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Michael: Album Reviews

dupsy said:
The british press really wants this album to fail.I nearly vomited when I read this

I dont see them telling people not to buy Elvis or Lennon's records .This album is better than so many shitty records they praise.For a country that loved MJ so much and vice versa,their press sucks,wish MJ fans would buy 2 copies of the album just to stick it to the press.
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That's good that they wrote that! They think that will stop people from buying it? Quite the contrary! Telling people DON'T buy it will only make them want to buy it out of pity for the person being attacked. Most people in the UK know just fine the daily mail and the sun are trash. The Guardian and the Evening Times are respected.
 
New Michael Jackson CD is a thriller
"Michael" (MJJ/Epic/Sony) doesn't have the hallmarks of a Michael Jackson album.

There's no overarching theme, no consistent sound, no evidence of Jackson's meticulous tinkering to make every note, every second, exactly what he wanted. But maybe that's a good thing.
When you're the King of Pop, your subjects naturally bow to your will - an issue that more or less held Jackson back since "Bad," when he parted ways with the great producer Quincy Jones. In the tragic circumstances surrounding "Michael," pulled together quickly in the months after Jackson's untimely death last year, we get to see how the King of Pop would fare if his collaborators had more equal footing.
The answer: Pretty well.

Though Jackson had been working on the follow-up to 2001's "Invincible" for years, he wasn't close to finishing it, especially after he shifted his focus to mounting his "This Is It" tour. Judging from what Jackson left behind, the comeback he so desperately desired was so close.

It could have come from the remarkable "Behind the Mask," where Jackson took a synth-pop sample from the Yellow Magic Orchestra, wrote his own lyrics to it and surrounded it with the Europop beat that has invaded the American pop charts.

It could have come from "Keep Your Head Up," the inspirational slice of early-Aughts R&B that came from his collaboration with Eddie Cascio and James Porte when he was living with the Cascios in New Jersey in 2007. "Keep Your Head Up," which is Jackson's most gospel-influenced track since "Man in the Mirror," is even more timely now than when he wrote it, with its discussion of economic struggles and trying to make ends meet.

Or it could have come from "Monster," Jackson's stab at hip-hop featuring a verse from 50 Cent that the rapper recorded this year. Along with the album's first single, "Hold My Hand," his collaboration with Akon, "Monster" is the song that sounds the most like Jackson, even including backing vocals he sang through PVC pipe to get just the right monstrous effect.

Also written in New Jersey, "Monster" - which starts out with a nice bit of Jackson beatboxing - is just crying out for a mash-up with Kanye West's "Monster." It is one of two songs on "Michael" that talks about a weariness of Hollywood and the paparazzi, continuing the theme started in "Hollywood Tonight," which was recorded during the "Invincible" sessions nearly a decade ago.

The songs' varying time frames make "Michael" so unusual. The touching ballad "Best of Joy" was one of the final songs Jackson worked on - he planned to finish it while he was in London last year for the

"This Is It" concerts. The ballad "Much Too Soon" was written around the time of "Thriller," nearly three decades ago, but was not released until now.

On the sweet "(I Like) The Way You Love Me," which was released as a demo version on "Ultimate Collection" in 2004, Jackson sounds innocent again - as if all the criminal trials, health problems and constant scrutiny never happened. It's a touching moment, the musical equivalent of a clean slate. But the song also highlights one of the album's problems.

Though the album's numerous producers give an interesting range of viewpoints on Jackson's music, "Michael" also releases bits that Jackson probably never would have allowed.

Toward the end of "The Way You Love Me," there's a loop that sounds like Jackson's voice is manipulated to change keys and repeated multiple times the way amateurs do when they're trying to stretch out a song. It's a flaw so noticeable it jumps out at you immediately and one a perfectionist like Jackson probably would have cut.

The song "Breaking News," which was oddly the first song from the album revealed on Jackson's website, is another track he probably would have held back, especially as he refers to himself numerous times in the third person, using "Michael Jackson" as a ridiculous hook. It's no wonder that after the release of "Breaking News," Jackson's family immediately began questioning whether it was, in fact, his music. (Sony Music says it brought in Jackson's collaborators and musicologists to determine the authenticity of the track and determined it is his voice.)

