Grave earnings

Releases that follow an artist's passing snapped up, but often lined with a hint of exploitation

By GEMMA TARLACH
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
gtarlach@journalsentinel.com

Dead men tell no tales.
But they sure put out a lot of albums.

The season's new CDs include a cemetery's worth of posthumous high-profile releases - including Aaliyah's heavily anticipated "I Care 4 U," which arrives in stores Dec. 10.

Everyone expired from beloved Beatle George Harrison to posthumously prolific rapper Tupac Shakur has new albums on the shelves. Even grunge gods Nirvana and the pioneering R&B-pop act TLC - both of which lost their most visible members - are rushing recordings into stores just in time for the holidays.

Do posthumous CDs keep creative legacies alive or is it just exploiting both artists and their loyal fans to line the coffers of record labels?

Well, yes and yes.

"There's a lot to be said for how much of the album was completed before the artist died," said Stephen Thomas Erlewine, director of content and pop music for All Music Guide, which runs a sprawling Web site (www.allmusic.com) that reviews albums from the big and small, the living and the dead.

"There's certainly a point with Tupac or Elvis, where it feels like you're trying to get blood from a stone. There was only so much the artist actually finished," Erlewine said, citing two of the most profitable posthumous performers.

"When the catalog grows that much (after death)," Erlewine added, "it starts to taint the whole catalog."

In some cases, posthumous releases arrive in stores a bit on the wings of angels, providing a fitting farewell from the artist.

Harrison's "Brainwashed," largely completed by the ex-Beatle before his death in 2001, is one such example. The album of all-new material was polished a bit by Harrison's son Dhani and longtime friend Jeff Lynne, but is essentially Harrison's work, intended to be heard by fans.

"If someone goes in to make a last album, it could be too overthought," Erlewine said. "But this is a very friendly, very relaxed album. And George, bless him, could be really inconsistent. So it's nice that his final album holds together really well."

'Grave-robbing' from Shakur
The creative worth and authenticity of most releases from deceased artists is less clear-cut, however.

Tupac Shakur released only four albums before a drive-by shooting took his life in 1996 at age 25. Since his death, however, there have been more than a dozen albums, double discs and boxed sets, including "Better Dayz," released Tuesday, plus ghostly "guest appearances" on a number of albums from newer rappers, such as current buzz boy Ja Rule.

"I get the sense individual raps were completed but not tied to specific tracks, so you could create faux duets that have no real context or interaction between the artists," Erlewine said.

"You have Tupac turning up on a Ja Rule album, but we have no idea if Tupac would have wanted to be on a Ja Rule album."

Similarly, some of the rapper's posthumous solo albums are poorly organized, cliche-driven outtakes that do little justice to Shakur's impressive songwriting talents - and which he may never have intended for release.

"It seems to me to be a little bit of grave-robbing," Erlewine said. "He was a singular talent, but it feels weird to hear him on a song that's something he himself never heard."

The legitimacy of the recordings hasn't stopped fans from lining up to purchase Shakur's posthumous releases. In 2001 alone, Shakur sold more than 2.7 million albums - an estimated $7 million for his estate - a feat from beyond the grave that earned him the No. 10 spot on Forbes' Top-Earning Dead Celebrities.

Shakur has a way to go before eclipsing the top-selling dead entertainer - Elvis earned $37 million for his estate just in 2001. But the rapper still enjoys an unshakable fan loyalty.

Jerry Thompson, owner of Flipside Records and Tapes, 3716 W. North Ave., said he had more than 100 pre-orders alone for "Better Dayz."

"There's only one Tupac. If Tupac was alive today, he'd be at No. 1 and a lot of the current rap artists wouldn't sell," Thompson said.

"Tupac sold for me," Thompson added. "I hate that he's dead."

Early death makes legends
An artist's death, however - especially if the artist was young and the death was unexpected - may be the single biggest across-the-board sales booster for an album.

The Notorious B.I.G., Janis Joplin, Jim Croce, Otis Redding, Jeff Buckley and Eva Cassidy are just a handful of the artists whose biggest commercial successes came after death.

In the aftermath of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994 - and the singer's elevation to tortured genius icon - many people forget that there were signs his band had peaked and that its latest album at the time, "In Utero," was failing.

" 'In Utero' was not doing particularly well at the time of Cobain's death. Nirvana was being overshadowed by Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins," Erlewine said.

Like Cobain, Shakur - and, to a lesser extent, cult heroes such as Jeff Buckley and Eva Cassidy - had talent, but their creative skills have become intertwined with, perhaps even absorbed by, the romantic tragedy of their early deaths.

It's a phenomenon Shakespeare and other master dramatists have turned to time and again and, for cynical labels and grieving fans alike, one that translates into sales.

"People become legends with an early death. They're frozen in time," Erlewine said.

Honoring potential
When rising R&B star Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash in August 2001, the outpouring of grief from both the music industry and her millions of fans was intense.

Thousands lined the streets of New York City to watch the 22-year-old singer's funeral entourage, an occasion that might have qualified for the city's largest show of collective grief that year had not the events of Sept. 11 completely overshadowed it days later.

Aaliyah's death gave her eponymous album, released weeks before the plane crash, a bump up the charts. According to Soundscan, "Aaliyah" sold roughly 62,000 copies in the week before her death - and more than 300,000 the week after the plane crash.

