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How many totally finished outtakes are there from the sessions of his adult solo albums?

BlackAnon said:
Michaels original idea was to record a triple disc but that was scrapped during the early stages of creating the Bad album. The songs listed are not finished songs, they’re demos that didn’t go beyond the versions we hear from that session. If they were true contenders for the album, most of them would have complete lyrics and properly mixed and mastered
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So did the likes of Price Of Fame, Cheater and Throwing Your Life Away never make it to Westlake? Quincy and the "A Team" never worked on them?
 
james283126 said:
Do we know much about Rolling The Dice’s status? I’m pretty Michael stated it’s just a demo but honestly his rough demos are still gold! I’m pissed it wasn’t on T40!
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It was recorded at Hayvenhurst but never considered excellent by anybody in the process. Just a lot of fake leaks online anyway.
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
So did the likes of Price Of Fame, Cheater and Throwing Your Life Away never make it to Westlake? Quincy and the "A Team" never worked on them?
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A lot of songs never made it to Westlake and some weren't recorded at Hayvenhurst either, Michael was just trying new sounds but they never got further than what we hear. Cheater isn't complete and Throwing Your Life Away isn't either. Price of Fame progressed further because it was supposed to be used for the Pepsi ad
 
BlackAnon said:
A lot of songs never made it to Westlake and some weren't recorded at Hayvenhurst either, Michael was just trying new sounds but they never got further than what we hear. Cheater isn't complete and Throwing Your Life Away isn't either. Price of Fame progressed further because it was supposed to be used for the Pepsi ad
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That's interesting. Can I ask what your source is for all this information? I've never heard any of this before
 
BlackAnon said:
Engineers that were working on the album. John Barnes being one of them confirmed
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Fair enough mate, I've always been curious with the process of making the Bad album.

Hopefully John Cameron's next musicology episode will touch on the song selection process, it's always fascinated me how many songs Quincy "produced" for the album
 
Bad company .slipped away .somewhere in time unreleased songs
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
Fair enough mate, I've always been curious with the process of making the Bad album.

Hopefully John Cameron's next musicology episode will touch on the song selection process, it's always fascinated me how many songs Quincy "produced" for the album
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I love John's musicology episodes and hopefully he will touch on the song process. With songs like Liberian Girl and Dirty Diana being written in 1983 and Another Part of Me being worked on January 1984 while Michael was recovering from Pepsi
 
james283126 said:
Do we know much about Rolling The Dice’s status? I’m pretty Michael stated it’s just a demo but honestly his rough demos are still gold! I’m pissed it wasn’t on T40!
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Not much is known besides it being the first song Rod played Michael for Thriller.....Michael recorded it in one take and liked it but like Hot Street, Quincy didn't think it was strong enough.
 
BlackAnon said:
Not much is known besides it being the first song Rod played Michael for Thriller.....Michael recorded it in one take and liked it but like Hot Street, Quincy didn't think it was strong enough.
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Not even MJ thought it was good enough lol, it probably isn't a good song to begin with.
 
ChanceToDance said:
Not even MJ thought it was good enough lol, it probably isn't a good song to begin with.
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If MJ thought The Toy was better than most Thriller songs, than we don't know anything about his good Rolling The Dice was. It was probably at least Off The Wall tier.
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
If MJ thought The Toy was better than most Thriller songs, than we don't know anything about his good Rolling The Dice was. It was probably at least Off The Wall tier.
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I just think that the chances of it not being a good song is higher than it is being because for him to record it once, agree along with producers that it's not good enough for Thriller and to never think of the song again possibly means that the song isn't good. Yeah, sure, there are songs that MJ recorded and didn't work on them further but it was due to several reasons like saving the song for another album, not being satisfied with its current state, being unable to record it and all of that but it was rarely due to him thinking the song was bad. So that speaks volumes about the quality of song.
 
ChanceToDance said:
I just think that the chances of it not being a good song is higher than it is being because for him to record it once, agree along with producers that it's not good enough for Thriller and to never think of the song again possibly means that the song isn't good. Yeah, sure, there are songs that MJ recorded and didn't work on them further but it was due to several reasons like saving the song for another album, not being satisfied with its current state, being unable to record it and all of that but it was rarely due to him thinking the song was bad. So that speaks volumes about the quality of song.
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Well, he never said it was "bad", right?. Just not strong enough. And he thought that many times about decent songs, by the time of Bad he actively chafed at Rod Temperton's songs, like he didn't think Groove of Midnight was much to write about and that's pretty pleasant as a tune. I think as a point, MJ just wanted to make hard tunes that would knock you off your feet. No more feel good party stuff per day. But you still got PYT and Baby Be Mine for those cases.
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Well, he never said it was "bad", right?. Just not strong enough. And he thought that many times about decent songs
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He worked on the songs multiple times before he gave up on them though, like Family Thing, Faces, Serious Effect, Blue Gangsta and others. For Rolling The Dice MJ didn't even bother finishing up the demo or working on it again like he did with Nite Line and She's Trouble (which understandably also aren't good enough for an album like Thriller lol) before he gave up on it entirely. It's probably a weaker song than these 2 or some other finished reject from Thriller.
 