They shouldn't have worried, though, because the rest of "Michael" is unquestionably Jackson. "Michael" isn't, as many have feared, some sort of project, like recent 2Pac albums, that cobbles together tapes of Jackson's voice and builds new songs around them. These are truly his songs and, for the most part, they couldn't have turned out better if Jackson had finished them himself.

The way Neff-U completes "Best of Joy" is masterful, with Jackson singing "I am forever" as the song fades out.

"Michael" may prove him right on that, considering the loving way others have carried on his legacy.

BOTTOM LINE Carefully keeping the King of Pop's legacy intact


GRADE B+
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/music/new-michael-jackson-cd-is-a-thriller-1.2532970
 
Disc of the week: Rejuice, reuse, re-Michael
ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN

Globe and Mail Update

Published Friday, Dec. 10, 2010 2:57PM EST
Michael Jackson (Epic/Sony)

Michael Jackson’s first posthumous album is really an anthology of material from different points in his solo career, from the high tide of his 1982 Thriller album to the ebb before the comeback he didn’t live to pull off. Some songs were apparently close to finished when he died, others not much more than rough sketches. A roomful of producers filled in the gaps and supplied the polish. It would have been fun if Epic and the Jackson estate had given us this approximation of a Jackson record along with a second disc of the source materials as found, so we could see where Jackson’s work ended and others’ began.

Media
Michael Jackson - Hold My Hand (Duet with Akon) (I Like) the Way You Love Me opens with an acknowledgment of the album’s patchy genesis, as Jackson sings a scrap of the tune on someone’s message machine. That gambit flows into a supersmooth love ballad, with a soft bossa kick and a scattered bouquet of flutes and bright keyboard sounds. It’s a plausible representation of one side of Jackson’s work, followed by another: Monster, a ragged-edged attempt to recapture Thriller’s dark frisson, with heavy staccato beats, a lumbering rap cameo by 50 Cent, and a lot of the kind of screaming we used to hear from James Brown. The fame-as-monster-juice theme is a little weary, but the song works, as does Behind the Mask, a tense dance number with an energetic, detailed bass line and maybe a bit too much moodling from a squeaky saxophone.

Hollywood Tonight, recorded during the making of 2001’s Invincible, has a prickly energy that harks back to the likes of Billie Jean. The opening, a sample of unaccompanied plainchant, makes no sense whatever, but the closing flurry of beat-boxing and whistles is a nice DIY touch, given that Jackson's later albums suffered from massive overproduction.

Those four songs are the best this album has to offer. Hold My Hand, a duet recorded with Akon, is budget-price industrial pop, built on a single workhorse chord progression and stacked up with overdubs. Jackson’s vocals have clearly been run through the same Auto-Tune neutralizer as Akon’s. The tone and quality of Jackson’s singing varies quite a bit on this disc – in part, perhaps, because the performances span three decades of his career.

Keep Your Head Up is a smooth but crude mishmash, an inspirational third-person ballad that also wants to be a save-me-baby love song. Best of Joy sounds like an inferior version of Bacharach’s filleted ballad That’s What Friends Are For, and the bland, middle-of-the-road pop of Much Too Soon, a discard from the Thriller era, tells me that it’s still too soon to loose this song on the world.

Breaking News mulls, for the umpteenth time, Jackson’s experience as a plaything of tabloid TV, with an opening collage of broadcast snippets and a good, grinding chorus melody that would have been better used in another song. And (I Can’t Make It) Another Day is basically a Lenny Kravitz blues-rock number with a phoned-in Michael Jackson vocal: Kravitz wrote the song and played virtually all the instruments.

As patched-together, postmortem efforts go – think of all those Notorious B.I.G. disasters – Michael isn’t bad. I find it less disappointing than Invincible, a hugely expensive record that smothered itself in second thoughts and the star’s justified paranoia. But this album may also be the best last thing we’re going to get from Jackson, whose label and estate have promised (or threatened) that more projects of this kind are in the works. Given the weaknesses of half these songs, I can’t believe there’s still great stuff in the vault.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...week-rejuice-reuse-re-michael/article1833299/

2 1/2 out of 4 stars
 
From R.F


Michael Jackson's new album: It's Out, and It's really pretty good

Michael Jackson‘s new album, “Michael,” is out. I have my copy. And guess what? An electronics store in mid town Manhattan actually put a pile of them on sale today by accident. They were a week too soon– or “Much Too Soon” to quote a title from the new album. Anyway, after I told them, they put it away. My copy didn’t come from the store. (I was buying a camera.)


