Latest on MJJC

Unpopular opinions about MJ’s music?

Themidwestcowboy said:
If I recall correctly someone here (I think Korgnex) who has heard and earlier version of Heaven Can Wait said that MJ’s voiced cracked and gave in during that part ad they had the re-record those Adlibs on a different day.
Click to expand...

Listening to it, I 100% believe it. IÂ’d be surprised if his voice didnÂ’t give during those sessions.
 
I donÂ’t hear it - IÂ’ve always loved every vocal Michael gave.
 
mj_frenzy said:
It has been theorized that Michael Jackson intentionally wanted to sing with that cracked, strained voice in order to show his anguish and despair so as to match the songÂ’s sad lyrical theme.

In any case, ‘Heaven Can Wait’ is a song that he should not have recorded and included on his ‘Invincible’ album because it is a song tailor-made for boy-bands, not for a singer in his 40s.

If you listen, for example, to songs like ‘Words’ (by Boyzone), ‘Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely’ (by Backstreet Boys), ‘End Of The Road’ (by Boyz II Men), etc, you will realize that ‘Heaven Can Wait’ fits far better for such boy-bands.
Click to expand...

While I don't think that the strain was really on purpose (since his voice was very tired after the HIStory tour), I do agree that it fits the song. I don't think it was necessarily an artistic decision, but I think it worked out well artistically.
 
i came here to defend heaven can wait but after listening to it again i can see what yall mean,its not healthy singing though imo it fits the songs.
mike deteriorated vocally after history and unfortunately i dont think he even regained his belting to a healthy form ever again ,id also attribute that to ageing and his diaphragm getting weak if i had to guess but probably some permanent vocal damage from singing the way he did throughout the years,funny enough in the 93 warmup tapes he sounds really vocally healthy and capable which makes you wonder why hed always push for the gritty unsustainable sound...but thats a discussion for another topic i guess
 
Themidwestcowboy said:
I prefer the 87 leg over the 88/89 leg of the bad tour :)
Click to expand...

87 is definitely better in terms of live vocals. Every single song was sung live and Michael's vocals were a lot stronger. I just wish more songs from the Bad album was performed. Just imagine Another Part Of Me with 87 live vocals.
 
analogue said:
87 is definitely better in terms of live vocals. Every single song was sung live and Michael's vocals were a lot stronger. I just wish more songs from the Bad album was performed. Just imagine Another Part Of Me with 87 live vocals.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, the 88 leg definitely had the better set list and i really wish he would have sung more bad songs on the first leg but I just think the first leg has the best combination of live vocals and dancing when it comes to MJ. I find myself watching the 87 shows over and over again
 
analogue said:
87 is definitely better in terms of live vocals. Every single song was sung live and Michael's vocals were a lot stronger. I just wish more songs from the Bad album was performed. Just imagine Another Part Of Me with 87 live vocals.
Click to expand...

Yeah.. The bad tour started right after the album release and he doesn't have time to put and rehearse new songs for the first leg sadly :'(
 
Not sure if I shared this one yet, but I find almost every Rod Temperton song to be ridiculously overrated. “Thriller” is excellent, but that’s really it. The other four range from decent to mediocre, especially “Rock with You” (which I personally rank as MJ’s most overhyped song). No disrespect to Rod, but his songs are one of many reasons why Off the Wall is the only MJ album that I just have no interest in.
 
Billie Jean is a song I almost never listen toÂ…

You are not alone is the worst MJ song.

Smooth Criminal is overrated

Moonwalker is not a good movie

I like „breaking news“ as a song. (Not MJ Song)

J5 Medley could have been removed/updated after the bad tour.

Give In To Me is the most boring composition (3 chords) i ever heard from an MJ songÂ…

Johannesburg 1997 is the worst Michael Jackson show I ever seen.

The Who is it short film is the worst he ever done.

(To be continued)
 
Who is it is so overrated. I mean, it's a good song but that's about it. Far from his best or even one of his best
 
As much as I love Dangerous I feel like some of the songs on that album dragged on too long. In The Closet and Can't Let Her Get Away in particular are songs I feel could have been trimmed down by a minute or two.
 
Michaels Lover said:
Who is it is so overrated. I mean, it's a good song but that's about it. Far from his best or even one of his best
Click to expand...

Apologies for the double post but damn this one got me haha. I mean we all have our own opinions but Who Is It man, I mean it's WHO IS IT!!
Each to their own brother
 
I think this one will be controversia but based on MJ's self penned tracks that he wrote for his studio albums I don't think he could write something as musically rich as Lady In My Life, Man In The Mirror or Rock With You that has complex rhythms with multiple chord changes etc. I feel like MJ's self penned songs were very groove orientated like James Brown's music and That's why we got songs with just three chords or even two chords at a time.
 
Themidwestcowboy said:
I think this one will be controversia but based on MJ's self penned tracks that he wrote for his studio albums I don't think he could write something as musically rich as Lady In My Life, Man In The Mirror or Rock With You that has complex rhythms with multiple chord changes etc. I feel like MJ's self penned songs were very groove orientated like James Brown's music and That's why we got songs with just three chords or even two chords at a time.
Click to expand...

There are songs that he wrote by himself which are very musically complex. Childhood has 35 different chords...that's a lot! Heal the World has 18, Speechless has 13 and even though this isn't a fan favourite - The Lost Children has 17 different chords.

Of course, a lot of his 'poppier' songs tend to be more simple (because pop songs are usually simple) but even those are extremely well written and have rhythmical elements that make them very interesting sonically. In my opinion, his songwriting got better with time and peaked around the early 90s.
 
