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Michael - The Great Album Debate

ivy said:
we heard that those songs were recorded by porte before. Assuming that Michael was listening to Porte recorded vocals when he's recording his vocals - yes. This would especially make sense if these vocals were intended to be for Porte's songs , he would have made his vocals fit with Porte's.

also side note a good singer would be able to mimic any accent and any word. for example I have experienced the singer I worked with to record in Italian by just listening to another singer in his headphones when he knew not a single Italian word.
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Well, then you will have to ask the following, which theory would be more logical:

A) Michael's odd voice trying to imitate MD's accent
or
B) Soundalike's voice trying to imitate Michael's voice and accent

It's something that each individuall will have to deal with and draw conclusions.


ivy said:
okay time for Paula Abdul Case.

Paula Abdul's record company was sued by her back vocalist saying that she is on the leads and she should be credited as such and should get more money. It turned out that the back vocalist was indeed called to record the leads and her guide vocals has been used on the leads with Paula Abdul's vocals as well. Babyface (or LA. Reid) testified that they used all her guide vocals in the leads to strengthen / layer the vocals and it's common practice that they do - that he even left his own guide vocals on Michael Jackson songs. In the end Paula Abdul won and the back vocalist lost.

this is indeed a common practice especially when you have a weaker singer. Layering the vocals with other singers make them more richer. and no depending on how you mix it doesn't sound like a chorus , I asked around.

So that's what I was asking about. What if Porte's vocals is also in the leads and mixed down with Michael's in not so obvious manner? and in some instances you hear his predominant accent.
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I always tell my students: "Do not compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to yourself. What were you able to do before? What are you able to do now?"

The same goes here. If this is common practice with Michael, then it's something we should consider.

If this is something that Michael never did, then we cannot compare it to Paula Abdul's case otherwise than with a big grain of salt.
 
Okay I found the exact quote

LA Reid noted pointedly that he has used vocal doubling on songs by "most of the vocalist I have worked with" including Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown. He added that such doubling was credited as background vocals on albums.

Reid than tells that Babyface's entire guide vocal for "Roni" is used on Bobby Brown's song to double the singer's lead track. They don't give an example of Michael Jackson song.
 
Why would Michael want to mimic the accent of another singer? Makes no sense at all. And if he did, he should still sound like himself. Just like when he did the cockney accent at the start of the UK broadcast of LWMJ.
 
I always tell my students: "Do not compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to yourself. What were you able to do before? What are you able to do now?"

The same goes here. If this is common practice with Michael, then it's something we should consider.

If this is something that Michael never did, then we cannot compare it to Paula Abdul's case otherwise than with a big grain of salt.
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bumper, Michael is dead. don't forget to consider that as well. In life when alive he could have recorded his own back vocals, guide vocals and his multiple tracks to do the layering. Now he's dead. They can use legally acceptable techniques - such as doing vocal doubling and crediting them as back vocals - because he's dead and cannot do his multiple takes.

The importance of Paula Abdul case is it also shows us a totally legally acceptable technique in song production. It shows that that they can use as much as guide vocals, additional vocals they want as long as they have Michael's vocals as well and credit the others as background vocalists.
 
ivy said:
bumper, Michael is dead. don't forget to consider that as well. In life when alive he could have recorded his own back vocals, guide vocals and his multiple tracks to do the layering. Now he's dead. They can use legally acceptable techniques - such as doing vocal doubling and crediting them as back vocals - because he's dead and cannot do his multiple takes.
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But there are multiple takes in the songs? There was a lot of material recorded for each track.
 
ivy said:
Reid than tells that Babyface's entire guide vocal for "Roni" is used on Bobby Brown's song to double the singer's lead track.
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so the entire leads here has both Bobby Brown and Babyface according to LA Reid.

 
ivy said:
bumper, Michael is dead. don't forget to consider that as well. In life when alive he could have recorded his own back vocals, guide vocals and his multiple tracks to do the layering. Now he's dead. They can use legally acceptable techniques - such as doing vocal doubling and crediting them as back vocals - because he's dead and cannot do his multiple takes.

The importance of Paula Abdul case is it also shows us a totally legally acceptable technique in song production. It shows that that they can use as much as guide vocals, additional vocals they want as long as they have Michael's vocals as well and credit the others as background vocalists.
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I do consider it. But I don't see the correlation with the change of accent and voice in the supposed MJ's voice and final release of something that doesn't sound Michael contrary to other MJ's 7 tracks, not to mention BG, 12 o'clock, STTR.
 
There are lots of unfinished Mj tracks and none of them sound anything like the voice on the Cascio tracks.
 
Also things to consider

this is the Paula Abdul song LA Reid in court accepted that they used whole guide lead vocals of Yvette Marine and merged it with Paula Abdul's vocals.