The best thing about the finished album: “Breaking News” is great. It’s all Michael singing all the way through it. Sony screwed up the mix on the Michael Jackson website last month, which sent his fans into shock. But the real mix is clearly Michael’s vocals from beginning to end. It’s a very good track.


The other tracks made with Eddie Cascio, first conceived by his brother Frank Cascio with co-writer James Porte, are excellent. Both “Keep Your Head Up” and “Monster,” the latter featuring 50 Cent, are destined for singles. Again, they are clearly all Michael. “Monster” is destined to be a Monster hit.
The other standouts are the Lenny Kravitz recording, “Another Day,” and “I Like the Way You Love Me.” The latter is a different version from the one known to fans, and on the video in this column. It’s been totally re-conceived. And it has a nice snippet of Michael talking on work tape. This also is so ready for radio play–it will be a welcome addition to the airwaves.


The sleeper track: a little funk number called “Behind the Mask.”
Considering all his complaining, I was surprised to find Michael’s nephew, Taryll Jackson, featured on a track. On the album’s liner notes, the album is dedicated to “Michael’s children, Katherine Jackson, and the entire Jackson family.”

Source: http://www.showbiz411.com/2010/12/07/michael-jacksons-new-album-its-out-and-its-really-pretty-good
 
lol, even if I agree that it is MJ singing (which I do), that article is clearly less of a review than Roger trying to make a point about the Cascio tracks. What do you know, his favorite 3 tracks are the Cascio songs!
 
Re: Michael: first review

smooth_criminal05 said:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2010/1210/1224285142413.html

Great review from the Irish Times
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JMie said:
it's amazing how whenever Michael sings about tabloids and paparazzi, they immediately call him paranoid and crazy. I guess it's very tough for them to face the truth and admit the way they treated Michael all his life. It's much easier to write everything down as "paranoid self-obsession". F**k the press.
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I know... Paranoid means an irrational fear that everyone is out to get you. Michael was saying factual things in his songs - talking about being stalked, being chased, them hiding in bushes, giving his all while they watch him fall, etc. It's all TRUE!! He was not paranoid. :smilerolleyes:
 
The Boston Globe Review

‘Michael’ unfinished, but not unfamiliar
By Sarah Rodman

December 12, 2010

There is a strange interior contradiction to “Michael,’’ the first in a planned series of posthumous releases from Michael Jackson, out this Tuesday and currently streaming in its entirety on Jackson’s website.

Reproduced in the booklet of the disc are several handwritten notes. The first details Jackson’s process of hearing and constructing entire song arrangements in his head before bringing them to life. “I don’t give in until I get exactly what I want,’’ he writes.

It’s a statement that argues against the very existence of “Michael,’’ which, 18 months after his death, presents 10 tracks that were in various stages of development but never finished to the superstar’s famously exacting standards. Instead, presumably trusted friends and collaborators — including Akon, Teddy Riley, Lenny Kravitz, and 50 Cent — took demos, sketches, and nearly completed songs and buffed them for public consumption.

The result is shockingly better than might be expected — and in some ways superior to his final regular studio album, 2001’s uneven and bloated “Invincible.’’ Not shockingly, “Michael’’ only rarely approaches the heights of Jackson’s best work. It is economical and lis tenable, but much of it sounds like the solid second string efforts from his less thrilling later albums, fleshed out with contemporary R&B window-dressing — including elements Jackson favored like stately choirs and saccharine orchestral accompaniment.

Lead-off track “Hold My Hand’’ is essentially an Akon song with MJ flavoring, filled with the hitmaker’s catchy handclap rhythm tracks and sing-song simplicity. Kravitz brings his A-game to the funky swagger of “(I Can’t Make It) Another Day’’ — which holds down the “Beat It’’/“Dirty Diana’’ rock slot — but the song, featuring Dave Grohl on drums, wouldn’t feel out of place on one of his own records.