ChanceToDance said:
I just think that the chances of it not being a good song is higher than it is being because for him to record it once, agree along with producers that it's not good enough for Thriller and to never think of the song again possibly means that the song isn't good. Yeah, sure, there are songs that MJ recorded and didn't work on them further but it was due to several reasons like saving the song for another album, not being satisfied with its current state, being unable to record it and all of that but it was rarely due to him thinking the song was bad. So that speaks volumes about the quality of song.
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There’s plenty of songs he didn’t revisit but it doesn’t mean they’re bad, just means they’re not in the same realm of the album he’s working on.

Michael said he would start writing a song and he’ll get ideas and start writing another one and he’ll discard the previous one because he’s excited about the next one
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
If MJ thought The Toy was better than most Thriller songs, than we don't know anything about his good Rolling The Dice was. It was probably at least Off The Wall tier.
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"Jackson named other songs he had written that he feels are 'just as strong or stronger than the stuff that was on the Thriller album,' including The Toy. 'Quincy wanted me to write a song for the movie with Richard Pryor, The Toy and it got too close to me doing Thriller. So I canned it, but I did write the song and I did a demo of The Toy.'" -- From Michael's 1984 Chicago Deposition.
 
BlackAnon said:
"Jackson named other songs he had written that he feels are 'just as strong or stronger than the stuff that was on the Thriller album,' including The Toy. 'Quincy wanted me to write a song for the movie with Richard Pryor, The Toy and it got too close to me doing Thriller. So I canned it, but I did write the song and I did a demo of The Toy.'" -- From Michael's 1984 Chicago Deposition.
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I wanna read this deposition. Mj in court in 84...I wish it was footage of that!
 
BlackAnon said:
There’s plenty of songs he didn’t revisit but it doesn’t mean they’re bad, just means they’re not in the same realm of the album he’s working on.

Michael said he would start writing a song and he’ll get ideas and start writing another one and he’ll discard the previous one because he’s excited about the next one
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From the Xscape album liner notes:

Jackson had a habit of over-recording for albums; oftentimes this meant outstanding songs were left on the cutting room floor (“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin,’” for example, was originally recorded during the Off the Wall era, but saved for Thriller; “They Don’t Care About Us” and “Earth Song” were originally recorded during the Dangerous sessions, but saved for HIStory). For Jackson, there could be a variety of reasons for leaving a song off a final tracklist. Sometimes he still wanted to let the song “speak to him” and try out different elements; sometimes, even though he loved the song as it was, he didn’t feel it worked with the rest of the material on an album; and sometimes it was just a practical matter of what could fit on a record or CD. Tracklist decisions were always difficult for Jackson and almost always came down to the last minute.

Jackson, however, frequently returned to tracks he liked on later projects, sometimes finding a “home” for them decades after they were first written and recorded.
 
There are several other reasons as to why Michael Jackson recorded certain songs but he did not include them on his albums.

Keep in mind that he was primarily a hits-oriented artist, which means that he wanted to include potential hits on his albums.

So, in the end, the selection of songs for the final track list came down mainly to that criterion.

Or, on other instances, certain songs could not be included on an album due to contractual/royalties disputes.

For example, although he recorded the 'Behind The Mask' cover song by even adding additional lyrical and melodic elements to it, royalties disputes with Yellow Magic Orchestra's management did not allow the inclusion of it on his 'Thriller' album.
 
mj_frenzy said:
There are several other reasons as to why Michael Jackson recorded certain songs but he did not include them on his albums.

Keep in mind that he was primarily a hits-oriented artist, which means that he wanted to include potential hits on his albums.

So, in the end, the selection of songs for the final track list came down mainly to that criterion.

Or, on other instances, certain songs could not be included on an album due to contractual/royalties disputes.

For example, although he recorded the 'Behind The Mask' cover song by even adding additional lyrical and melodic elements to it, royalties disputes with Yellow Magic Orchestra's management did not allow the inclusion of it on his 'Thriller' album.
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Behind the Mask is a good song but it doesn’t fit with Thriller…..one of the reasons Behind the Mask was scrapped was because Michael wanted a bigger percentage for writing additional lyrics.
 
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