badujunkie said:

i agree. when i heard "street walker" i was like

that track is a million times better but i guess it also
shows the heart of the "problem" as to why a lot of cuts
were left off the album in the end because street walker
sounds too much like the way you make me feel.

still, there must have been SOMETHING amongst those 60
tunes that would have topped speed demon



and they made that cheesy video for it too with the big
rabbit.

oh great, now i'm thinking about the donny darko rabbit again

^^^Yeah, that... just a fun song about speedin' on the freeway, something Michael surely never did!

bboy87 said:

these are probably the same "hardcore" MJ fans who forget or ignore the fact that he had a stellar career before "Off The Wall".

Timmy84 said:

No, I guess people who think so are the once who only love Dangerous and HIStory stuff.
I was in let's say three different MJ-forums, but most of the fans seemed to be young men or even teenies who think the ultimate MJ would be the 2 Bad/Tabloid Junkie kinda MJ. They have little respect for Off The Wall.
It's only in the org where a lot of people can appreciate OTW.

I love "Speed Demon."

AlexdeParis said:

I don't like that song and I don't like "Just Good Friends".Those two songs should have been replaced with two stronger tracks.

SoulAlive said:

"Just Good Friends" is the weakest track, but I think it has a certain charm. As for "Speed Demon," I'd rather drop "I Just Can't Stop Loving You," "Bad," or "Smooth Criminal" before I let go of it.

AlexdeParis said:

Just Good Friends gets on my nerves, especially when Stevie sings. It's one of his most unpleasant to lisgten to recording. I dislike their other duet as well.

graecophilos said:

I like "Get It",the Stevie/MJ duet that appears on Stevie's album 'Characters'.That's a very good song,much better than the boring "Just Good Friends".

"It's funny you should say that. Alot of fans feel that Off The Wall isn't that great. When it was announced that Legacy Recordings was going to release a CD/DVD 30th anniversary edition, alot of them felt the album didn't DESERVE a deluxe edition because:
-They felt it was "minimal success"
-It wasn't a huge seller
-It's a "disco" album
-It didn't have much impact"

Who are these fans???? Or are these post bandwagon "Thriller" fans? Is "disco" to mean "urban"? Cause any pre-thriller MJ fan will attest to the fact that "OTW" sold 10 mil in 78-79 pre-mtv and people didn't think MJ would ever top that!!!! Thriller was for MTV and crossover. Period. Outside of "girfriend" and "burn this disco out" - "OTW" is like that!!!!! Ask any keyboard player about playin' "Can't help it"- sheeeeeit! Thriller/Purple Rain - accomplished the same crossover goal

JQuad said:

The fans that MJ has today are different from the fans he had 30 yrs ago or even 25 yrs ago. Most of them can barely remember Thriller, let alone OTW let alone the Jacksons/Jackson 5 era. These are the same fans that believe Michael looked his best when he started to look like a white woman. They are the same fans who truely believe Dangerous & History are his best work, even though both albums are similar to his looks: they both sound plastic & artificial. They are fans that are obsesse with his record sales and can't understand why record sales do NOT always equate to quality.

JQuad said:

The fans that MJ has today are different from the fans he had 30 yrs ago or even 25 yrs ago. Most of them can barely remember Thriller, let alone OTW let alone the Jacksons/Jackson 5 era. These are the same fans that believe Michael looked his best when he started to look like a white woman. They are the same fans who truely believe Dangerous & History are his best work, even though both albums are similar to his looks: they both sound plastic & artificial. They are fans that are obsesse with his record sales and can't understand why record sales do NOT always equate to quality.

whatsgoingon said:

how is History plastic and artificial, I'm sick of people putting down his later work, just becuase it might not be the kind of music you like doesn't mean it's bad, there is nothing artificial about history,I agree it is one of his best albums,there is nothing commercial about that album in fact he pretty much told main stream America to kiss his butt with that album, you are just a Hater. You probably hate it just because of the way he looked


There are other genres of music you know, not only disco and whatever you would call off the wall is good music. and another thing, most of these "crazy" fans usually say mj looked best during the bad era not the history era or whatever and sure he had surgery by then, but he did look good during that era, he was just plain pretty, so they are not crazy for thinking that. You just generalize people most everybody likes thriller and if they don't and like dangerous better so what! it does not mean they are crazy. I am the kind of person that likes ALL of mj's music from big boy the first song the jackson 5 ever did to some of the songs on invincible. I like any music that sounds good

cdcgold said:

It was during the Bad era that he started to look like a white woman, it's just that he still looked better than the last 10 years. Anyone who remembered Michael from the days of the Jacksons, OTW and even Thriller were shock when we saw the cover of Bad, most of us were saying WTF has this guy done to his face. We weren't impressed.