A reimagining of the Yellow Magic Orchestra song “Behind the Mask’’ — also recorded by Toto and “Thriller’’ keyboardist Greg Phillinganes and, more famously, Eric Clapton, with slightly different lyrics in the ’80s — has a fervent vocal, but the Franken-dubbing of various Jackson vocal signatures (“hee-hee-hee,’’ “hoo!’’) is indicative of the stitched-together nature of the whole project.

The most captivating tracks, unsurprisingly, are those that feel less manhandled by the chosen producer. In that respect, former new jack swing architect Teddy Riley and Theron “Neff-U’’ Feemster are the MVPs of “Michael.’’ Riley imbues the paparazzi-scalding “Monster’’ with real dance-floor crackle, while Feemster piles up harmonies like celestial strings on the understated “Best of Joy,’’ and captures that particularly Jacksonian sense of heavenly airiness on “(I Like) The Way You Love Me.’’

(That song — released in a different form in 2004 — is preceded by a grainy but illuminating recording of Jackson sketching out the various vocal parts, which made me realize the record I really want to hear is the one that collects the raw forms of these songs, where the purity of their genesis would have been preserved even if it wasn’t radio ready. It’s shocking that Sony didn’t think of this as a cash cow deluxe option for MJ completists.)

In the same sweetly contemplative vein of “Best of Joy’’ is the album’s closer, an acoustic “Thriller’’-era ballad with a Beatlesque delicacy called “Much Too Soon.’’ Notes indicate that Jackson liked the song “but never found the right home for it.’’ Is “Michael’’ the proper home for this, or any, of these songs? Fans may be glad to have it — and it does offer testimony that even his leftovers had sparkle — but it seems likely that he might not have wanted them to.

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/cd_reviews/articles/2010/12/12/michael_unfinished_but_not_unfamiliar/
 
Album: Michael Jackson, Michael (Sony)
Schmaltz, thrills and 'hee-hees': how Michael Jackson lives on

Reviewed by Simon Price
Sunday, 12 December 2010

Supposedly "conceived and inspired by the King of Pop", the "new" Michael Jackson album – heard by this reviewer in one of those supervised listening sessions where you're accosted as soon as you leave the room by a PR person asking for your verdict – is a controversial entity from the very start.

After all, let's be honest: his previous studio album Invincible mostly sucked... and he was alive for that. Sony and the Jackson estate, keen to defend the validity of the project, make much play of the "creative vision" Michael left behind, even though, by their own admission, the source material is drawn from several decades' worth of demos. The press release ominously promises more to come, prompting fears that a Tupac Shakur-style industry of barrel-scraping may be upon us. For now, the good news is that Jackson's voice doesn't appear to have aged too badly in his later years, albeit a little rawer around the edges.

The 10-track Michael opens with the Akon collaboration "Hold My Hand", a piece of orchestral R&B with the lump-in-throat line "this life don't last forever". "Hollywood Tonight", on which an Enigma-style monastic chant gives way to tuff Teddy Riley beats reminiscent of "Scream", is the tale of a 15-year-old girl lured to Tinseltown only to end up turning tricks. The schmaltzy "Keep Your Head Up" is described in the blurb as "inspirational", which I suppose is true if you find lines such as "Give me your wings so we can fly" inspiring.

Suddenly, on track four, something amazing happens. The summery, "(I Like) the Way You Love Me" begins with a snatch of Jackson humming and beatboxing into a Dictaphone: "This is the tempo and this is the melody..." Those few seconds are the most thrilling of the whole record.

By contrast, the 50 Cent duet "Monster", another song about what stardom does to the human spirit, suffers from a kitchen-sink production. "Best of Joy", on which the singer was still working at the time of his death, is another return to gooey triteness. "Breaking News", a weird mish-mash of 1990s New Jack rhythms and machine-gun beats, begins with a mocked-up montage of clamouring media coverage, eerily echoing the aftermath of MJ's death. The presence of Lenny Kravitz (and Dave Grohl on drums) ensures that "(I Can't Make It) Another Day" is a piece of strident rock-soul, though it does include a trademark "hee-hee".

