To protect those who explained everything to me, I will be using fictitious names to protect them. I have known them for many many years. Charlie as we’ll call him works for Sony and has an extensive background in audio engineering, producing, and music management. Once I heard the track and all the drama that has followed he was the first person I reached out to for some answers. As we know, the family only sends cryptic notes and with everyone posting on twitter from Teddy Riley, to Frank Cascio on facebook, what are we, the fans, left to believe? If anything there are far more questions now than answers.
“The fact is, at this point no one knows what tracks are what.”Charlie tells me. “The tracks that are listed for the upcoming album everyone besides those closely working on the project, are confused as to what is what. Some may have been recorded in 2007 or 2008 but damn it’s a mess.” Sitting in an office today w/ a high level Sony executive (again I will leave out who exactly it was), the man is laughing within the first 3 lines of “Breaking News” Charlie sits back and says, “wow, really?” “Of course hardly any of this is Michael” he tells Charlie, “but the good news is from I have heard so far, it shouldn’t get any worse than this.” “Damn” Charlie says. “The bridge & background vocals are him in parts but the Cascio guys chose to do it this way.” He continues.”It’s good publicity right now.”
Charlie explains to me, we listened to it numerous times in the studio, and you could tell from the breathing patterns to the push behind the vocals, its all different, nothing like Michael. Problem is, is that when recording vocals there is no type of pitch control when you go high. They can’t pitch up in other words to fix whoever they had sing it. Michael did not care for this track, he never recorded lead vocals only bits and pieces of a demo. When you record a demo its not stacked. They stacked the finish, Michael would be furious if he were alive, he never did stacking this way, it’s not his production style. When he stacked a track he did it all with vocals, as you can hear on the Dangerous album. It’s not like the old days when they recorded in analogue. When you first record a track you’ll record a demo, then once its chosen you go back and record everything twice pretty much, one is higher and one is lower, basically for the sound in the left ear and the right. Demos are recorded in mono, not as rich and thick like a finished track, what it sounds like is that they placed Michael’s voice dead center, and had whoever they brought in, possibly this guy Jason, to record the stacking and placed his on the right and left. If you listen hard Michael’s there but its far too saturated. It’s over done, its simply not his style. However, you have to remember that whatever you’re going to hear from now on will never be a finished polished product the way Michael would have wanted because of the simple fact that none of it was fully finished. So they are left to decide what to do with them because they don’t want to put demos out. What Michael wanted to do and what the world wants are two different things. I think they wanted to duplicate and make the kind of money they did with This Is It last year, so they release the album just before the holidays and hope that they go platinum with this LP. I honestly think though that this single is going to hurt album sales. They are trying too hard to get something catchy, Invincible style but the fact is that Invincible was short lived. They’re attempting to go overly poppy with this LP and its not going to work.
The thing is, Cascio’s music ideas don’t work, he’s a very intelligent guy, don’t get me wrong. The family is in the restaurant business but Cascio was pretty much in the right place and the right time for Michael to take an interest in him becoming his personal manager. Now Mr. Cascio wants to cash in and finish the record. He was shopping for post production and engineering volunteers to finish the tracks (hence Teddy Riley confirming today on Twitter that he was not compensated for his post production on the track). I wouldn’t be surprised if his dad is in charge of the whole thing. Those vocals that Michael recorded were done in the Cascio’s dad’s studio. Michael’s there but Cascio wanted to push himself, he always pretends he’s got the contacts, but never went anywhere in music. Sure you may have contacts but it doesn’t mean they want to work with you. Towards the last 3 years of his life Michael was trying to produce more for other people. He was trying to get the Black Eyed Peas to let him produce for them. Do you remember those rumours about that rapper guy (cardanal?!?), what I believe is that they could have had this song written for a rapper, but what makes no sense to me is why have a knock off singer, a rapper would have made a little more sense since Michael never recorded the versus.
Jason on the other hand, well he was doing his regular singing when he started doing his knock off singing like MJ. Ever since then he’s blown up even though the music is trash, but I just wonder now if they paid him out. If not, he’ll probably get publishing credits and royalties from the album and if so, everyone and anyone involved in publishing will find out. That’s pretty funny and he’ll be sitting there collecting checks. At the end of the day, I hope they deliver the rest of it in an upright way because honestly what they have now, Michael would be furious! “Breaking News” is horrible.
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I love Howard Zinn, he has a great quote that states, "its easy to be overwhelmed or intimidated by the realization that governments have enormous power but some historical perspective can be useful, because it tells us that at certian points in history governments (& corporations) find that all their power is futile against the power of an aroused citizenry."
That gives me hope...cheers~
Rebecca~
