Michael Jackson - A Thriller with No Happy Ending

On Jacko's Death – Autopsy of an Icon

by Simone Dotto

Stitching together platitudes and stock phrases in so-called obituary pieces is an unpleasant chore we're happy to leave to newspaper filler columns, fanzines and the like. And yet, even for those who never had pop's top-chart fare as their exact "cup of tea", it's worth spending a couple of lines on the death of someone like Michael Jackson - if only to understand who, or rather "what", the American singer represented for so many years within the entire international pop landscape. It must be admitted that in cases like this, escaping the naive dichotomies that cast private and public life as now inversely proportional (shadows in one, light in the other), now inseparably bound together (the eternal Peter Pan with the mutilated childhood...), is actually no easy task. Faced with a (s)subject like ours, even widely used stock phrases ("he changed the face of music", "an eclectic artist who constantly reinvents himself", "the man's light and shade") sound embarrassing. Perhaps because Jackson himself was, in a way, "proverbial": everything surrounding his figure was geared toward building him into a symbol, almost a universal prototype of the very concept of the popstar. This is also why understanding what Michael Jackson truly represented for his era (our era) means above all investigating what it could mean to be an icon within the "supersized" starsystem of the 1980s.

The story begins, as is well known, at the age of just six among the ranks of the Jackson Five, under the thumb of patriarch Joseph who, a failed musician himself, drove his sons toward success with the crack of his belt - or at least so Michael himself would claim years later in his autobiography "Moonwalk", spawning a whole range of Dickensian hagiographies (along with some cheap psychoanalysis once the first child-abuse accusations surfaced). What is certain is that from the tenderest age Jackson had personally experienced the less pleasant side of that sense of "rise and redemption" pervading much of the black music world: Motown, for its part, was the first label to openly state its goal of "selling Black music to white listeners". Michael stayed with Berry Gordy's company for all the Jackson 5 records, while also launching a parallel solo career that would establish his name as a soul and disco performer.

But worldwide success arrived only in 1979 with his Epic contract and his collaboration with producer Quincy Jones: despite all the hits already racked up by then, it was "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" that was the first single to catapult him beyond the confines of the R&B charts and claim the top spot on the pop charts. A dancefloor juggernaut whose chorus, taken out of the lyrics' erotically-charged context, sums up its author's road to success and would serve as the ideal theme for that decade "of winners" still to come.

Keep On With The Force Don’t Stop

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough (...)

(from "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough", 1979)

By that time, pop had already lost the innocence of its first great triumphs and was fully aware of the kind of collective mania a microphone-wielding star could unleash: but to replicate the worldwide effect of a Beatlemania or an Elvismania, the new -mania had to outdo in scale everything that came before it, swallowing it all up in the process. From both a media and a musical standpoint, the entire Jackson operation seems aimed at precisely this: building the definitive pop machine, the idol who would embody every conceivable alternative, the All-in-One of pop. Consider that his first record for Epic, Off The Wall, placed his own compositions alongside songs written by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder - which at the time was tantamount to saying it offered the very best that Anglophone popular music, both Black and white, had to give. Moreover, like its hit-making successor Thriller, the album benefited from the contribution of Quincy Jones, already the man behind the astonishing "Back On The Block", a kind of crash course in the history of Black music. The sound of Thriller, too, would be a sumptuous collage of every Black genre that had already found success with a white audience: from funk to soul, from R&B to disco, right down to generous previews of the hip-hop that would later sample more than a few of Jacko's hits.

The singer himself (visually enshrined by the "Thriller" video) presented himself live as a summa of every stereotype of the Black performer: yelps, calculated moves, dance steps, a sensual charge radiating from both body and voice. To put it simply, King Jackson did for pop what King Elvis had done for rock'n'roll: ferrying to a worldwide audience an artistic wealth that until then had been the exclusive preserve of African Americans, claiming most of the credit for himself but (in his own case) also personally bearing the consequences of that crossover. The progressive stages of "bleaching" that saw Jackson's skin grow paler video after video become an awkward, overblown metaphor for the anxiety over acceptance and the wannabeism that runs through certain strands of Black music, in sharp contrast with the uncompromising stance of Black pride: whatever the anti-racists might say, when it came to climbing the ladder of social success, it still mattered - and how! - whether you were black or white...