The album ends with the Thriller-era "Much Too Soon", a weepie containing one last stunning moment where the music drops out and Michael's breathy vocal is left alone.

The final page of the CD booklet contains a back-of-an-envelope quote, in Jackson's shaky handwriting: "We only live once. Since we are given the gift of life, it should be a persistent endeavour to immortalise ourselves, no matter what field of endeavour we choose." One has to ask: is Michael what he had in mind?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...bum-michael-jackson-michael-sony-2158466.html
 
Jackson back on record rack (Warning: Refers to MJ in slanderous terms)

The Gloved One’s posthumous CD ain’t no ‘Thriller,’but he still ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Something’
BY DAN AQUILANTE
Last Updated: 8:17 AM, December 12, 201

When you consider that Michael Jackson is dead and can’t raise a finger to defend himself from hit-hungry record executives, the Gloved One made out surprisingly well on his first posthumous CD of unreleased material, simply titled “Michael.”
Few would expect this 10-song collection, which arrives officially on Tuesday, to be another “Thriller” — and it isn’t. But it is Jackson’s best record in years, despite a few tracks that would have been better left in the vault.
Let’s start with the rampant claims that the song “Breaking News” is an outright fraud — allegedly not even sung by Jackson. Jackson’s two eldest children reportedly believe that it’s not their dad singing, and sister La Toya told TMZ.com, “I listened to [‘Breaking News’] . . . It doesn’t sound like him.”

After listening to this tune more times than it deserved, it appears the Jackson clan is right — it doesn’t sound like Michael. But not because it was faked; it’s just that the song is a clunker. Jackson doesn’t warble in his usual falsetto register. He refers to himself in the third person: “Everybody wantin’ a piece of Michael Jackson.” A further drawback to being dead is that you can’t keep a crappy song off your own album.

Fortunately, “Breaking News” is the record’s low point. Other songs showcase Jackson’s strengths: his distinct upper register, his human beat-box skills and his ability to bridge R&B and rock with his yowling pipes.
There are times when you hear can how Jackson’s voice has been electronically kneaded, as on “Keep Your Head Up,” but this isn’t a Franken-album, awkwardly stitched together from dug-up, muddy musical parts. There is a consistency and wholeness to most of the songs on “Michael.”

After repeated spins, the verdict is: a solid collection with four downright terrific tracks. These are the up-tempo ballad “Hold My Hand,” on which Jackson duets with Akon; the good-girl-gone-bad song “Hollywood Tonight”; the Lenny Kravitz rock contribution “(I Can’t Make It) Another Day”; and the gentle acoustic finale “Too Much, Too Soon.”

While not quite in the league of that quartet, “Monster,” is also a standout, with a rap interlude by 50 Cent (placed strategically to cover a gap in Jackson’s vocals). This song might be the most important on the record because it’s clearly the direction Jackson had to take — dead or alive — to lend his music a contemporary feel.
For the most part, posthumous albums are a bad idea, but nobody can blame fans for wanting more music from an artist they love. The estate and record executives may be greedy, but they clearly enabled a huge amount of care and polish to make “Michael” as good as it could possibly be.

Considering that Jackson is vertically challenged, and that this album could have been slapped together as if it were “Invincible, Part II,” everyone did right by the King of Pop. With nine more post-mortem collections in the pipeline, we can only hope that’ll be standard practice for whatever riches remain in his archive.


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainme...e_record_Tsu8QlWRfp38bTT1maF3YN#ixzz17uDqOwYS
 
stunned that the NY Post gave it a positive review.. That Dan dude was always nasty as hell to MJ.
 
Michael has recieved many positive reviews -- That's fantastic.
 
The whole album is good. I love these songs not because I'm a MJ fans. The media sucks!
 
3 stars

Michael Jackson

Michael
(Sony)

HIS DEATH IN THE SUMMER of 2009 robbed Michael Jackson of his chance to disprove F. Scott Fitzgerald's maxim that there are no second acts in American life. Towards the end, he was a deposed King Of Pop, his last album (2001's Invincible) a baffling 13-million selling 'failure', its sales dwarfed by his previous outrageous fortune, and overshadowed by his tabloid infamy. But possible, if unlikely salvation had shimmered on the horizon in the form of the ambitious, ultimately-doomed series of concerts he'd booked at London's O2 Arena that July, and an eleventh solo album he'd been working on since 2004.

