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Why was everything out of place/wrong with Invincible?

PurpleThriller said:
So that's why the album is heavily autotuned lol? You can hear the autotune during the entire Privacy song, during the "hereeeeeee" long note from You Rock My World and during some parts from Butterflies. The autotune is not even a decoration in this album,it sounds way too robotic and ridiculous. What was Mike hiding with that heavy use of autotune?The fact that his voice was over?
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Don't give me the "the image is photoshopped" argument.
Every image is digitally processed in one way or another and every song is electronically influenced in one way or another.
You can't complain about vocal manipulation on Invincible and at the same time praise the sounds on Bad. Because those were also artificial and electronically manipulated.
So it's a weak argument and it's avoiding my main point. Michael's voice on Invincible is incredible. If you one day manage to get past your brick wall of "Oh noes, it was manipulated with cemputeers!", you will start to appreciate the way he sings. It's on another level, it's an evolution of what he established with his previous albums.


PurpleThriller said:
The lycris of "Earth Song" and "Little Susie" beat the entirety of Invincible for me.
Plus he barely wrote anything on that album tho(he only wrote Speechless and The Lost Children on his own)
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What do you mean by "wrote"? Wrote the beats, the melody, the lyrics?
Have you listened to demos of his older songs? They had very different lyrics. Thriller used to be Starlight, so please don't act like we must only like music that was 100% written/composed/arranged/played/sung by him.
Lyrics on Invincible are dense, refined, complex,...you can even see it by looking at them. Just look at lyrics for all songs on Dangerous. Individual short sentences repeating through most of the songs. It's perfection, but it's empty when compared to Invincible lyrics.

AlwaysThere said:
It’s music. Music is subjective. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it incorrect or untrue.

I like Invincible for what it is, but it is in no way a masterpiece in my eyes. Now, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, HIStory, and the five-song EP on Blood on the Dance Floor? THOSE are masterpieces.
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Yes but we are all here because we subjectively like the same music. It's just that Michael evolved and changed so much that even inside his own hardcore fanbase you have discrepancies which speaks volumes about Michael's ability to evolve. You have people who only like Off the Wall which to me is ridiculous.


PurpleThriller said:
Maybe because not everybody is a fan of robotic vocals?
Maybe because a Michael Jackson album is expected to have more than 2 songs actually written by Michael Jackson?
Maybe because not everybody is a fan of Michael leaving his signature hiccups behind and not doing them anywhere in the album?
Maybe because Invincible (except for a few songs) barely sounds like the other Michael Jackson records?
Maybe because Michael is for the first time just following trends without adding his touch to it?
Just saying lol
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Again with classic "autotune" and "didn't write himself" arguments. It's like a song can't be awesome if other people beside Michael had some input. I'm guessing by your definition Man in the Mirror is a bad song, right? And You Are Not Alone as well.
The only thing that is important is that Michael had control over final polishing. A great example of this is all the stuff you can hear on Michael and Xscape. Those albums also have songs that were written by Michael but they sound weak and lack his magic. But by your definition, they are masterpieces just because Michael wrote them.
Also, how can you say that Invincible doesn't sound like other MJ records? No MJ record sounds like other MJ records and that's a good thing. He continued to evolve and he embraced new technology. But I know that many people only want more of the same and I'm glad he didn't cave in to that pressure.
Following trends without adding his touch? You obviously never actually took your time to listen to Invincible and consider the era it came out. Just listen to what music was played in 2001, lol. Invincible sounds fresh even by today's standards, I can't believe what I'm reading here.
Just answering lol
 
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Prince Of Pop said:
Too many songs of similar style back to back of each other. There's not a really good flow from 1 song to another like past albums. It's like all the songs were pulled from a fish bowl when their order was selected.
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So by this definition, Dangerous is his worst album, because all songs actually sound the same on there. You can actually scream "JAM" in the middle of Why You Wanna Trip on Me and Dangerous and don't get me started on beats and sound effects (glass breaking).
 