This is the other song that Yvette Marine claimed her guide vocals were used to enhance Paula Abdul's vocals and she deserves co-lead credit.


As you can see combined / merged / blended lead vocals is not that easy to hear and identify.

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The unprecedented case pressured the industry to expose complex technological wizardry employed by many of the nation's biggest pop stars to secure perfect-sounding vocals on their hit recordings.

For years, recording artists, from Michael Jackson to the Beatles, have regularly used separate recordings of their own voices or unison vocal tracks by background singers to doctor the accuracy and strength of their performances on some of their biggest hits.

While many insiders initially dismissed Marine's lawsuit as a publicity stunt, record companies feared that a victory for Marine might open the floodgate to dozens of potential copycat suits.

During the vitriolic four-week trial, attorneys for both sides called a plethora of witnesses, including record executives, sound specialists and studio producers.

The Abdul flap surfaced in March, 1991, after Marine was allegedly misquoted in a Globe tabloid article stating that Abdul did not sing at all.

Marine testified that Virgin hired her for several days' work to lay down background and lead "guide" vocal tracks for Abdul on several songs. While it is common for an established artist to rehearse with a studio "guide" track during the initial stages of recording, the track is usually discarded once the singer memorizes the song.

However, Marine alleged that Virgin--without authorization--combined her lead guide track with Abdul's vocal track in the song's final mix.

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At a press conference, however, Virgin's Jeff Ayeroff submitted a sound analysis of ''Opposites Attract'' conducted by University of California music professor Fredric Lieberman, who says, ''It remains possible, though I believe highly improbable, that a small percentage of Yvette's pilot track was blended or bled into some sections of the lead vocal mix, but if so it is imperceptible.''

The use of guide vocals by singers is not unusual. Besides blending two vocals together, common studio tricks include applying processors and harmonizers to enhance an audio track.
 
What makes me even more suspicious is that according to the Estate there is maybe enough material for one or two more albums (I suppose including the remaing 9 Cascio songs).

So if I get it straight, MJ in his whole career didn't have time to record more unreleased material than that, but 50% of it was recorded in 2007 in an underground studio?

p.s. I don't see why Paula Abdul's example sounds more plausible than a soundalike's imitating MJ's voice.
 
BUMPER SNIPPET said:
What makes me even more suspicious is that according to the Estate there is maybe enough material for one or two more albums (I suppose including the remaing 9 Cascio songs).

So if I get it straight, MJ in his whole career didn't have time to record more unreleased material than that, but 50% of it was recorded in 2007 in an underground studio?
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There is enough material for one or two albums without the Cascio tracks. Three if they are included. They would be absolutely stupid to release any more.
 
BUMPER SNIPPET said:
What makes me even more suspicious is that according to the Estate there is maybe enough material for one or two more albums (I suppose including the remaing 9 Cascio songs).

So if I get it straight, MJ in his whole career didn't have time to record more unreleased material than that, but 50% of it was recorded in 2007 in an underground studio?
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I think this is all about "complete" part. I suspect Michael recorded hundreds of songs but they are a verse here a chorus there and so on. Therefore they are not "complete" or releasable. I tell you the way to handle such songs in posthumous releases is duets.

We all know the rumors that Cascio songs were written fully before. Similar to Akon said or that we have seen from Michael's song with Barry Gibb in case of already written songs all he need is a few hours to record them. It's a different thing when he's writing his own songs from nothing.
 
But Michael was quoted a billion gazillion times as saying songs just come to him and a lot of the time are fully done.

Hollywood Tonight, Best Of Joy, I Am The Loser, etc. I think a lot of the time songs came to him almost instantly.

Countless other examples of him making a song immediately, but those are the more recent ones I could think of.
 
Aniram said:
But Michael was quoted a billion gazillion times as saying songs just come to him and a lot of the time are fully done.

Hollywood Tonight, Best Of Joy, I Am The Loser, etc. I think a lot of the time songs came to him almost instantly.
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fully done doesn't mean he recorded them fully right?

for example Hollywood tonight is missing it's bridge. Why that's not recorded? We know he wrote it but he didn't record it. See what I'm saying? he had years to finish Hollywood Tonight and yet it's still missing a bridge but it took him an hour to record Hold My Hand.

Similarly I forgot a while back Joe Vogel was talking about a song that Michael worked on a lot but didn't lay down any vocals.

there could be thousands of songs that are finished on paper but not yet recorded.
 
ivy said:
fully done doesn't mean he recorded them fully right?

for example Hollywood tonight is missing it's bridge. Why that's not recorded? We know he wrote it but he didn't record it. See what I'm saying?
Similarly I forgot a while back Joe Vogel was talking about a song that Michael worked on a lot but didn't lay down any vocals.

there could be thousands of songs that are finished on paper but not yet recorded.
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So why does Hollywood Tonight sound perfectly fine and not let's say Fall In Love?
 