Well They Say The Sky’s the Limit

(from "Bad", 1987)

As the new decade dawned, Jacko renewed his contract with Epic, but did without Dr. Jones's services, enlisting Teddy Riley instead as the man behind the sound of Dangerous (1991). As had become routine, the album stormed the charts, propelled by the usual run of killer singles: but on January 12, 1992, after two months of unchallenged dominance, Dangerous was knocked off the top of the Billboard chart by Nevermind, by the then-unknown Nirvana. This was no mere generational changing of the guard: the fact that it was a punk-rock-inspired trio, freshly signed to Geffen (and, until the day before yesterday, relegated to playing Seattle gyms), that toppled the King of Pop from the top of the charts was a clear sign of the times. The following year, at the MTV Video Awards (Michael's honorary home ever since "Thriller"), Nirvana themselves sent a Michael Jackson impersonator up to collect the Best Alternative Video award, chased by an equally fake policeman.

The skit of the King of Pop coming back to reclaim what was "stolen" from him was really meant by Cobain and co. to poke fun at the whole "Nevermind affair" and to distance themselves from the ceremony's big circus - but it is also telling as a way of understanding how the Jackson mythology was being received by the new generation. A scarecrow, a grotesque mask, a cumbersome myth whose time had by then passed. For a while, critics (and apparently a certain segment of the public too) had been demanding "authenticity", and were finally about to get it: first from Seattle rock, and later from pop too, with the arrival of the new Brit-generation.

It may be a coincidence, but it's from this point on that Jacko's star began a slow but steady decline: unreleased material was spread thin across two anthology and remix releases, while the performer coasted along on a handful of lavish (and always packed) live shows. What endured above all was the persona, kept alive through scandal and blatantly staged, ostensibly private coups de theatre: the King of Pop, who had already in the past come to own a sizeable share of the royalties from the Beatles and the young Bob Dylan, in 1994 also became Elvis's son-in-law, marrying his daughter Lisa Marie Presley. A mere publicity stunt, according to those in the know, and without doubt one more notch on that "expansionist" trajectory we've already traced.

If we add to this the mad Neverland project and the very last reports placing him in training with personal trainer Lou Ferrigno (aka the original Incredible Hulk), we get a rough sense of just how far Jackson's celebrity status had carried him into a disproportionate dimension, bordering on the ridiculous.

The musician's last gasp dates back nine years, when, at the weary turn of another decade, Sony released a new album of unreleased material: given his soon-to-expire contract and his by-then-tarnished fame, the record was barely promoted and sales fell short of expectations compared to Jacko's once-lethal average. Both fitting and ironic was the title chosen to christen it: Invincible.

Post Mortem

As we write, the fallout from the news continues to unfold: a second autopsy, a suspicious injection to the heart, the quantity of drugs ingested shortly before his death. These questions about the circumstances of Jackson's death feel less like genuine inquiries and more like an unconscious hope of uncovering a murder, an overdose, or some twist dramatic enough to properly close out a legendary existence. It's already hard enough to watch an idol fade away outside the spotlight, far from the peak of his success: to accept that it was a banal midlife heart attack that took his life would mean admitting that, in the end, behind the grandeur of the myth there was nothing more than a man.

***

RISE AND FALL OF THE MOONWALKER

by Claudio Lancia

Michael Jackson, the singer who, more than anyone else, managed to break down the barriers around black music and turn it into a mass phenomenon not just among Black audiences, was born in Gary, Indiana, on August 29, 1958.