I think Invincible lacked direction and it lacked Michael vocally/musically at his best.
It doesn't feel like a Michael Jackson album

I always wonder what that proposed 1999 album would have sounded like. Probably better suited to MJ age 40 and more RnB
 
SmoothCriminal1995 said:
I always wonder what that proposed 1999 album would have sounded like. Probably better suited to MJ age 40 and more RnB
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It wouldn't have been that much different. Damien Shields posted on his old twitter account some years back and he said that the songs that would've been included were Escape, You Rock My World, Break Of Dawn, Angel, A Place With No Name, etc. I don't remember the tweet much, maybe someone can tweet him about it.
 
SilkySnare said:
Lyrics on Invincible are dense, refined, complex,...you can even see it by looking at them. Just look at lyrics for all songs on Dangerous. Individual short sentences repeating through most of the songs. It's perfection, but it's empty when compared to Invincible lyrics.
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Heartbreaker's chorus: ,,That girl I can't take her
Should have known she was a heartbreaker
That girl I can't take her
Should have seen right through her she's a heartbreaker
That girl I can't take her
Should have seen it coming heartbreaker
That girl I can't take her
Should have seen right thriough her
She's a heartbreaker,,. The phrase ,, That girl i can't take her ,, is repetead 4 times and the word ,, heartbreaker,, is also repetead 4 times. Not to mention most of the sentences are fairly similar. Not as weird ,but similar to Bad's also repetitive chorus.

Privacy's chorus:,,I need my privacy (yeah yeah)
I need my privacy (yeah yeah)
So paparazzi (yeah yeah)
Get away from me (yeah yeah), just get away from me,,. Now tell me this is not repetitive. This is similar to how repetitive Why you wanna trip on me is for that matter. Invincible has some brilliant moments lycris-wise (Threatned,Butterflies) but still,every one of his albums
does.(tho maybe not at Threatened's level). Dangerous has great lycris for Who is it and History has amazing storytelling for Little Susie.
 
SilkySnare said:
So by this definition, Dangerous is his worst album, because all songs actually sound the same on there. You can actually scream "JAM" in the middle of Why You Wanna Trip on Me and Dangerous and don't get me started on beats and sound effects (glass breaking).
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How is Jam so similar to In the Closet for example? And how is Jam so similar to Remember The Time also?
Also does Gone To Soon sound that similar to Will You Be There? Is Will you be there any similar to Who is it or Give into me?
Aside from the guitar,what do Black or White or Give into me have in common? Dangerous was not perfect,but it is way superior than Invincible
 
kreen said:
Invincible is what happens when 3 things go wrong at the same time :
1-An artist known for writing his own songs has writer’s block
2-His team struggles to find A-list material from outside writers
3-The artist, for health- or drug-related reasons, doesn’t manage to elevate the mostly average material
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This. Mike was way past his prime during Invincible,in my opinion.
 
SilkySnare said:
Following trends without adding his touch? You obviously never actually took your time to listen to Invincible and consider the era it came out. Just listen to what music was played in 2001, lol. Invincible sounds fresh even by today's standards, I can't believe what I'm reading here.
Just answering lol
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Oops I did it again or whatever that song's name was by Britney Spears was pretty similar to the material of Invincible in my opinion
 
Mike may had issues with turning 40, as he hated the aging process. The frozen top lip and new nose job didnt look to go as planned so this would have severely dented his confidence, understand too.

I do have to say I love the Invincible album as it was important part of my late teens/early 20s, but in retrospect I personally felt the HIStory album was his peak.
 
Just here to add the songs I like on the album

Heartbreaker, break of dawn, you rock my world, butterflies, you are my life, don’t walk away, speechless and the lost children. Just 8 out of 16. I agree many of the outtakes had more potential.

As for everything surrounding the album, I have no clue about it, it was at a time in my life that I barely had attention for MJ, he was just out of the public for too long.
 
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PurpleThriller said:
This. Mike was way past his prime during Invincible,in my opinion.
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In an odd way, his last album was a return to the kind of solo album he had done when still at Motown: a series of mostly so-so songs from outside writers, some of which didn't particularly suit him and could have been given to any number of other artists, sung in a professional but perfunctory way.
 