That eleventh album surfaces now as the first posthumous collection of unreleased Michael Jackson material, although it's impossible to know if Jackson planned his next album to sound like this. The best of his unfairly-reviled Invincible had followed tracks like Scream and They Don't Really Care About Us from 1995's HIStory, away from the rock-soul-disco hybrids that had unified pop's tribes and won him monarchy back in the day, in favour of tracks that threaded *****'s trademark syncopated yelps and howls in amongst bristling, heavily-percussive future funk indebted to hip-hop and modern R'n'B.

The curators of Michael, meanwhile, have compiled from the hundreds of songs, ideas and sketches he recorded after Invincible a ten-song album that attempts to reposition Jackson as the genre-straddling pop polymath of his golden era; indeed, two of its tracks were discarded from sessions for Thriller.

It opens badly. Hold My Hand, a duet with R'n'B star Akon that was apparently Jackson's own choice for his next single, is a ballad so insipid and saccharine as to make Black Eyed Peas sound like Black Flag, while Akon's autotune-croon is hardly a match even for a clearly-treading-water *****. MJ's opening line - "This life won't last forever" - also signals the first in a number of moments where the album seems to explicitly reference its singer's death, lunging after poignancy with the grace of a National Enquirer front page. Similarly, when Breaking News - a brash, self-pitying funk recorded with New Jack Swing pioneer Terry Riley in 2007 - opens with a collage of TV reporters announcing the ***** latest, and is followed by lyrics like "Everybody want a piece of Michael Jackson... Wanna write my obituary," it seems so on-the-nose as to be in poor taste.

A more successful rewrite of this "everybody hates me" vein of pop he first coined with 1987's Leave Me Alone, Hollywood Tonight finds Jackson playing to his strengths: a Billy Jean-esque bassline, guitars right out of Beat It and hooks of a vintage with his superstar era, set to the steroidal funk of Invincible (indeed, this Riley-produced track dates back to sessions for that album). It's excellent, one of a number of highlights only slightly marred by more mawkish moments like Keep Your Head Up, a queasy regurgitation of empty self-help mantras and clichéd platitudes like "Give me your wings so we can fly", ***** at his You Are Not Alone worst. But even here, his gospelised breakdowns on the second verse remind us that we've lost an amazing vocalist.

In among its more cynical, sickly clunkers, though, Michael boasts a couple of great ballads, finding Jackson at his most nuanced and sensitive. (I Like) The Way You Love Me is a gauzy vintage Motown confection, sweet enough to have been penned by Smokey himself, Michael crooning like Stevie at his most ecstatic; Best Of Joy is a similarly deft Quiet Storm, suggesting a direction he might've pursued in his twilight years, when all that moonwalking was finally beyond him, had he not died last summer.

A couple of all-star uptempo numbers show Jackson wasn't ready to play the Radio 2 card just yet, however. Monster suffers from a perfunctory verse from 50 Cent, proving that as a rapper, the multi-millionaire Curtis Jackson is an excellent businessman. ***** sounds pretty badass, though, relishing a vampy chorus of "Monster / He's a monster / He's an animal" and riding martial funk akin to sister Janet's Rhythm Nation and Sly Stone's Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). (I Can't Make It) Another Day, meanwhile, finds Dave Grohl and Lenny Kravitz backing Michael on a grandly cinematic, guitar-heavy track that might've had Bond theme potential, and certainly rocks harder than anything featuring Lenny Kravitz has any right to.

If Michael represents the cream of *****'s recent unreleased work - and you know we're going to hear a fair amount more of it, in further posthumous releases, round about this time every year - then it proves he was still making great uplifting pop and terrible sentimental schlock up until his death. There are flashes of genius here; but you know that, whatever other songs Michael would have selected for the final tracklist, had he survived to complete his eleventh album, it would have included that awful Akon duet. He wasn't so much an artist in fatal decline, as an artist so distracted by the circus of his own life that he couldn't focus long enough to give his music the direction it needed.