After his first local appearances, guided by his parents Joseph and Katherine, he was already a star at just eleven years old as the lead voice of the Jackson Five, the boy band he formed with his brothers Jackie, Jermaine, Tito and Marlon.

In the late '60s the Jackson Five were signed by Motown, the world's most important soul label, and thanks to the push of such a formidable team they rapidly became hugely famous across the United States.

Their cheerful, carefree rhythm & blues took them to the top of the American charts time and again with a string of singles that include at least "I Want You Back", "ABC" (Grammy for Best Pop Song in 1971), "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There".

From 1971 onward, alongside his work with his brothers, Michael launched the solo career that would earn him global stardom.

In 1975, following the move to Epic and the subsequent arrival of Randy in place of Jermaine (who stayed with Motown as a solo artist), the Jackson Five changed their name to the Jacksons, continuing to churn out increasingly "grown-up" and hugely successful records, among them Destiny (1978), driven by the hit single "Shake Your Body". Also in 1978, Michael made his acting debut in the film "The Wiz" alongside Diana Ross, with whom he recorded the duet "You Can't Win".

But Michael Jackson only began to be regarded as a global star in 1979, when his fate crossed paths with that of producer Quincy Jones (whom he'd met on the set of "The Wiz", where Jones served as musical director), forging a partnership as fruitful as few others in pop history.

The single "Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough" (Grammy for Best Male R&B Performance) became an inescapable hit in late summer 1979 and made Off The Wall Michael's first true post-adolescent solo record.

Off The Wall features top-tier musicians (Steve Porcaro, Greg Philinganes, George Duke, Paulinho Da Costa, to name just a few) and contains ten songs (three written personally by Jackson), almost all of them dancefloor-ready (except the hushed "She's Out Of My Life") and dressed in lavish arrangements, often punctuated by gorgeous horns.

The album fits with surgical precision into the black-disco movement, which had become a mass phenomenon a couple of years earlier thanks to the explosion triggered by the film and soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever". So songs like the title track and the closing "Burn The Disco Out" stand out as dancefloor-fillers of the highest class, while "Rock With You", a phenomenal slow-tempo R&B dance number, became the second-most successful single pulled from the album.

One song apiece was gifted by Paul McCartney (the forgettable "Girlfriend") and Stevie Wonder ("I Can't Help It"), two figures we'll encounter again later in the story.

This successful fusion of black and disco music would reach perfection four years later with Jackson's masterpiece, Thriller, released in November 1982. Before starting the sessions for his new solo record, in 1980 Michael found time to take part in yet another Jacksons album, Triumph, a powerful, dance-oriented effort driven by the smash hit "Can You Feel It?".

Thriller, destined to become the best-selling album of all time (according to current statistics it has now surpassed one hundred million copies sold worldwide), once again sees Quincy Jones producing a string of songs that would take the world by storm, reaching even its most remote corners.

The knockout blow is "Billie Jean", the first single released, which benefited from the push of the newly launched MTV. Jackson would be the first black artist to have a video played on the world's most famous music channel, as well as one of the first artists to fully exploit the power of the music video, becoming the first truly global multimedia star. For two years, the singles pulled from Thriller dominated everywhere, the album sat for months at the top of charts around the world, and Jackson took home no fewer than eight Grammy Awards, reaching a level of fame that rising stars Madonna and Prince would only come close to in the years immediately following.

The album alternates relentlessly grooving dance tracks ("Billie Jean"), standout duets ("The Girl Is Mine" with sir Paul McCartney), funk-rock crossovers light years ahead of their time ("Beat It", featuring Eddie Van Halen on guitar, the first in a series of collaborations with great guitarists), more subdued moments ("Human Nature", "The Lady In My Life"), bursts of pure dancefloor frenzy rooted in Afro sounds ("Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"), and a couple of classy filler tracks ("Baby Be Mine", "P.Y.T."). And then there's the title track, essentially the soundtrack to a cinematic set piece complete with instrumental effects, slamming doors, nocturnal howls and the unsettling voice of guest star Vincent Price; the song would be immortalized by a landmark music video, directed by John Landis: a genuine 13-minute horror short film.

