silverchild said:

A new analytical discussion about Michael's impact on Black culture, pop culture, and his many musical achievements by Michael Anthony Neal:

I remember this guy. He was @ that Chicago symposium. Everything was going fine up until, again, he stopped talking about MJ around Thriller or so. As if the man didn't have a career afterwards. Then we got to the Q&A and he started saying that everything post-Thriller sucked, basically, and that the only good song on Invincible was Butterflies. He said that Invincible was about the same quality as something Brian McKnight could have released. =/ Just like Nelson George, who I talked to briefly, @ another one, claimed that the only good song on HIStory was You Are Not Alone (the only song I fukkin' hate on that album). This is when I just came to the conclusion that if you are a, serious, r&b and funk fan, especially from the earlier eras, you are just going to have an issue with his later work. Well whatever, opinions are just that. Opinions.

So then as the Q&A progressed, he started going on about how MJ should have released more work seeing how it worked for R.Kelly and Prince and then people will forget about all the drama. Unfortunately, this old man got to be the last question for the panel so I lost my chance to challenge that claim. Needless to say, I couldn't totally get behind what he said, and I was going to ask him if he had his head in the sand between 1993-2001. Even when HIStory was released I remember how the media was still on his ass pretty hardcore. Then, when it didn't sell like Thriller they started calling it, and him, a failure, again. He didn't even tour in the US and even though that was tragic, I really don't blame him for not doing so. (That is if that decision was totally his.)

The difference in the situations between R.Kelly, Prince and MJ are HUGE ones. R.Kelly isn't even on the same cultural wavelength as Prince is and even then, Prince is nowhere near the same cultural wavelength as MJ. There's no one size fits all solution, especially when taking into account the way that each of those artists worked and the circumstances & situations surrounding them.

I just think it's a little unbelievable that these black American scholars would come to an Academic discussion and totally not be completely well versed in the subject matter. Then these, are more than likely, the first idiots to get up there and complain about how black people and musicians are nearly, omitted from history or not regarded with the same worth as their white peers. Oh shit, really? I wonder why? If you can't be bothered to take one of the biggest black American historical figures in recent history seriously, then how can you expect others to as well? All that money to pursue a degree in higher education and for what? Did you burn out all of your working brain cells doing your thesis work?

Utter bullshit.

The only two presenters who did anything that resembled any real research and work at that entire symposium was this professor from Nigeria and this white American male journalist who was doing a presentation of the chitlin' circuit in Chicago and managed to bring out all of the people the Jackson 5 worked with at that time. The rest of them were utter shite, save for the two doing the presentation on dance, but even then the black American professor who was doing it totally disregarded anything post-Thriller/Bad. How can you do a presentation of MJ's dance when you totally disregard the Panther dance from Black or White?! Like wtf? That's like if I were to do a presentation on Pablo Picasso and totally leave out 'Guernica' simply because 'I didn't like it.' (Quoted from the professor when asked why she didn't include it.) Whenever I read up on anything on the Beatles or Elvis, you best believe that the researchers do their damndest to make sure that everything is properly researched and everything is accounted for. EVERYTHING. It's not as if black people are getting their heads blown off or being hung for reading books anymore. There's no excuse this time.

If we don't do anything properly for MJ in terms of recording and evaluating his place into history than who will? This isn't even isolated to him, this goes for so many black American acts that have existed save for Jimi Hendrix. There's really no excuse, for this, wtf are black music journalists and scholars thinking?! They want to preserve him, but only pre-Bad Michael as even evidenced in the BBC documentary. His ENTIRE career matters. ALL OF IT. When you discard everything after Bad as if it didn't exist, you are ignoring 2/3rds of his career as a solo artist. That's more than half of it. You are ignoring his growth and evolution as an artist. You are ignoring Michael Jackson, the artist, when you do that. The fact that anyone would do this and then have the audacity to volunteer themselves to do any kind of scholarly work on him is un-fucking-believable. In all of my years of schooling in art & history I have, never, come across some shit like this. Never. The fucked up thing is that they didn't even state what time periods they were covering, nor this dude. They just casually ended it as if that was it.

It is just so fucking frustrating. I posted a youtube link here where this white professor from a college in upstate NY talked about his place in music and even counted Dangerous era Michael. That's a whole lot more acknowledgement than most of those presenters did for the symposium in Chicago.

I just don't understand what it is. Well, at least the one at Berkeley College in California was far superior. Also, thank god that they taped it and posted it online for everyone to see. It was nice to see some people could look at the man's career with unclouded eyes.