The album closes on a high with the two Thriller-era relics. MOJO readers will no doubt remember Behind The Mask from when Eric Clapton recorded it for his 1986 album August, and might be surprised to learn the song was originally a Yellow Magic Orchestra track Quincy Jones brought into the studio for Jackson to write some new lyrics and melodies for and record. It was a pretty neat song when Clapton recorded it, and remains so here, its clipped chorus perfect for Jackson's unmistakeable yelp.

The final track, Much Too Soon, finds strings and accordions and acoustic guitars lending a Beatlesque depth to another Jackson ballad, a song that, in the hands of a lesser talent, would be sunk by its own sentimentality. But it's also a reminder that while, even at his peak, the King Of Pop could just as surely be the King Of Pap, he could deliver the more saccharine stretches of his songbook with a dedication and sincerity that made it fly. That's why he was the King. As was written of Elvis Presley, another pop King sunk by his stardom, shortly after his death: remember him this way.

Stevie Chick

http://www.mojo4music.com/blog/2010/12/posthumous_*****_album_first_m.html
 
^^^

That was the most positive review so far I think.

GREAT.
 
^^^

That was positive too. - For most parts.
 
Another GREAT Review (and one that looks at "MICHAEL" exactly like it should) I wish other publications would the same...

Jackson's 'Michael' imperfect but worth it

Judge posthumous album for what it is — a snippet of late singer's thought process

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
updated 12/13/2010 10:43:02 AM ET 2010-12-13T15:43:02
REVIEW

Anyone hoping that "Michael," an album culled from Michael Jackson's vaults, would rival "Thriller," "Off the Wall" or even "Dangerous" will likely be disappointed when they hear the first posthumous release credited to the King of Pop.

But that's not to say that "Michael," consisting mainly of material Jackson was working on during the last two years of his life, should be considered a disappointment or an artistic letdown — especially if the listener accepts it for what it is, and that's not a Michael Jackson album.

Had Jackson not died last year, chances are he'd still be working on a follow-up to his last album, 2001's "Invincible," spending millions of dollars and untold hours trying to come up with an album that would outdo Kanye, Beyonce and whoever else was ruling the charts at the moment. None of the songs on "Michael" had been completed at the time of his death, and there's no way of knowing if the perfectionist Jackson would have deemed them worthy of the album he was trying to create — or thrown them into the discard pile.

"Michael" should then be judged for what it is: a snapshot of Jackson's musical thought process — Photoshopped and airbrushed, but still enjoyable.

Jackson's estate selected producers such as "Dangerous" producer Teddy Riley and Tricky Stewart (Beyonce, Rihanna) to put the finishing touches on the album's 10 tracks. It's unclear how much studio wizardy was required to get the songs into top shape, but if "Hold My Hand" (the first single with Akon) is any indication, there wasn't much. The song had leaked onto the Internet a few years ago, and while this version is more polished, Jackson's vocals — tender, sweet but strong — sound almost identical to what circulated on the Web years ago. The ballad itself is saccharine and generic, but Jackson's soulful performance gives it all the charm it needs.
Jackson co-wrote several of the songs on "Michael," and the recurring themes that ran throughout Jackson's work are evident here as he paints himself as the victim of the tabloids in "Monster" and "Breaking News," two of the album's weaker tracks. "Breaking News," while it has noteworthy lines ("he wanna write my obituary" Jackson intones in one part), seems the most unfinished with nonsensical lyrics and a chorus that repeats Jackson's name incessantly. "Hollywood Tonight" also warns of the dangers of seeking fame, this time with a young woman fooled by its lure.

There's no song on "Michael" that will rank among Jackson's best work, but there are a few that stand out. "(I Like) the Way You Love Me" is a groovy midtempo song that recalls a classic doo-wop sound; "Best of Joy" is a dreamy, airy track that features Jackson's vocals at their heart-melting best, without a melange of sound effects and the vocal hiccups that often distracted the listener from that amazing voice; and "Keep Your Head Up" is a lovely inspirational anthem that accomplishes its mission with each listen.