Besides Quincy Jones, crucial to the makeup of Thriller was the contribution of arranger and composer Rod Temperton (already present on Off The Wall), co-responsible for the album's formal perfection, the interracial record par excellence, in which it's impossible to tell where black ends and white begins.

After the monstrous success of Thriller, Michael Jackson rises to become the undisputed "King of Pop", a Midas figure able to turn everything he touches into gold. His appearances on other people's records guaranteed instant success: just think of the duet "Tell Me I'm Not Dreamin'" on brother Jermaine's solo album, or his cameo on "Somebody's Watching Me", the short-lived hit by Rockwell (son of the Motown boss), through to the breezy pop single "Say Say Say" alongside Paul McCartney, which became a worldwide hit.

The brothers want to strike while the iron is hot, and so Victory, a mediocre new album credited to The Jacksons, achieves staggering sales thanks to Michael's presence and the heavily rotated MTV single "Torture".

Meanwhile, the two sisters also ride the wave, drawing the public's attention with their own record releases; of the two, La Toya would prove to be just a flash in the pan, while Janet would become a mainstream pop star.

Michael also establishes himself as a highly acclaimed dancer, even inventing new dance moves, like the now-legendary Moonwalk, which in 1988 would also give its name ("Moonwalker") to a film he starred in.

In the era of Live Aid and rock's humanitarian commitment, Jackson contributes to the writing and performance of "We Are The World" (1985), composed to raise funds to help children in Africa: a parade of American music stars – from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen, from Stevie Wonder to Ray Charles – that would top the charts all over the world.

Perhaps this is where the King of Pop's somewhat peculiar interest in children begins, which over time would lead him to show "excessive attention" toward minors and to be accused of pedophilia.

The eccentricities of this eternal Peter Pan figure also begin here. Well-informed sources speak of a hyperbaric chamber installed at his royal residence (Neverland) to fight aging and ward off illness, and a lightening of his skin tone starts to become noticeable. Over the years Jackson would claim to suffer from a rare form of vitiligo, but skeptics would be quick to bet on cosmetic surgery as the real reason behind the permanent whitening of his skin, a theory backed up by his constant facelifts and touch-ups to certain facial features. Thus arises the absurd paradox of the most successful black artist of all time willing to do anything to satisfy his barely concealed desire: to become white.

Jackson also ventures into the business world, acquiring part of the publishing rights to the Beatles' catalogue, a move that would strain his relationship with Paul McCartney, and signing a colossal contract with Pepsi, for whom he becomes a spokesperson.

Fans would have to wait a full five years to get their hands on the follow-up to Thriller, but Bad (released at the end of August 1987), while still achieving thoroughly respectable sales, would land at a noticeably lower level of quality than its predecessor. Following up the best-selling album of all time would have intimidated anyone, but Jackson evidently felt the pressure more than most, and the final result falls short of expectations.

Bad is a concentrate of funk-pop streaked with soul undertones (especially in the record's softer tracks, which also happen to be its best: "I Just Can't Stop Lovin' You", a duet with Siedah Garrett, "Liberian Girl" and "Man In The Mirror", where Michael attempts a "humanitarian" approach, questioning the state of the planet) and rock (with solos from Steve Stevens, then Billy Idol's guitarist, on "Dirty Diana").

Despite Stevie Wonder's presence on the duet "Just Good Friends", and an army of excellent musicians, Quincy Jones's production this time comes across as more chaotic than usual. "Speed Demon", "Another Part Of Me" and even "Bad" itself (with a lavish video directed by Martin Scorsese that would keep millions of people around the world glued to their TV screens when it first aired) would have been acceptable compositions on a debut album, but certainly not on one by the Midas of pop.

Bad will still become a massive hit, driven also by the other singles "The Way You Make Me Feel" and "Smooth Criminal", for which a video roughly ninety minutes long will be produced.