SilkySnare said:
So by this definition, Dangerous is his worst album, because all songs actually sound the same on there. You can actually scream "JAM" in the middle of Why You Wanna Trip on Me and Dangerous and don't get me started on beats and sound effects (glass breaking).
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Not even close. Dangerous IMO is his best album. Each song flows well from start to finish. Maybe you could easily replace a couple songs here and there for some of the better outtakes of that era, and maybe cut down some of long intros. Dangerous doesn't sound rushed and thrown together like Invincible does.
 
kreen said:
Invincible is what happens when 3 things go wrong at the same time :
1-An artist known for writing his own songs has writer’s block
2-His team struggles to find A-list material from outside writers
3-The artist, for health- or drug-related reasons, doesn’t manage to elevate the mostly average material
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I wouldn’t say he had writer’s block. He was pumping out some excellent songs at the time: “Hollywood Tonight,” “The Way You Love Me,” “Beautiful Girl,” “People of the World,” so on and so forth. There was material available; he just didn’t choose the best of it for whatever reason.
 
I listened to this last night. It's an interesting mix of opinions on Invincible track by track with a lot of context. Well worth a listen...
 
SmoothGangsta said:
MJ got convinced that Darkchild would be the next teddy riley for him. Didn't really work out as well unfortunately.
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I think he could’ve been; they just chose underwhelming songs. “Unbreakable,” “You Rock My World,” “Threatened,” “Escape” are all phenomenal; even “Heartbreaker” is enjoyable.
 
jmoses said:
I listened to this last night. It's an interesting mix of opinions on Invincible track by track with a lot of context. Well worth a listen...
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Can't give it 3 hrs at the moment, skipped through bits of it. Interesting mix of opinions, some strong negativity that made me wonder if the speaker is Michael fan or hater! IF you have the time and care about Invincible, sounded like a good opinion piece to hear.
 
You can easily pick out the two songs Michael wrote by himself without looking at the credits. Not surprisingly the two are the most original en magical songs on the album ( which doesn’t automatically mean they are the best) but they are vintage Michael.
 
analogue said:
With the exception of some songs the album just didn't ''feel'' like a Michael Jackson album to me. It sounded like a bunch of people trying to imitate a Michael Jackson album.
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That's exactly how I feel mate. Perfectly put

One thing I always miss with Invincible is Mike's lush background vocals. No offence to any people singing background on Invincible, but part of an MJ album is being immersed into that wall of vocals. It's shows how much he poured his heart into it
 
It has been theorized that Michael Jackson (towards the end of those sessions) decided due to certain reasons to sabotage his 'Invincible' album by creating a poor track list.

This theory suggests that the singer kept the truly good songs for himself with a view to releasing these outtakes later via a new studio album but under a different record company (not under Sony Music).

This theory seems to be true if you take some things into account.

For example, in the early '00s, he fell out with Sony Music mainly because he refused to give the masters (of his previous studio albums) to Tommy Mottola, as confirmed by Teddy Riley.

Also, Tommy Mottola announced to Michael Jackson (towards the end of those sessions) that Sony Music this time would not undertake a big promotional campaign for his new studio album, much to the singer's dismay.

So, if Michael Jackson created a very strong track list, then that would monetarily have benefited Sony Music, something that the singer did not want to happen according to this theory.

Also, some of the album's songs that have been described as highlights (like, 'Break Of Dawn', 'Butterflies') are nothing more than generic, formulaic and uninspired RnB mid-tempo tracks.
 
mj_frenzy said:
It has been theorized that Michael Jackson (towards the end of those sessions) decided due to certain reasons to sabotage his 'Invincible' album by creating a poor track list.

This theory suggests that the singer kept the truly good songs for himself with a view to releasing these outtakes later via a new studio album but under a different record company (not under Sony Music).

This theory seems to be true if you take some things into account.

For example, in the early '00s, he fell out with Sony Music mainly because he refused to give the masters (of his previous studio albums) to Tommy Mottola, as confirmed by Teddy Riley.

Also, Tommy Mottola announced to Michael Jackson (towards the end of those sessions) that Sony Music this time would not undertake a big promotional campaign for his new studio album, much to the singer's dismay.

So, if Michael Jackson created a very strong track list, then that would monetarily have benefited Sony Music, something that the singer did not want to happen according to this theory.

Also, some of the album's songs that have been described as highlights (like, 'Break Of Dawn', 'Butterflies') are nothing more than generic, formulaic and uninspired RnB mid-tempo tracks.
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That’s not what happened.

