I mean, going back to disco or pop/R&B is basically what we're talking about. Throwbacks like that happen all the time. LNFSG wasn't a disco tune but yet, it worked. It was pretty barebones though.
I don't rate many fan mixes that highly anyway tbh, so idk, you kinda lost me. But:
This isn't MJ but it sounds great and very authentic.
I misread this. But I still disagree. Lots of covers, if you count those, remix 80s tunes and sound pretty classy. Silk Sonics own cover of Love Train for one. There was a cool Thundercat remodel of a Ryuichi Sakamoto song before he just passed. And even John McClain/Neff-U's reworks of MJ's tunes were pretty natural. So idk, it's never beholden to their era. The strength of MJs songwriting is how versatile and flexible it is, and how well his voice goes with any genre.
It was never this long, but for the Invincible follow up it would've been. My point is, we never got MJ material annually. It did need to slow down at least a little