What I can say about HIStory is that in one sense I hated it and in another I loved it. I played the whole thing today and Disc 2 doesn't sound too dated at all but some of the tracks just sound downright awful. Disc 1 was a great MJ collection. HIStory was just Michael's way of making a statement of his ego and anger. So, how did you feel about it?

I think there were a few bad choices on disc 2. Like putting an 8 year old recording of Come Together right in the middle of the album. And finishing the album off oddly with Little Susie and Smile. Even though they are solid tracks, it was an odd way to end the album. HIStory would have been the perfect album closer.

Other then that I love it. Scream, They Don't Care About Us, Stranger In Moscow, Earth Song, You Are Not Alone, Money, Tabloid Junkie are all great songs. And you are right about it not sounding dated. Which is surprising considering all the programmed drum tracks.

love half (and i don't mean the GH disc), disinterested in the other half.


this is where the number of "poor, pitiful, famous, rich me" and "i'm the new jesus, here to save all the little babies from the world" songs started to overtake the number of songs about real things.



that is a bad thing.

Love IT!!!

The packaging is very heavy, so it makes an awesome paperweight.

I wonder what songs are on it?

LOVE IT!

"Scream" Is awesome!

They Don'T Care About Us rocks the house... i have the frist pressing before he re-edited the song to change the words

Um..while being his weakest effort, it was still a great album because it was his most personal and angry experimental album.

The anger of Scream, a classic duo of Mike and Janet, with Jimmy & Terry productin (it dont get no better than that!!).
The hollering of "They Dont Care About Us" speaking for the first time about a black perspective.
The haunting and oddly catchy "Money", the epic video of Earth Song.
A great tune crafted by R. kelly for "U R Not Alone"..
but then it gets lost from there.
Tabloid Junkie is a fantastic tune, but it suffers from Michaels 100 mumbles per second lyrical wordsmanship and it didnt help there were no lyrics for it. But when I found out what he did say after all it was mindblowing. I love "they say he's homosexual" and "she's blind and she's bi-sexual". History is weird because it is a typical 'heal the world' tune then it's a rap of Mike claiming violence.
2 Bad is ok, but This Time Around was better done by Biggie instead of Shaq, and shouldve been kept on the "Ghots" film or saved for the Blood On The Dance Floor piece later released the next year.

Overall it was just one angry record, which led it astray from some casual fans. But it still was a strong album.

One of his BEST albums!! real classic - if only ppl would get their heads out of their arses on the anti-jacko stance and actually 'listen'....

Love the ending have to disagree - think it's perfect, little susie / smile (2 of my all-time fav MJ tracks)
[Edited 12/2/04 1:31am]

I love the fact that Michael was still making uptempo funk instead of selling out to midtempo hip hop like the majority of the other artists at the time. The music behind these songs sounded great but the lyrics were not that hot. He was too busy singing about his previous legal battles. Like I have always said though, I can overlook most lyrics as long as the music is good because music is what attracts me to a song.

Most of the slow songs, I could not stand. Some of them sounded a little like classical music. One song even sounded like it had monks in the background which really depressed the hell out me.

Overall, I thought it was a decent album. It was not one of his best, by no means, but it beated the hell out of everyone else's music that year. But once again he had to bring all those damned guest artists on the album. And the children's voices should have NEVER been on the album. That was a COMPLETE turn-off!

It was a nice album.
ANd the fact he wrote and produced most of it on his own is what is really nice.

Can you really deny the hit "Scream" which is where MJ finally says the F-word

They dont really care about us, AWESOME! (where can i find the original version?)

Stranger in Moscow is a werid ballad, and yes it sounds like classical music. But his voice is beautiful in it, even though i have no clue what the song is about

Earth song is beautiful

DS is silly, yet rockin

Come together is blah

You are not alone is nice but it's not his greatest ballad, i mean it went to #1 WTF?

Money is cool but i much prefer the mix on the Blood on the dance floor album

Childhood makes me wanna vomit, especially the video

Tabloid Junkie is good

2Bad is stupid, stupid, stupid

HIStory is the best, it's artsy and the actually history clips in this song is such a neat idea.