In the 15 months since the singer died, interest in her life and music have remained high thanks to high-profile shout-outs on albums and in concerts by peers such as Missy Elliott, Usher and Jay-Z.

A starring role as the titular "Queen of the Damned" earned Aaliyah positive reviews despite a general trashing of the vampire flick.

The name "Aaliyah" even made the Social Security Administration's annual list of the 100 most popular baby names, released in May.

"It's a case of people celebrating the potential rather than the achievement," Erlewine said. "Aaliyah seemed like a superstar in waiting."

Despite all the attention Aaliyah's music has received since her death, however, her label may have waited too long to ready the upcoming "I Care 4 U," which contains a mix of repackaged material and songs recorded before her death but never before released. The title track and first single off the album failed to climb higher than No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and already is in a downward slide.

"Aaliyah's album will suffer not because her label waited too long after her death to put it out, but because it's arriving in a season awash with heavily hyped albums and, for all the outpouring of grief, she was never as popular as, say, TLC," Erlewine said.

"I also don't know how much of the album was finished before her death. It could very well be lots of odds and ends put together, which won't work."

Flipside's Thompson, who focuses his inventory on R&B and rap releases, agrees that despite the initial show of grief for the singer, Aaliyah was not enough of an established star to enjoy an afterlife of commercial success along the lines of Shakur.

"Aaliyah was just starting to be big - she was on her way up. Tupac was already there. So they're not the same," Thompson said, adding, " 'Pac was a genius."

Nirvana and TLC
"Genius" is a tag often applied by critics and fans alike to Cobain.

After public mud-slinging and acrimonious lawsuits, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, the surviving members of the grunge mega-group, and Cobain's widow Courtney Love settled their differences - just in time for a holiday shopping season release of "Nirvana," essentially a single-disc distillation of the band's greatest hits with one previously unreleased track, "You Know You're Right."

Although the newly unearthed track has been getting play at rock stations, fans have not been flocking to buy the album, which, after debuting at No. 3, already has slid from Billboard's Top 10 in just three weeks. It could well be a case of longtime Nirvana fans already owning all of the tracks and nicking an MP3 copy of "You Know You're Right" off the Internet, while younger rock fans give the once-huge band a shrug and opt instead for newer grunge sound-alikes.

If Nirvana fans see the release of "Nirvana" as a thinly-veiled marketing gimmick to tie-in with Cobain's recently published "Journals," TLC fans and others familiar with the multiplatinum urban pop trio may be scratching their heads over the tone of "3D."

Released some seven months after the death of TLC's most visible - and arguably most talented - member, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, "3D" made a respectable debut at No. 6 on Billboard's Top 200 in late November. But sales for the disc in its first week were less than half of the numbers posted for the group's previous album, "Fanmail," released in 1999. The three years between "Fanmail" and Lopes dying in an SUV crash in Honduras were marked by public acrimony between Lopes and her band mates, canceled tours, interview walk-outs, financial problems and little love.

To promote "3D," however, surviving TLC members Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas have been posing in nothing-short-of-creepy outfits covered with images of Lopes. The liner notes of "3D" are loaded with sentimental celebrations of their love for "little sister" Lopes, who once very publicly mocked their musical abilities.

"Who knows how somebody grieves? Maybe they were overcome with guilt," Erlewine said of the rosy sendoff for Left Eye.

"It's possible they're sincere. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt."

As to who benefits from posthumous releases, the only clear victor is the labels. While some releases from dead artists are works of integrity and creative achievement that are indeed worthy additions to fans' CD collections, others really are just a shill.

Retailers like Thompson say, in the end, the fans are the ones who have to decide if the departed are really worth parting with their cash.

"The labels benefit, but I don't think the fans get taken," Thompson said. "You know, you don't have to buy it if you don't want to."

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[This message was edited Sat Nov 30 12:44:03 PST 2002 by lovemachine]

I wonder what Mani will do when Prince dies with all his vaulted material?

"Genius" <---a word thrown around too readily and easily, to the point that it doesn't hold the weight it once did.

I've noticed some geniuses weren't publicly heralded as such during their lifetimes - although some were world-beating successes when it came to their careers.

If the estates (or more specifically the surviving immediate family members) have a say in how a deceased recording artist's unreleased music is eventually sold, or NOT sold as may be the case (is there a case?), more power to them. I'd rather see Tupac's mother having the final decisions about her son's unreleased work, I'd rather see Al (RIP) and Janie Hendrix having the final decisions about Jimi's unreleased work, I'd rather see George Harrison's estate have the final say in what happens to his unreleased work, and on and on.

Because of contractual provisions in some cases the surviving family members' opinions don't count AT ALL, and it's left up to the record companies. I may not always agree with what the family of the deceased is doing with that work, but it should be their right, if you ask me. Record companies have always, and will always make more money than ANYONE involved. A more balanced process is a more fair process.

Good points, Supernova. So it's encouraging that Prince emancipated himself from his contracts before his death. This way, we can hope that he includes his vault's recordings in his will, and Mani can do with them as Prince wished. Maybe he doesn't want them released, maybe he isn't particularly proud of them. Or maybe he'll want them released after his death.

I just hope that someone knows what his wishes are before he dies, and that they respect them.