The next release is Dangerous, put out in 1991.

By now we're in the age of the compact disc, and the track count grows, this time to fourteen, marking the definitive shift from a black music approach to one more devoted to cold, repetitive electronics aimed squarely at the dancefloor. The lyrical content hardly matters, Michael can write about the world's disasters or failed relationships, what counts is being able to dance to it without thinking too hard.

And from that standpoint, it works: the first of the four sides on the vinyl edition plays like a mini DJ set, with the pounding "Jam", "Why You Wanna Trip On Me", "In The Closet" and "She Drives Me Wild" following one another. The problem is that the electronic beds chosen to build the tracks on are so repetitive that it's almost hard to tell one song from another.

And yet Dangerous will go on to become one of the best-selling pop records of the '90s, ranking as the second-biggest seller in Jackson's catalogue, and currently the fifteenth best-selling album in music history, with nearly thirty-five million copies sold. That's thanks to the variety of choices on offer, since across the album's other three sides Jackson manages to please just about everyone: from teenagers smitten with Guns 'n' Roses-style rock ("Who Is It", "Give In To Me", with Slash taking the guitar spotlight), to older fans of reassuring, glossy pop that tears up MTV (the hit singles "Remember The Time" and "Black Or White").

There's no shortage of nods to the sacred ("Keep The Faith"), a couple of ballads, this time a bit too overwrought ("Heal The World", "Will You Be There"), and the effective closing mid-tempo track that gives the whole album its title.

In May 1994 Michael marries Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Beaulieu, but the union will be short-lived and will strike most observers as little more than a marriage of convenience. His boyish looks lead the tabloids to describe him as an asexual "Peter Pan", intimidated by others and by his own shadow. Elsewhere, rumors surface about his supposed homosexuality or bisexuality. But it's other testimonies that will drag his image, and his very life, toward the abyss. Like that of Jordan Chandler, the boy who in 1993 accuses him of abuse: the case will end with a settlement and a $22 million check handed over by Evan Chandler, the boy's father (who, however, will retract everything years later). More accusations of child molestation rain down on Jackson, many of them allegedly committed inside his Neverland estate. It's a descent into hell that will only end in June 2005 with the King of Pop's acquittal by the Santa Maria court, though it will leave plenty of shadows and unanswered questions in its wake.

In 1996 Jackson marries for the second time, to his former nurse Deborah Jeanne Rowe, with whom he will have two children and from whom he will divorce in 1999.

A third child, Michael, will come from artificial insemination with an unknown mother.

By now Jackson is a cover-story figure only for matters tied to gossip, legal troubles, and what the press deems his inability to properly raise his own children, as when he's photographed dangling one of his kids precariously off a balcony.

In 1995 the long-awaited new album arrives. HIStory is a double album, featuring fifteen past hits and fifteen new compositions. Guests include rapper Notorious B.I.G., Boyz II Men and Shaquille O'Neal.

Opening the record is lead single "Scream", a punchy duet with his sister Janet, accompanied by a hyper-technological video packed with elaborate special effects and sharp choreography, which will go down as the most expensive music video ever made.

By now the ingredients are the familiar ones: dance rhythm tracks ("This Time Around", "2Bad"), Afro-inflected touches ("They Don't Care About Us"), vague hip-hop influences ("Money"), and a handful of ballads that aren't always on point (though at least "You Are Not Alone" and "Earth Song" can be counted among his finest slow numbers). Jackson also takes the chance to launch his own personal counterattack against the press: the title of the syncopated "Tabloid Junkie" says it all.

The tracklist also includes two rather controversial covers, the Beatles' "Come Together" and Charlie Chaplin's "Smile".

Ideas, in short, are in short supply, and his talent no longer appears even a distant relative of what it was ten years earlier.

1997 brought the stopgap release Blood On The Dancefloor, an album featuring eight remixed versions of previously released songs plus five new tracks — certainly the lowest and most irrelevant point in Jackson's artistic career.