And true there are other genre of other music, from his Motown days MJ did pop as well as RnB so I have no problem with him doing different genres, he has always done that. The thing about the albums subsequent to Thriller is that most of the music sounded soulless, almost bland. I always got the impression that he was always trying too hard, his once effortless voice just sounded force most of the time.

With Dangerous you got an album where he was trying too hard to be all things to all people and it showed because the album was all over the place. With History I understood what he was doing but he did more shouting, screeching and straining than actual singing. Along with his African-American features Michael lost his soul along the way too.

cdcgold said:

It was during the Bad era that he started to look like a white woman, it's just that he still looked better than the last 10 years. Anyone who remembered Michael from the days of the Jacksons, OTW and even Thriller were shock when we saw the cover of Bad, most of us were saying WTF has this guy done to his face. We weren't impressed.

And true there are other genre of other music, from his Motown days MJ did pop as well as RnB so I have no problem with him doing different genres, he has always done that. The thing about the albums subsequent to Thriller is that most of the music sounded soulless, almost bland. I always got the impression that he was always trying too hard, his once effortless voice just sounded force most of the time.

With Dangerous you got an album where he was trying too hard to be all things to all people and it showed because the album was all over the place. With History I understood what he was doing but he did more shouting, screeching and straining than actual singing. Along with his African-American features Michael lost his soul along the way too.

whatsgoingon said:

during the bad era he did not look like a white women, if anything he looked puerto rican

cdcgold said:

The fact of the matter is by the Bad period he was looking very different from how he originally looked and everyone who remembered him before that time were shocked at the changes. I remember people saying he looked like a "dolly".

Now, if you can only remember him from Bad onwards I can understand you thinking he looked great, but by Bad anyone old enough to remember how MJ once was knew he had gone too far with the surgery already and he was gradually turning into a white woman.

The fact of the matter is by the Bad period he was looking very different from how he originally looked and everyone who remembered him before that time were shocked at the changes. I remember people saying he looked like a "dolly".

Now, if you can only remember him from Bad onwards I can understand you thinking he looked great, but by Bad anyone old enough to remember how MJ once was knew he had gone too far with the surgery already and he was gradually turning into a white woman.

Well a major difference in his music was technology! OTW and Thriller had primarily live musicians. Horn sections and not keyboard horn parts,real bass lines not synth basslines. So the essence of the music had more soul because real musicians played on them. Bad was the first step into a less soulful sound. Dangerous had production from Teddy Riley who....had been a studio sequencing dude from jump! History had some lyrically great songs....musically...synth driven. Jam&Lewis did what they could. It would've been interesting to hear the arrangements of those songs with real musicians. Invincible....was probably his best shot at re-capturing some of that earlier MJ feel between Destinty-OTW- Triumph-Thriller.

Now the look: Cats who remember seeing J5 on the ed sullivan show all the way up to seeing the Bad cover were shocked. Hell I remember discovering old J5 albums in my dad's collection looking at them then comparing then to the Victory promo tour shots with a raised eyebrow. With Bad....especially in the africian-american community who supported him since "I want u back"...were like WTF! By Dangerous heads were like this mofo has lost it....

since leaving Motown, Michael was eager to get his solo career back on track....

he had been writing songs for a few years at that point and wanted to try his ideas with free reign instead of being one vote out of five or six....

one of his first strikes of independence was accepting the role of the Scarecrow in the film version of The Wiz--a hit Broadway play that was essentially the Black version of The Wizard of Oz...

in 1977, Mike relocated to NY to start filming The Wiz....

Mike's character, The Scarecrow, would help out in a jam by pulling a quotation from a famous mind out of the trash he was made of and reading it....

in this scene that he was filming, Mike would pull a scrap of paper out and read a quote from Socrates

being the product of a very informal education, Mike pronounced Socrates as "soh-crates"

a nice older gentleman corrected Mike....the man introduced himself as Quincy Jones....

Quincy Jones was serving as musical director of The Wiz as a favor to his friend and director of The Wiz, Sidney Lumet....Lumet had chosen Quincy to score his film, The Pawnbroker some years earlier...

before The Pawnbroker, Q had never scored a film....after The Pawnbroker, Q became one of the top movie scorers in Hollywood....

Quincy and Michael worked on the soundtrack to The Wiz....being impressed by Q, Mike approached him with questions about his solo project....

How Q got the job as producer for what would be Mike's first solo album as an adult is up for debate....

one story is that Mike asked Q for suggestions for producers for his solo project and Q suggested himself....

another story is that Mike set his sights on Q from jump....he asked Q and he accepted....

Q's version is that Mike pestered him with questions about a solo album but Q was not interested because Q felt he was too old to produce an album on 20 year old Mike....but Mike's persistence and great songwriting ideas wore him down...

once Q was selected, CBS was also leery....Q was not known for producing pop records at the time...he was seen as a jazz cat, an elder statesman--even though Q had been kicking out his own funk/R&B albums throughout the 70's and had scored big by producing funk duo The Brothers Johnson...

