Go to any of the leading record producers or artists in the world and play them any MJ demo track that you like and I guarantee you with 100% certainty that they will say it's dated. Guaranteed!! Try it with general public. You think any of them will think it's anything other than dated? Even the Will.i.am demos are 12 years old at this point and will have the sound of their time.
You're missing my point entirely. Using "dated" to describe the production qualities and/or the overall aesthetic of a song isn't an issue; contemporary music fluctuates constantly, and pretty much everything more than a year or two old (including the entirety of Michael's discography) is pretty obsolete in that regard.
The problem is when "dated" is used as a means to undersell or diminish a song's quality and/or marketability, as if old-fashioned songs and albums are unappealing.
There IS a difference between a 'retro' sound and an old song. 'Retro' contains enough contemporary elements to make it fit the current soundscape, and that's what I was talking about when I said MJ's tracks would need to be reworked. All the examples of retro acts or songs that have done well in recent times missed my point. The acts may have been 'legacy', the songs may have been 'retro' but they all had one thing in common. They FIT the current musical landscape well.
"Finesse" (2018) is clearly-defined 1992 New Jack Swing; "Get Lucky" (2013) is mid-'70s disco-funk; "King Kunta" (2015) is late '90s G-funk and West Coast hip-hop; "Uptown Funk" (2014-15) is '80s Minneapolis soul; "Treasure" (2013) is early '80s post-disco; so on and so forth. These songs make absolutely no effort to sound current or present-day, they all root themselves firmly in whatever genre/time period they're emulating, from the vocals to every component of the production. I'd encourage you to listen to them all, then reference them against the styles they were competing against.
For those Pharell and JT tracks they were catchy as hell. Good songs. MJ won't have anything like that in the vault. nothing.
How cynical. Neither you nor I know the quality of what remains in the vault.
You seem to misinterpret "unreleased" as "not up to par," which is simply erroneous. Michael's standards of quality far surpass yours or mine, so we might praise what he rejected and vice versa -- there are plenty of outtakes that surpass some of the songs he consciously chose to release ("I'm So Blue," "Beautiful Girl," "We've Had Enough"). This isn't even acknowledging the praise and optimism several collaborators have shown toward as-yet-unheard material.
The biggest problem with MJ tracks, apart from the dated production, which you can strip away (like Xscape album), is MJ's singing style was very specific and just doesn't fit current trends. Softer songs are particularly sacharine, louder songs are aggresive and quite 'shouty'. Neither fits current trends. Who else sings in those styles right now?
What? So not only are you indicating that the current Hot 100 is completely absent of any aggressive dance songs or saccharine love songs, not only are you indicating that Michael only ever recorded songs that fell into one of those two categories, but that he is now somehow unmarketable because he has a distinct style? Seriously?
Often the subject matter is dated. What about Slave to the rhythm? Look at the words. Horrendously dated attitude toward a male female relationship. Like something out of the 50s.
"Slave to the Rhythm" chronicles an oppressive, misogynistic relationship that extenuating circumstances prevents her from exiting. In what way is that "horrendously dated," particularly in the #MeToo era? Songs cheapening women to disposable sex toys should be long outdated, yet they continue to chart, don't they?
By the way, here's a reasonable example. Have you heard the track by Juice World called 'Lucid Dreams'? Can you hear that 'Fall Again' element in the track? You think that if MJ's Fall Again demo was completed and released it would chart as well as LD with only MJ?? No chance. Now if they had mixed some of MJ's lyrics into Juice World's version then maybe it would be as successful.
Obviously any song that panders to what's currently trending will face the highest probability of chart success; no one has ever questioned or debated that point. But being contemporary will not immediately guarantee high sales and streaming numbers, just as being "dated" will not immediately forfeit a song's chances at similar praises.
Here's an even more reasonable example:
Xscape was created with the implicit intent of clout chasing. Every single song was repurposed to fit the contemporary musical landscape, some more clearly than others ("Chicago," "A Place With No Name," "Blue Gangsta"). Yet somehow the album's sole success story was "Love Never Felt So Good," a disco throwback with LITTLE current flair (though obviously the Justin Timberlake cosign helped).