Fans would have to wait until 2001 for a completely new album, but Invincible turned out to be his weakest work.

The ambition to make a record with a powerful sound collapses under the weight of repetitive songs that are already hollow by their very titles — just consider the opening trio "Invincible", "Heartbreaker" and "Unbreakable", where he once again wanders into hyper-rhythmic territory peppered with hip-hop flourishes, as if Michael wanted to declare his own indestructibility to the world without ever truly sounding convincing.

Once again Jackson seems sharper in the quieter moments, but the only tracks that truly deserve to be remembered are the lead single "You Rock My World" (the only moment that oozes the verve of his better days) and the sweet ballad "Whatever Happens", embellished by the guitar of the evergreen Carlos Santana.

Invincible sells decently of course, since Michael is a name that always manages to grab attention, but the golden years are truly long gone, and the singer would even go on to accuse his own record label of failing to promote the album properly.

During this period "Jacko" alternates between moments when he appears adrift (as in some unflattering photos) and others in which he still looks in good shape, such as in a few television appearances for Mtv.

Meanwhile, in 2003 the greatest hits collection Number Ones becomes a worldwide success, gathering 18 of the Moonwalker's best-known songs, including the previously unreleased "One More Chance".

The following year sees the release of a lavish limited-edition box set titled The Ultimate Collection, comprising four CDs, a DVD and a book, but it's clear this is simply a money-making exercise designed to scrape together some cash.

In 2008 word gets out that Jackson is putting together new material under the guidance of Will.I.Am. of the Black Eyed Peas, one of the most in-demand artists of the new millennium.

Rumours begin to circulate about Jackson's staggering debts (400 million dollars), and work starts on a new world tour to "cash in", with the sensational announcement of fifty dates planned in London. Many wonder whether he'll actually go through with it or whether it's merely a publicity stunt. Tickets sell out instantly, but Michael will in fact never perform those shows.

On 25 June 2009, Michael Jackson dies suddenly of cardiac arrest, possibly caused by a cocktail of drugs (though rumours of suicide and even murder — the latter theory backed by some family members — would persist for a long time). A mysterious end that, as befits stars who die prematurely, would forever fuel speculation. The funeral ceremony-turned-event at the Staples Center in Los Angeles was the most imposing in music history since Elvis Presley, drawing a television audience of nearly a billion people.

2010 brings the inevitable posthumous album, Michael. These are more or less unfinished tracks, completed by various producers (all chosen by him, including the ever-trusted Teddy Riley), some originating from different sessions scattered across his last six years. Listening to it is nonetheless useful for getting a sense of the state Jackson the artist was in during his final years. Now that his name no longer shone as brightly as it once had, he might have done better not to rest on his laurels, rather than letting his style crystallise permanently between two extremes: danceable tracks built on syncopated, panting beats seasoned with beatboxing, yelps and shattering glass, and increasingly languid, saccharine ballads, present in ever greater and excessive numbers. The autobiographical "Breaking News" (yet another tirade against the media), "Hollywood Tonight" and "Monster" (what's the point of collaborating with the hottest name of the moment if you don't cash in on the popularity right away... who cares about a duet with 50 Cent now!?) all belong to the first category, and to make them pale by comparison you don't even need to go back to the days of Bad — the already unremarkable HIStory (of which these seem to be leftovers) is more than sufficient.