Michael insisted that Q was his producer and would not be moved...

after The Wiz wrapped, Mike and his brothers had been given free reign to write and produce and album--a first for the brothers...their future at CBS Records and as a group were riding on the results....

the result was the classic album Destiny, a smash hit in Shake Your Body(Down To The Ground), and platinum sales....

CBS was not sure about letting Mike do a solo album since his solo records at Motown never amounted to much...but after the success of Destiny, they gave him the green light....

Quincy assembled his crew of master studio musicians--among them Rufus drummer John Robinson(Q was producing their 1979 album, Masterjam), Brothers Johnson bassist Louis Johnson, percussionist extrordinaire Paulinho da Costa, and songwriter and Heatwave keyboardist Rod Temperton....

Michael brought his songs and Wonderlove keyboardist Greg Phillinganes...

Greg had worked on the Destiny album and proved to be valuable not only on keyboards but helping to shape arrangements as well.....Phillinganes was so useful that both Q and Mike would use him for years to come...

Q chose the songs that he felt were the best and in December of 1978, got everyone to work....

the end result was Off The Wall....

Off The Wall is often categorized as a disco album, but that does the album a disservice...while dance oriented material was definitely present, there was also pure pop like the hit ballad She's Out Of My Life(Mike could not finish a take without crying)...there was AM radio fare like Stevie Wonder and Susaye Green's beautiful and sophisticated mid-tempo classic, I Cant Help It...easy going fare like Paul McCartney's bubbly composition, Girlfriend...also Michael's romantic duet with Patti Austin, It's The Falling In Love(written by David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager)....

among the best songs in the bunch were Rod Temperton's laid back groovers, Rock With You and the title track....but the tracks that socked everyone in the gut were Mike's own compositions...

all 3 of Mike songs--Dont Stop Til You Get Enough, Workin Day And Night, and Get On The Floor(built around a bass riff by co-writer Louis Johnson) were percussive funk monsters that allowed Mike to sing with unbridled skill and funkiness not heard yet from him...

Mike appeared on the cover as a grown man--with a cocky smile, dressed in a neat tuxedo and in the midst of bustin a move....further inspection of the cover would reveal Mike's flair for showmanship...his white socks glowed as if there were lightbulbs in them...

The album was Michael's way of putting everyone on notice that he wasn't a kid anymore and was a force to be reckoned with....

Mike fired his first shot with the irresistible funk smoker, Dont Stop Til You Get Enough, as the first single...

on this song, Michael took everyone by surprise by singing the lead entirely in falsetto--and idea perhaps gleaned from one of Mike's heroes, Marvin Gaye....

Gaye had done the same in 1977 with his percussion heavy smash dance hit, Got To Give It Up....Michael had previously borrowed Gaye's chant from the full version of Got To Give It Up for the chorus of Shake your Body...

Dont Stop was also heavy with percussion....

though Mike's delivery make some of the lyrics unclear....the lyric sheet leaves no question to what the song is about....

though Mike would punk out when asked about it, the song is about sensuality and the joy of sex....

"Touch me,/and I feel on fire/aint nothin like the love desire...."

"I'm melting like hot candle wax...." --a nod to the song Touch, the sexually mature song that the Jackson 5 had covered in the early 70's

"Get closer/to my body now/just love me/til you dont know how..."

"so let love/take us through the hours/I wont be complainin'/cuz this is love power..."

the message was clear, Mike was his own entity....

of course, the album and singles were an instant smash worldwide....dance floors pulsated with Mike's new elegant, heavy funk grooves directed by Q....

Vocally, he seemed less concerned with delivering the lyric than making the listener feel the mood of the song...though Mike's vocal tics had been developing since the mid-70' when his voice was changing, Mike let loose here....all over the album Mike whooped, growled, screamed, howled, squealed, stuttered, and scatted....

the album begins with Mike's jarring "WHOOOOO!"....he began Working Day And Night with a percussive scat...Get On The Floor breaks down and builds to a climax with Mike's scatting and howling--whipping the listener or dancer into a frenzy....

overall, the album felt like a hot summer evening out on the town in LA with Michael Jackson as your host, hosting the hottest party in town...

Off The Wall sold millions at a time when the industry was in a slump, the economy was bad, and no one was moving records...an instant classic that stands up today...

it was now official--Michael Jackson was a genius and the future of music industry...he was the man to watch...

come Grammy time, Mike was denied Album Of The Year, Record Of The Year, and Song Of The Year....

hurt and offended by the snub....Michael vowed that his next album would show them all....

little did anyone know what was to happen next....

in retrospect, Off The Wall went down in the history books as a masterpiece--one of the greatest albums of all time and to some, Mike's best work ever...