Not about his music, but I'm not the biggest fan of the long build up to Billie Jean with the suitcase on the HIStory Tour. I preferred it on the previous tours where the song would just start.
 
dethorro said:
There are songs that he wrote by himself which are very musically complex. Childhood has 35 different chords...that's a lot! Heal the World has 18, Speechless has 13 and even though this isn't a fan favourite - The Lost Children has 17 different chords.

Of course, a lot of his 'poppier' songs tend to be more simple (because pop songs are usually simple) but even
those are extremely well written and have rhythmical elements that make them very interesting sonically. In my opinion, his songwriting got better with time and peaked around the early 90s.
Click to expand...

These are very beautiful indeed and I agree that

I know MJ wrote all of the lyrics for Childhood but that song was a
collaboration with David Foster as David was credited as co-producer, co arranger etc and if you are familiar to DavidÂ’s work youÂ’ll understand where the Disney elements come from.

Speechless and heal the world are not musically complex imo. They use very standard chord progressions etc. ThatÂ’s no knock on them, I love the songs and I love how dense and tightly produced MJÂ’s songs are but for example a pop song that I would describe as musically complex would be True by Spandau Ballet or Kiss From A Rose by Seal and looking at a song from MJÂ’s own discography like Lady in my life, man in the mirror, Keep The Faith, Rock With You etc. thatÂ’s a different kind of songwriting than MJ did imo.
 
Last edited:
dethorro said:
There are songs that he wrote by himself which are very musically complex. Childhood has 35 different chords...that's a lot! Heal the World has 18, Speechless has 13 and even though this isn't a fan favourite - The Lost Children has 17 different chords.
Click to expand...

These four Michael Jackson songs are not really musically complex songs, because the large number of different chords alone does not make a song musically complex.

A musically complex song requires also some other elements, such as dynamics, rhythm, tempo, melody, instrumentation, pairings of instruments, production, etc.

Even the layering of the vocals is also one of these elements (when the song has vocals).

For example, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen (1975) is a song that fits the criterion of a musically complex song.
 
analogue said:
Not about his music, but I'm not the biggest fan of the long build up to Billie Jean with the suitcase on the HIStory Tour. I preferred it on the previous tours where the song would just start.
Click to expand...

Yep 100% agree mate
I remember my mum told me about going to Wembley 92, she said one of the best moments of the show was seeing Mike way up on the top stage and then him cueing Billie Jean and how thunderous it sounded because there was no build up, it came out of nowhere.
I think the whole suitcase routine worked better in 2001
 
JAM is a terrible song and I knew as soon as I heard it the NBA would use it for events and that was really what is was made for.
Little Susie is disturbing and shouldn't have been included on any album ever.
Macaulay Culkin and Corey Feldman were probably huge brats when they were kids and it's crazy why MJ would have hung out with those little snots.
Speed Demon is a bad song.
The video for Liberian Girl is a narcissistic ridiculous endeavor.
 
Themidwestcowboy said:
All you need is "3 chords and the truth" haha. Give Into Me has more than three chords tho
Click to expand...

I didn’t count the few other chords from the Bridge („you and your friend were laughing…“) and the pre-chorus cause it’s just a few seconds long.

Basically itÂ’s a 3 chord Song and boring to me.
 
kai said:
I didn’t count the few other chords from the Bridge („you and your friend were laughing…“) and the pre-chorus cause it’s just a few seconds long.

Basically itÂ’s a 3 chord Song and boring to me.
Click to expand...
Plus, as much as I've spent my life worshipping Michael, it's clearly "heavily inspired" by this song from 7 years before 🤣

 
Last edited:
AdamBa17 said:
it's clearly "heavily inspired" by this song from 7 years before 🤣
Click to expand...
Igor Stravinsky: "A good composer does not imitate; he steals".

Jim Jarmusch: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, streets, signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal, from that which speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent."

Paul McCartney: "We pinch as much from other people as they pinch from us."
[video=youtube;nJPERZDfyWc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc[/video]
 
DuranDuran said:
Igor Stravinsky: "A good composer does not imitate; he steals".

Jim Jarmusch: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, streets, signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal, from that which speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent."

Paul McCartney: "We pinch as much from other people as they pinch from us."
[video=youtube;nJPERZDfyWc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc[/video]
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, I'm not knocking it. Michael wrote many songs which borrowed nothing and is clearly an incredible writer. But he definitely borrowed on this occasion, which is fine: every artist has done it. It's even got the riff and vocal melody of this song, which is odd as it's out of what I would have thought Michael's musical interests are lol:

 
I think after Quincy Mike was guilty of lacking quality control perhaps. Dangerous is perfect but as much as I love HIStory it's a long record and Invincible suffers from that too.
I'm not giving Quincy credit of picking the songs for the albums but in terms of being able to say to Michael "listen Mike 15/16 is a long record and some of these songs could be trimmed if not cut" similar to what he said to Mike about 33 songs appearing on Bad
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
I think after Quincy Mike was guilty of lacking quality control perhaps. Dangerous is perfect but as much as I love HIStory it's a long record and Invincible suffers from that too.
I'm not giving Quincy credit of picking the songs for the albums but in terms of being able to say to Michael "listen Mike 15/16 is a long record and some of these songs could be trimmed if not cut" similar to what he said to Mike about 33 songs appearing on Bad
Click to expand...

I don´t think so...

Dangerous is 77:03
History is even 6 mins shorter... 71:30
invincible is about 20 seconds shorter than dangerous... 76:48

So basically you praise Dangerous as perfect, and Invincible and history as too long albums, when Dangerous is the longest one :D Doesn´t make much sense
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top