On the other side, the slow one, we're forced to endure the childish do-gooderism of "Hold My Hand" (the no-longer-hot name here being Akon, before his Guetta-assisted rehabilitation), the obligatory gospel-tinged ballad "Keep Your Head Up", and what is, to all intents and purposes, his musical testament, a merely decent "Best Of Joy". The exception to the rule (for this particular album, though not for his habits) is the rock track "(I Can't Make It) Another Day": where once he had Eddie Van Halen and later the ever-loyal Slash assisting him on this kind of song, a few years ago it fell to Lenny Kravitz to step into the studio with him to energise his more aggressive side; there's little to add, such an anticlimax speaks for itself. Is it all to be discarded, then? Not quite, since towards the end of the album, like a life raft to cling to, come the two best tracks: a reworking of "Behind The Mask" (Yellow Magic Orchestra), which adds sax and future-disco atmospheres to his well-worn dance formula, and a restrained acoustic ballad, "Much Too Soon"... nothing exceptional, but as if to reinforce the point, these happen to be tracks whose original demos date back to the Thriller sessions, and the gap in melodic quality between these songs and all the others is noticeable.

Four years later, Epic is once again hunting for unreleased material. The timing is perfect. At a time when disco music seems to have come back into fashion in the charts, a revival of one of the genre's most celebrated figures was inevitable. This time Xscape plays it light; just 8 tracks gathered from various periods of his career (mostly from the 90s onward). With Timbaland leading the team of reworkers (also including J-Roc and McClain), the old demos are elegantly "doped up" with a veneer of r'n'b with strong disco overtones, string arrangements and an arsenal of percussion for the more rhythmic numbers. It all sounds very enjoyable indeed, but by now Timbaland's "signature" — that sort of layered, mid-tempo synthetic tribalism — however classy, seems almost unchanged since the days of Aaliyah's third album (a record now a good 13 years old). Perhaps the styling suits the age of some of these tracks, but for the modern listener's ear, is there really anything left to get excited about? Considering, too, that without Jackson in the studio it would have been sacrilege to "distort" the songs in a more interesting way (see Timberlake's recent "Experience"), the result is therefore little more than a simple reupholstering — well executed and respectful, but ultimately decidedly conventional.

There's nothing bad on Xscape, but the faded aggression of tracks like the title track, "Slave To The Rhythm" or "Do You Know Where Your Childern Are" (a title that's woefully misjudged, given the well-known court case) is certainly not enough to compete with the songbook of the past. The greatest curiosity, then, lies in the two oldest tracks. First and foremost the single "Love Never Felt So Good", a delightfully enjoyable piece from the golden period straddling Off The Wall and Thriller, and the graceful, muffled backing vocals of the ballad "Loving You", a leftover from the Bad sessions. But if it's to be a Battle of the Outtakes, then nothing on Xscape can compete with "Streetwalker", a track Jackson himself included on the 2001 reissue of "Bad" – one wonders whether he would have done the same with even one of the tracks presented here.

If nothing else, this time around, in an exercise of unprecedented transparency, the deluxe edition of Xscape presents all 8 tracks exactly as they'd been left in their original form. A perfectionist like Jackson must be turning in his grave at the idea of these "raw" versions being released to the public, but if this is indeed a nostalgia operation, then these are about as close as we can get today to the man himself. An ancient-sounding synth line ("Chicago"), the plain, unhurried gait of "A Place With No Name", or the 7" single played at 33 rpm speed in the intro of "Loving You" don't magically turn these songs into classics, but they do put the protagonist in the spotlight, giving the momentary illusion that he's still among us. And once again it's "Love Never Felt So Good" that rises above the rest, with a voice/piano demo (played by Paul Anka) that, in its simplicity, distills the full art of Jackson as a supreme vocalist: rhythm kept with barely a finger snap and flawless delivery – truly, nothing else was needed.

If anything, what should absolutely have been avoided was turning that very "Love Never Felt So Good" into a duet with Timberlake, because hearing the latter say "lemme see ya move" to someone we know to be in an advanced state of decomposition is rather grotesque.

In the battle between the most die-hard fans for whom "it's all wonderful", and the eternal detractors of the man (mostly clinging to the controversial biographical episodes), Xscape falls more or less in the middle. An album with two faces: a reworked version slathered in a mountain of polish and gloss for the mainstream audience, and a deluxe edition capable of piquing the interest of the most devoted fans. But overall, still nothing truly memorable.

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