Can you imagine this crap happening to any other artist of his magnitude? How were those songs not laughed out of the studio?
I can only imagine the following:
Some people can't
taste differences very well. Some people can't
see differences very well.
If you're old enough, you lived through the transition where 4:3 TVs were replaced by 16:9 TVs. Some old channels/programs would
stretch the image to the new format - and guess what: some people wouldn't notice!! They just couldn't tell. They had other things in mind, they would just not care about such things.
I once sat in front of an old CRT-monitor, which had a low 20Hz Refresh-Setting. It was
really hard on the eyes. But the owner wouldn't notice. I switched
a lot of CRT-monitors to 60Hz back in the day, when I got my hands on them (which they all supported - but you had to set them up right).
Also, some people suffer from the rainbow effect on DLP-projectors. It is a
very strong effect imho, but probably more than 50% of the people won't notice.
Some people have difficulties with persons/faces. Like 30 minutes into a movie: "Is that Matt Damon?" ... Erm, sure it is. Couldn't you tell? Also from his voice ...? These are by no means stupid people.
Now to music and voice:
It seems: some people can't
hear differences very well. There is a lot going on. Not just timbre. Lot's of complex things get mixed where the sum is the distinctive voice/vocal performance of a singer. For those who can tell, it is
clear as night and day that MJ is not the singer of the Cascio tracks. Even though there a lot of similarities. But some - even if they are long-time/big fans, or claim to be experts on historical facts / unreleased tracks ... they just can't tell and start to build up excuses/explanations. Lots of superficially obvious things tells their brain, it is indeed MJ singing. When a single doubt arises, it gets discarded ... because "they would never" or "conspiracy theory" or "such a secret can't be kept" or "James Porte" ... Again, they are not stupid people, nor are they "bad fans".
So somebody in power must have been duped and thought it is indeed MJ. People in lower positions probably noticed but were to shy/embarressed to say something. Maybe some peer pressure. They might also have been blinded by such a glorious discovery. Then there is money to be made ...
Of course it is heartbreaking to think: I'm a fan for 20 years. How could I be duped by an imposter? And most people say, it was easy to tell?
What I suck at:
- I can't watch hockey games on TV ... I will never know, where the puck is at. I lose it all the time.
- I have a really hard time, when two opposing soccer teams have similar jerseys. There once was a match: red-white vs. white-red. Nobody I talked to seemed to care. I got furious, because I just couldn't tell what was happening during the game.
- I have a hard time remembering faces or clothes.
- I misplace things.
- I forget what I was about to be doing very often.