Marrk said:

I would tag "Dirty Diana" probably as the alltime low of his entire career. I absoultely hate this piece of shit

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[Edited 1/12/06 1:37am]

The best songs on 'Bad' are...

"Man In The Mirror"---a very powerful message song

"Another Part Of Me"---the funkiest jam on the album.Too bad there weren't more songs like this on the album.

"Liberian Girl"---impressive...very impressive!!


The other songs are nothing to write home about

Yeah, it's easily the weakest of his 6 Epic studio albums.

Another Part Of Me
I Just Can't Stop Loving You
Man In The Mirror
Smooth Criminal

Love those, the rest is just okay.

FunkyBrotha said:

Absolutely. I'm tired of seeing that album getting trashed (mostly by his younger fans who need videos to fully enjoy a song), it contains some of his best ever work.

Ellie and co will likely appreciate it much more as they grow up.

Cloudbuster said:

Speed Demon
Liberian Girl
Leave Me Alone

Cheek said:

Speed Demon & Liberian Girl are okay at best. Leave Me Alone is one of his very worst. It needs filing next to Girlfriend, The Lost Children and Childhood.

Cloudbuster said:

Those tracks suck ass!

Cheek said:

Which is why Leave Me Alone belongs with them.

Cloudbuster said:

As I thought!

Cheek said:

You like it, huh? No matter, you'll get over it.

Cloudbuster said:

Just like you'll get over Kate!

Cloudbuster said:

I'm calling the Bush Police!

Dancelot said:

I agree...I would also add that MJ finally succeeded in building on his "Beat It" rock-n-roll ambitions with the track "Give In To Me." Like "Beat It," that song comes off as a sincere and natural attempt to really rock out...

Bad is a great piece of work. "Another Part of me" + "Speed Demon" + "Bad" are absolutely brilliant songs. the only songs i don't like are "Just Good friends' + "Leave me alone"

Cloudbuster said:

Haha. The thing is with Invincible is that I actually agree with you on the individual songs. Love 'em. But his voice is so annoying on half of it, and it's padded out with such utter shit like You Are My Life, Privacy and Cry, it just doesn't work as an album.

Cloudbuster said:

"Leave Me Alone" is my very favorite MJ song!

Moonbeam said:

Ellie said:

Yeah, but in terms of genuinely good songs it has as many as his other albums, imo.

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[Edited 1/12/06 10:30am]

Moonbeam said:

Cloudbuster said:

I like Invincible, as I mentioned before on this site if 2000 watts was never on there I would probably love it. That song is just annoying. But with songs like Break of Dawn, Butterflies and Heaven Can Wait, Invincible had the potential to be a great album. I hate that it gets slammed so much as well.

none of his stuff can touch off the wall...as far as cohesive full listening experience albums.

Bad is a fantastic album. Start to finish.

Cloudbuster said:

Well, it's one of the most commercially inclined records ever. Every song on that album is like a Steven Spielberg movie, sans perhaps "Just Good Friends" which is also what most folks think the weakest track on the record. Some of it is impressive, some way too much calculated/naive for me personally, and most of it dated - but not dated like the vast majority of music released during the same era.

It's either very valid to call "Bad" a five-star album or a one-star album, or anything in between. Depending on the views how people deal with commerciality in general. You can't deny the catchiness of the songs however.

dirtyman2005 said:

So basically you admit that MJ's career was going downhill after his first solo album.

Like it or not, Bad is a classic album, as well known in pop music as pretty much anything else you could name. I grew up with this album, so i just cant make a judgement on it. With a critical ear i hear the mess that is Dirty Diana, the bland Liberian Girl, and the way the first two trakcs are just plain annoying. Yet the young pop fan in me cant resist the likes of Smooth Criminal, Man In The Mirror and Another Part Of Me.

Bad is his attempt to out-do himself, blatantly so, but blatant in its failure to do so too. MJ has never recovered from the success of Thriller, because it was so ridiculous the only way could ever have been down, and he cant accept that. He constantly tries to create a pop album that covers every genre and matches what he's done in the past, when all we want is plain honesty in his music.

As for invincible, sure it has a few tracks that are brilliant, im sure somewhere in the hundereds of songs recorded, there is a great album there, but in 5 years and after $50million + spent, you'd expect some return on your money and time, and thats where i feel invincible disappoints.

prettymansson said:

I only dig a handfull of tracks on Bad. Liberian Girl is a great cut, Leave Me Alone is cool, and I love Speed Demon. I can do without the rest.

There were afew tracks on the Bad album that I liked (Liberian Girl, Man In The Mirror, The Way You Make Me Feel, Smooth Criminal) but looking back at it now, nearly all of the tracks sound dated. That's not a full knock on MJ; most of the pop, R&B, dance and even some rock tracks done in the late 1980's were too synth heavy. The primary reason for new wave coming to an end wasn't so much that the music became outmoded like acid rock or disco, but was because much of the musical production and arrangement which separated new wave from other music at the time became mainstream. When I hear a lot of music from that time period, much of it is soulless and mechanical. That goes for a lot of the hair metal acts as well as synth pop.

For me, it's not that "Bad" is synth-heavy, it's that it's simply overproduced. Those sterile, banging drum loops on every song sound completely horrid , as do the ones on all of his albums since.