Little Susie is haunting, very creative

Smile is meh

Scream
They Don't Care About Us
Stranger In Moscow
This Time Around
Earth Song
D.S.
Money
Come Together
You Are Not Alone
Childhood
Tabloid Junkie
2 Bad
History
Little Susie
Smile

Pretty decent album I would say.

.
[Edited 12/2/04 3:02am]

THAT WOULD BE BOYZ 2 MEN

vainandy said:

I HATE "You are not alone"!!!! (I'm sure some of it had to do with jealousy about the whole Lisa Marie thing but, not entirely) and I didn't like "Childhood" I'm not into crap like that. Otherwise I'd say it was one of his best albums.

A lot of people complained that this album was weak, that the songs didnt make sense together in a compilation. To be honest, i think its his tightest collection of songs. Albums like Thriller, Bad, Dangerous were thematic, for example all the songs on bad were edgy, stylistically similiar and the songs had a BAD "image", dangerous was slick and dark, new jack funky. "HIStory" on the other hand didnt have that 2getherness, but what it did have was emotion and anger and pain, the songs were a musical autobiography, michael said at the time "stranger in moscow" was his most autobiographical song.

Ultimately i think this album flows like the story of a mans life and incorporates everything that is michael jackson today, it is also interesting that the album begins with a loud scream from michael and ends with him laughing.

Cloudbuster said:

Scream
They Don't Care About Us
Stranger In Moscow
This Time Around
Earth Song
D.S.
Money
Come Together
You Are Not Alone
Childhood
Tabloid Junkie
2 Bad
History
Little Susie
Smile

i think i'm slightly less enthusiastic about it. 7.5/10.

Loved it. Like many said it's his most angry and personal which was nice to hear after what he'd been through. Some of the tracks are a bit 'busy' for my tastes but the best thing about HIStory is that it was finally a 2-disc set from MJ (even though most stuff was already had) and it produced of 3 of his best songs ever:
Stranger in Moscow
Earth Song
They Don't Really Care (About Us)

And while I've had enough of the syrupy tunes I can't deny that his voice is amazing on Childhood, Little Susie and Smile.

Nice to have Come Together finally but maybe it should have been on the Bad album.
[Edited 12/2/04 6:35am]

Liked it at the time, but nowadays I only listen to "They Don't Care About Us" (first pressing with original "controversial" lyrics)

CinisterCee said:

Same here
I only listen to They Don't Care About Us and Stranger in Moscow
don't bother withe the rest
those 2 songs where the best constructed songs ive seen MJ create ever
Stranger in Moscow in my opinion
was Mj's Masterpeice
Perfect Lyrics and perfect arrangements
Defines him as a person
weirdness begins to melt away

You know, over the weekend, just as a goof, I popped "HIStory" into my cd player while my wife and I were in the car. She'd only heard a couple of the singles from the album. I love "Stranger In Moscow" so I quickly skipped to that. She totally understood why I liked it. It's got a beautiful melody, and Mike's voice is so gorgeous on it. Then, just to surprise her, I skipped to "Smile". Oh my . She frowned up like I'd just blasted off a White Castle fart. That's one of the corniest, sappiest tunes I've ever heard by anybody. The music is what's really bad about it. Sounds like he picked up an old Casio from the pawn shop down the street and said, "oh yeah, this ballad's gonna be the jelly. Smelly jelly, man".
Some guys I used to sing in a group with used to sit and laugh at "Childhood".
Now I have a song I can laugh at with my wife. Thanks Mike, for bringing us all together.

I love HIStory!
But i'll admit Come Together was out of place, and the way they massacred 2Bad is just . Listen to the stripped down 'mix' on the Ghosts shortfilm and you discover a whole different song.
This time around, Money, D.S. and Childhood don't do much for me, but were still decent, some way or another.
I love everything else (with Scream, TDCAU, Stanger in Moscow, Earth Song and HIStory among my favorite MJ songs ever!).
I especially loved the concept of the album. Modesty my ass! The booklet, the cover, the promo video, the floating statues, the whole comeback after the 1993 case.