First off, the idea that MJ would self-sabotage his own album seems completely against his perfectionist tendencies. “I’m gonna stick it to Sony by releasing a mediocre album that will only reflect poorly on myself!” Doesn’t really make sense.

Second, per his 1991 contract, Sony already owned the rights to MJ’s masters. The conflict arose when MJ discovered that the rights wouldn’t revert to him until 2009-2010, around 5 to 7 years later than he initially thought.
 
Michael was in industry long enough to know that any sub-par album would hurt his image way more than it would hurt Sony. And it would also jeopardize his 'so called' release of better songs later. So it does not make sense that any self sabotage was involved here.
 
AlwaysThere said:
That’s not what happened.

First off, the idea that MJ would self-sabotage his own album seems completely against his perfectionist tendencies. “I’m gonna stick it to Sony by releasing a mediocre album that will only reflect poorly on myself!” Doesn’t really make sense.

Second, per his 1991 contract, Sony already owned the rights to MJ’s masters. The conflict arose when MJ discovered that the rights wouldn’t revert to him until 2009-2010, around 5 to 7 years later than he initially thought.
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Michael Jackson did not seem to care about his perfectionist tendencies during that period.

Note, for instance, that in 2002 he stated at the Killer Thriller Speech (in London) that he was about to release a box set ('The Ultimate Collection') by just giving Sony Music any two new songs.

Also, here is what Teddy Riley revealed about the masters:

"…Michael had me responsible for so many things. I remember Tommy Mottola cursing me out telling me, 'This will be the end of your career if you don't turn over those masters!’ I had no idea that Michael had told him I had the masters. I called him up and said, 'My God Michael…you put me in trouble with Tommy Mottola. Do you know who Tommy Mottola is? But I ended up helping Michael. I took the masters and I held them for him…" (Teddy Riley, Vibe, 2012)
Hiker said:
Michael was in industry long enough to know that any sub-par album would hurt his image way more than it would hurt Sony. And it would also jeopardize his 'so called' release of better songs later. So it does not make sense that any self sabotage was involved here.
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Michael Jackson did not seem to care about hurting his image during that period, either.

Remember, for example, his erratic behaviour in 2002 on a double-decker bus when he was verbally attacking Sony Music, or even when he was holding up ridiculous posters against that record company and against Tommy Mottola.
 
It hasn't even been confirmed that MJ was referencing TUC during that speech and I don't think he was.
 
mj_frenzy said:
Michael Jackson did not seem to care about his perfectionist tendencies during that period.

Note, for instance, that in 2002 he stated at the Killer Thriller Speech (in London) that he was about to release a box set ('The Ultimate Collection') by just giving Sony Music any two new songs.

Also, here is what Teddy Riley revealed about the masters:

"…Michael had me responsible for so many things. I remember Tommy Mottola cursing me out telling me, 'This will be the end of your career if you don't turn over those masters!’ I had no idea that Michael had told him I had the masters. I called him up and said, 'My God Michael…you put me in trouble with Tommy Mottola. Do you know who Tommy Mottola is? But I ended up helping Michael. I took the masters and I held them for him…" (Teddy Riley, Vibe, 2012)

Michael Jackson did not seem to care about hurting his image during that period, either.

Remember, for example, his erratic behaviour in 2002 on a double-decker bus when he was verbally attacking Sony Music, or even when he was holding up ridiculous posters against that record company and against Tommy Mottola.
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Teddy was referring to the master recordings of his tracks for Invincible. At that point, recording had gone on for nearly four years and Mottola was getting fed up with mounting costs, and he was demanding that producers and engineers turn it all over. The same thing happened during the recording of Dangerous — Teddy was told, “No more delays. Do not record one more song.”

As for his Killer Thriller speech, as SmoothGangsta said, MJ referred to an unnamed compilation album. It sounds a lot more akin to Number Ones than The Ultimate Collection.

MJ’s personal image was already widely damaged due to the events of 1993 onward; I can’t imagine he was too concerned with what the tabloids said, given that they’d twist anything against him. His catalog was another thing entirely. I don’t believe for one second that he’d purposefully release a low quality album to “stick it to Sony,” especially since Invincible was his fastest-selling album worldwide since Dangerous before all promotion was pulled.

Again, you’re pulling things out of thin air and changing the context of quotes to fit a narrative you’ve created. As is tradition.
 
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