@ivy: I see what you're saying and yeah, probably more than completed songs are just done on tape recorders. But I still think that in his career he recorded a lot, he was constantly producing music with people and there's a bit more completed than two more records without Cascio songs.

I could be wrong, but since Michael lived music and he was getting up in the night to work on music all the time, I don't know why he'd just be going to write on paper and record in a tape rather than working on and completing his songs.

I wouldn't mind a duet album, though, I guess, if it came to that. If they are done in a similar light to Hold My Hand. If they are done beautifully and with talented artists. Of course none can stand right next to Michael but he would likely lead the songs and I would be happy with it. Anything to hear his actual voice in songs, though, no more fake stuff. :( I'm still really looking forward to I Am The Loser..
 
BUMPER SNIPPET said:
So why Hollywood Tonight sound perfectly fine and not let's say Fall In Love?
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that's a whole different topic isn't it?

if this is solely about how the songs "sound like" you need to keep that topic at focus.

When you bring something else to the discussion , please discuss on that and do not always fall back on to "sound like" argument when it seems like the discussion isn't going the way you hoped.
 
StellaJackson said:
You know, how anyone could think Fall In Love is Mj is utterly beyond me. It's insulting beyond words
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I agree...It is indeed insulting...Out of tune, lack of power, dull vocals...totally uninspiring, totally lacking that magical, smooth, amazing voice..When have we ever described MJ as that? I'm sorry...That is NOT MJ...
 
You know, I often think another reason the Cascio songs aren't him is because he doesn't go "uh-huh, alright" like in every freakin' song when he got older.

And by the way I love it when he does that!
 
ivy said:
that's a whole different topic isn't it?

if this is solely about how the songs "sound like" you need to keep that topic at focus.

When you bring something else to the discussion , please discuss on that and do not always fall back on to "sound like" argument when it seems like the discussion isn't going the way you hoped.
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Well actually, I was comparing Michael to Michael, and not to Paula Abdul.

By the way, I started with the dialectal differences in pronunciation and you went on with Paula Abdul's case.

So what is the focus here?
 
Arklove said:
I agree...It is indeed insulting...Out of tune, lack of power, dull vocals...totally uninspiring, totally lacking that magical, smooth, amazing voice..When have we ever described MJ as that? I'm sorry...That is NOT MJ...
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And it is so blatantly obvious who's voice it actually is. Listen to any of Jason's songs. It's the exact same voice
 
Think if this was the old days, 20 years ago or so before forums like this, and we had to be in an actual room debating this... And we'd be here dragging it out for over a year now, living together. :) Using the same restrooms and having to share a community fridge.
 
BUMPER SNIPPET said:
Well actually, I was comparing Michael to Michael, and not to Paula Abdul.

By the way, I started with the dialectal differences in pronunciation and you went on with Paula Abdul's case.

So what is the focus here?
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Dear Bumper,

You know for a fact that I asked if it could be Porte and from your response it was obvious that you didn't know or consider vocal doubling / blending / combining / merging. I went to Paula Abdul lawsuit and examples from it because our resident experts are also unaware of possibility of such techniques and they expected an obvious Porte. It was relevant to the discussion and I needed those examples to explain to you what I was asking you about. I'm yet hopeful that you would consider Porte in regards to dialects and answer my question, now that I hope you know what I'm talking about.

What I was meaning is that you ask a question of why Michael recorded more songs with Cascio's then on his own. You are given an answer with due to difference of already written song versus writing a song from nothing but your answer is not related to it at all, you switch the topic to what it sounds like. It had nothing to do with your original question.

I have been in debate groups and also ran them, the rule is to stick to a topic however what I see with the doubters is that they bring a discussion topic such as the recorded songs, the copyright registrations and whenever you are discussing that and they feel like they have nothing relevant to reply to you it suddenly goes back to "doesn't sound like" argument. It again makes me consider why do I even respond. I mean if the issue is "number of recorded songs with Cascio's" then why can't the discussion stick to that?

edited to add

StellaJackson said:
One rule for one.
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you know what bumper, don't mind at all. forget what I have asked about Porte and forget my efforts to try to explain what I've been talking about.

I have again been shown that still no one understands why I post what I post. These posts remind me again and again why I shouldn't post here at all.
 
StellaJackson said:
And it is so blatantly obvious who's voice it actually is. Listen to any of Jason's songs. It's the exact same voice
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Aniram said:
Yeah, Jason's...
Indeed.
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Well, actually I don't care if it's Jason's voice or not...What I care about is the fact that someone is actually, truly, seriously labelling this song as sung by Michael Jackson? Um..what? All of a sudden, now that Michael's gone, we forget what he sounds like? That any old imposter is fair game? That we're actually debating this??
 
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