"Dedicated to all my children of the world,
the healthy, the sick and the dying...
I love you dearly, and this album could not have
been made without you love and support.
I will always love you,
Love, MJ"

That took some guts

well, there's not much point commenting on the "classics" disk, because that was obviously brilliant.

the new material...well, strangers in moscow is an MJ classic - one of his best ever IMO. scream and they don't care about us are both great. you are not alone is overplayed, but it's a great tune, and the vocals are excellent. The other tracks are so-so, for me. Quite a disappointment for me, personally. Smile is ok - but i was already addicted to and in love with Nat King Cole's version, which this one was never going to beat. But, ignoring NKC's version, MJ does a good job. Wish i could say the same about Come Together - really not feeling that one.

Like i said, on the whole a bit of a disappointment for me, given the outrageous strength of his previous albums.

whoops - forgot Earth Song. The lyrics are pap, of course, but my gosh that's a helluva track. Fantastic, musically.

Scream
They Don't Care About Us
Stranger In Moscow
This Time Around
Earth Song
D.S.
Money
Come Together
You Are Not Alone
Childhood
Tabloid Junkie
2 Bad
History
Little Susie
Smile

The album starts pretty well. Sue me but I upgraded 'This time around' and 'Tom Sneddon' (ups... D.S.) due to recent events to 4-star songs.

When I first heard 'Come Together', I thought it was a sarcastic joke by Mr. Neverland. WTF does an almost ten year old cover version have to do on this disc? After that he lost it completely and went on a disney ride that ends with another awful cover version.

I don't understand the man. Why does he have to do 70 min records?

'Mike, Mike... it's enough, it's enough!' 'This one and this one... and this one... and... huh? 65 min? OK, this one... and this one... and this one...'

JohnDoe

ehuffnsd said:

Me too, I got it for that reason and because its a decent package of all his songs up until that time. Hell I even like You're not Alone despite it being from R. Kelly, it's a great song, sue me if you disagree.

History is one album I can never sit threw as a whole!


I LOVE "2 BAD", FUNKIST TRACK ON THEIR! Lyrics r shit but who cares? The rap by shaq makes me laugh too and the breakdown before the rap is awsome!

I really dig "childhood" these days.....it is so sad and such a pretty tune and well sung! Mike has bals 4 doing this, though it does sound like "goon too soon", but I prefer this!

"ds" sucks and "money" is a track i should hear again as I always skipped that track! If only "on the line" was recored and put on this album instead of "u r not alone"....."on the line" easily (and still does) have the potential to be huge!

"this time around" had a good rap

"history" (the track) is wierd, but good, and not a sappy but still a motivational song.....smoove backing vox by boyz to men too...then the choir come in!

"earth song" has to be played really loud.....I never get round to hearing it, but such an orignal track! It deserves way more props musically, something that Mike never gets


question? Is "History" better then "Invincible"? Thats tough.....

To me this sh*t is classic. One of his better albums. Its his deepest stuff lyrically, and if you disregard or have failed to see how powerfull the production or writing was, (from songs soley by him, and even collaborations), chek the lyrics to songs like money, tabloid junkie, stranger in moscow, this time around, then it syncs in. I love the Notorious B.I.G. collab on this time around. My favourite rapper and artist on the same trak.

His best album.

proves he's a genius.

"Childhood" has grown on me. The lyrics and theme aren't for everybody. But it really is a beautiful composition.

As to whether it is better then Invincible? Without a doubt!

WildStyle said:

I think i disagree. There is too much pap on this album (we're talking about new material, i assume). One song is absolutely, drop-dead fantastic (Strangers), quite a few are excellent to very good, and then there are at least 4 or 5 which are throwaway. Invincible has only two or three awful songs (principally The Lost Children and Cry), many excellent to very good songs and one outstanding song (Butterflies).

That's my take, anyway.