores FTLOSM. I actually think it was better than Street Talk (more cohesive album, more interesting lyrics, I really like the sound of the album and the way he sings it, I think the rasp adds character and emotion to his voice, but I think that now he's become too raspy and thin, but he still sounds great for a man old enough to be my grandfather). I know there might be bad memories associated with TBF for him because of the hip injury and the tour, but I don't think he would feel negatively about FTLOSM. He chose the band, and was in the driver's seat. He was Lincoln Brewster and Paul Taylor's boss, whereas he wasn't Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain's. My high school choir teacher actually worked with Jonathan Cain once, which I think is kind of cool, since it puts me at only 3 degrees of separation from Perry.

Ok, now back to Invincible! lol

Interestingly, I'm only 2 degrees of separation from MJ, since I've met Jane Goodall twice.

 

[DuranDuran]

I don't care for those albums either. My father loves them, though.

I guess you're not into Prince, OutKast, or Terence Trent D'Arby/Sananda then. Because their albums often have different styles of songs. Songs In The Key Of Life & Secret Life Of Plants by Stevie Wonder have various sounds too.

I liked the hee hees, the aaaows, the oohs,

None of that originated from Mike. Even "shamone" came from Mavis Staples.

 

[Mister_Jay_Tee]

Off-topic, but I wish this forum had a way to quote multiple posts without having to manually cut and paste them all.

Yes, same.

Teddy did something to MJ's vocals on the tracks he produced for Invincible.

He changed the pitch and auto-tuned em. It's really not a great conspiracy.

The way the vocals are mixed/effects used on various Invincible tracks alone destroys cohesion.

Well at the end of the day, that's on Bruce and the engineers ain't it? You can make that all sound good when it's mastered properly. Invincible is not the greatest master, not for headphones anyway.

Dirty Diana still sounds like the other Bad tracks in terms of the "sound"

I mean, sure. I was talking about genre cohesion, maybe we have different things in mind.

It has some good songs, I don't think it works as a whole album though.

That's good enough for me, really. At the end of the day I agree with that really, it's just not the best "album". I miss the tightness of the 80s trilogy and I enjoy Dangerous because at least the way it sprawls feels captivating. Still, idk. Invincible only has 16 tracks; some albums have like, 23-25, or more now. One of these days someone can see how these records compare; JTs 20/20 Experience 1 and 2, put together, is about the same length, flows the same way, and covers a lot of the same sonic territory. The format has its fans still.

It's less extreme with Dangerous. Half of it's Teddy's stuff, the other half is more "conventionally MJ" stuff.

A lot of times that boils down to people mostly liking the MJ side, and some of the Teddy stuff. Which, I won't yuck anyone's yum, but, MJ sang other people's music sometimes. And it still sounds good, that's just the way the biz works. I mean he got to superstardom status by doing that, and so has most modern artists today. It's still about tastes, of course.

HIStory (except Come Together) is held together by being about the false allegations

That is true. And it is a bonus. But it's still, not, a concept album. They existed. MJ didn't make one. It's just the closest he came.

And Come Together has more to do with the record than you think; you can wager it all started when he bought the Beatles catalogue. It's really the centerpiece of the album and MJs life. So I dare say, it's integral. Though he could've recorded a different Beatles song and maybe gotten the same effect. But it was still pretty rare on CD, without Moonwalker, or a Remember the Time CD Single. The song ain't actually easily acquired. Like it wouldn't even be on Streaming platforms without HIStory.

The long intros of random noises and stuff was one of the things I liked least about his post-Quincy work.

I changed my mind on this. Most of the times they are nice and set up space to "sizzle". I still don't like Black or White's, and You Rock My Worlds should be separate to the song itself. Will You Be There also kinda drags. But you need SiM to simmer, and Little Susie flows better with it.

Because I liked his MJ style and everything uniquely MJ that made him MJ. I liked the hee hees, the aaaows, the oohs, the hiccup thing he did.

I do too. But we had 20-30 years of that, literally. People liked MJ before all that and even without that. At least I hope they do.