MICHAEL JACKSON - Michael

The making of a posthumous album like this always brings mixed feelings and opinions, torn between outrage at such a blatantly commercial operation and the desire to hear some new songs from an artist who left the stage far too soon… as if he were still among us.

Let's judge this collection, then, as if Michael Jackson were still here. Of course that's not entirely fair, since these are, after all, more or less unfinished tracks, completed by various producers (chosen by him nonetheless, including his most trusted collaborator Teddy Riley), some of them drawn from different sessions scattered across the last six years. Still, listening to them is useful to get a sense of where the artist Jackson stood in his final years, what ideas he had, how inspired he was, and where he wanted to take his music — and it's painfully clear that throughout this period Jackson was tired and, once again, stuck, unconcerned with bringing anything new to his sound, anything fresh that might justify the long wait (for that we may have to wait for the release of more recordings made alongside Will I Am!?).

Jackson was never one to chase trends or enjoy wrong-footing people with his albums — he didn't need to, his fame alone was always enough to justify the event-like atmosphere surrounding every new release. But now that his name no longer shone as brightly as it once did, he might have been better off not resting on his laurels, and avoiding letting his style harden permanently into two extremes: dance tracks built on syncopated, panting beats, seasoned with beatboxing, yelps and shattering glass, and ballads that grow ever more languid, saccharine and, above all, far too numerous. The autobiographical "Breaking News" (yet another invective against the media), "Hollywood Tonight" and "Monster" (there's little point collaborating with the hottest name of the moment if you don't cash in on the buzz right away — who cares about a duet with 50 Cent now!?) all belong to the first category, and to make them look pale there's no need to go back to the days of "Bad" — the already mediocre "HIStory" (of which these tracks seem to be leftovers) is more than enough of a benchmark.

On the other side, the slow one, we're forced to sit through the childish feel-good platitudes 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 amounts, in every sense, to his musical last will and testament, a merely passable "Best Of Joy". The exception to the rule (for this album, though not for his usual habits) is the rock track "(I Can't Make It) Another Day": if once it was Eddie Van Halen, and later the ever-loyal Slash, who helped him out on songs like this, a few years ago it fell to Lenny Kravitz to step into the studio with him to energize his more aggressive side; there's little to add — such an anticlimax speaks for itself.

So is it all worth tossing out? Not quite, since towards the end of the album, like a lifeline 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 extraordinary, but as if to drive the point home, these happen to be songs whose original demos date back to the "Thriller" sessions, and the gap in melodic quality between these tracks (shelved at the time though they were) and all the others is decidedly noticeable.

Who knows — had Michael Jackson still been alive, perhaps these tracks would never have seen the light of day, perhaps they would have remained forever unfinished in his archives. One can only hope so; still, this umpteenth lack of fresh ideas — even just one that hinted it could, properly reworked, give rise to something unforgettable — is truly disheartening.

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09/12/2010