We'll never know whether "Michael" would have been anything close to the album that Jackson might have released had he lived, but by releasing these songs, fans can know that the King of Pop was off to a promising start. "Michael" does nothing to detract from Jackson's amazing legacy and, if anything, gives us a little bit more to cherish, however imperfect.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/406412...entertainment/
 
babykinsilk05;3133934 said:
Another GREAT Review (and one that looks at "MICHAEL" exactly like it should) I wish other publications would the same...

Jackson's 'Michael' imperfect but worth it

Judge posthumous album for what it is — a snippet of late singer's thought process

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
updated 12/13/2010 10:43:02 AM ET 2010-12-13T15:43:02
REVIEW

Anyone hoping that "Michael," an album culled from Michael Jackson's vaults, would rival "Thriller," "Off the Wall" or even "Dangerous" will likely be disappointed when they hear the first posthumous release credited to the King of Pop.

But that's not to say that "Michael," consisting mainly of material Jackson was working on during the last two years of his life, should be considered a disappointment or an artistic letdown — especially if the listener accepts it for what it is, and that's not a Michael Jackson album.

Had Jackson not died last year, chances are he'd still be working on a follow-up to his last album, 2001's "Invincible," spending millions of dollars and untold hours trying to come up with an album that would outdo Kanye, Beyonce and whoever else was ruling the charts at the moment. None of the songs on "Michael" had been completed at the time of his death, and there's no way of knowing if the perfectionist Jackson would have deemed them worthy of the album he was trying to create — or thrown them into the discard pile.

"Michael" should then be judged for what it is: a snapshot of Jackson's musical thought process — Photoshopped and airbrushed, but still enjoyable.

Jackson's estate selected producers such as "Dangerous" producer Teddy Riley and Tricky Stewart (Beyonce, Rihanna) to put the finishing touches on the album's 10 tracks. It's unclear how much studio wizardy was required to get the songs into top shape, but if "Hold My Hand" (the first single with Akon) is any indication, there wasn't much. The song had leaked onto the Internet a few years ago, and while this version is more polished, Jackson's vocals — tender, sweet but strong — sound almost identical to what circulated on the Web years ago. The ballad itself is saccharine and generic, but Jackson's soulful performance gives it all the charm it needs.

Jackson co-wrote several of the songs on "Michael," and the recurring themes that ran throughout Jackson's work are evident here as he paints himself as the victim of the tabloids in "Monster" and "Breaking News," two of the album's weaker tracks. "Breaking News," while it has noteworthy lines ("he wanna write my obituary" Jackson intones in one part), seems the most unfinished with nonsensical lyrics and a chorus that repeats Jackson's name incessantly. "Hollywood Tonight" also warns of the dangers of seeking fame, this time with a young woman fooled by its lure.

There's no song on "Michael" that will rank among Jackson's best work, but there are a few that stand out. "(I Like) the Way You Love Me" is a groovy midtempo song that recalls a classic doo-wop sound; "Best of Joy" is a dreamy, airy track that features Jackson's vocals at their heart-melting best, without a melange of sound effects and the vocal hiccups that often distracted the listener from that amazing voice; and "Keep Your Head Up" is a lovely inspirational anthem that accomplishes its mission with each listen.

We'll never know whether "Michael" would have been anything close to the album that Jackson might have released had he lived, but by releasing these songs, fans can know that the King of Pop was off to a promising start. "Michael" does nothing to detract from Jackson's amazing legacy and, if anything, gives us a little bit more to cherish, however imperfect.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/406412...entertainment/
Click to expand...

Wow... the writer of this review might be my lost twin sibling. We share the same like's and dislike's. It's pretty scary how close this article mirrors my comments.

I usually don't agree with album reviews. But, I have to say this one is one fair review.
 
love is magical said:
Wow... the writer of this review might be my lost twin sibling. We share the same like's and dislike's. It's pretty scary how close this article mirrors my comments.

I usually don't agree with album reviews. But, I have to say this one is one fair review.
Click to expand...

Cmon tell us you wrote it :p
 
This kind of album must have been hard to do. I can only imagine. I am not going to even compare it to past albums. Michael wasn't here to finish this so they could only do what they thought he would do or want I assume. It's different situation. It is like This is It. Looking at what he wanted to do and seeing how great it would have been had he finished it. Tomorrow I finally will listen to the album when it comes out.
 
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