/rant

[Edited 11/21/10 0:56am]

Actually, I agree with that guy then. I've always though Mike should have released more work. Should have put out an album once every 2 or 3 years. Practice different styles... use some more organic instruments every now and then. He was doing pretty good in the 90's... Dangerous in '91, HIStory in '95, then Blood On The Dancefloor to cap off the decade... not ideal, but pretty close. The rumors would never go away, but he did a good job of getting on with his career with HIStory. Had he tried to switch his routine up a bit, I don't if he would have sold 20 or 30 million copies of every album, but he probably could've done 10 million of each album easily with consistency and quality, which I don't think would have been hard for him and the people he worked with.

Superstition said:

Actually, I agree with that guy then. I've always though Mike should have released more work. Should have put out an album once every 2 or 3 years. Practice different styles... use some more organic instruments every now and then. He was doing pretty good in the 90's... Dangerous in '91, HIStory in '95, then Blood On The Dancefloor to cap off the decade... not ideal, but pretty close. The rumors would never go away, but he did a good job of getting on with his career with HIStory. Had he tried to switch his routine up a bit, I don't if he would have sold 20 or 30 million copies of every album, but he probably could've done 10 million of each album easily with consistency and quality, which I don't think would have been hard for him and the people he worked with.

Basically, he should have been just like Prince is what you are saying.

Anyways, Michael already did this back with the Jackson 5 & Jacksons and look what happened to them. I don't think that Michael wanted that to happen to him again, which is why he did things as he did in his own solo career. I, personally, don't mind having a few good albums of strong material rather than an innumerable amount of them with too many varying degrees of quality of material that I'm never going to listen to and tracks that will end up just getting deleted off of my playlist.

The mere thought of people just suddenly 'forgetting his issues' in lieu of all the extra work though seems a bit unrealistic (this is the point I had reservations about though). As someone said in an interview, "his personal life was way more interesting than his music." As much as I disagree with this, it seems to ring very true, even with many fans.

Unholyalliance said:

Superstition said:

Actually, I agree with that guy then. I've always though Mike should have released more work. Should have put out an album once every 2 or 3 years. Practice different styles... use some more organic instruments every now and then. He was doing pretty good in the 90's... Dangerous in '91, HIStory in '95, then Blood On The Dancefloor to cap off the decade... not ideal, but pretty close. The rumors would never go away, but he did a good job of getting on with his career with HIStory. Had he tried to switch his routine up a bit, I don't if he would have sold 20 or 30 million copies of every album, but he probably could've done 10 million of each album easily with consistency and quality, which I don't think would have been hard for him and the people he worked with.

Basically, he should have been just like Prince is what you are saying.

Anyways, Michael already did this back with the Jackson 5 & Jacksons and look what happened to them. I don't think that Michael wanted that to happen to him again, which is why he did things as he did in his own solo career. I, personally, don't mind having a few good albums of strong material rather than an innumerable amount of them with too many varying degrees of quality of material that I'm never going to listen to and tracks that will end up just getting deleted off of my playlist.

The mere thought of people just suddenly 'forgetting his issues' in lieu of all the extra work though seems a bit unrealistic (this is the point I had reservations about though). As someone said in an interview, "his personal life was way more interesting than his music." As much as I disagree with this, it seems to ring very true, even with many fans.

No. Michael should not have done what Prince did. For one, Prince is an instrumentalist. He had a more hands-on approach to his music, whereas Mike would compose and co-produce many of hi stracks with others, he was more of a team player than Prince: I think both ways worked well in their respective favors. However, Prince released a LOT of stuff. Not an album every two years, but tons of stuff pretty much all the time. So no, I'm not saying Mike should have done what Prince did. I'm talking about an album of new material every 2-3 years.

The J5 and Jacksons did lose their steam towards the end of their runs, but they were also never as big as Mike was after Thriller. Mike reached a stratosphere that I think allowed him to do things very few artists have done. He took some time soaking in his celebrity status between Thriller and Bad. I think after Dangerous, he should have dialed it back to the roots and just released some stuff... forget the critics, forget selling 30 million copies, just put out some music and try to give fans something to listen to. He would've went multi-platinum every time, guaranteed.

Unholyalliance said:

silverchild said:

A new analytical discussion about Michael's impact on Black culture, pop culture, and his many musical achievements by Michael Anthony Neal:

I remember this guy. He was @ that Chicago symposium. Everything was going fine up until, again, he stopped talking about MJ around Thriller or so. As if the man didn't have a career afterwards. Then we got to the Q&A and he started saying that everything post-Thriller sucked, basically, and that the only good song on Invincible was Butterflies. He said that Invincible was about the same quality as something Brian McKnight could have released. =/ Just like Nelson George, who I talked to briefly, @ another one, claimed that the only good song on HIStory was You Are Not Alone (the only song I fukkin' hate on that album). This is when I just came to the conclusion that if you are a, serious, r&b and funk fan, especially from the earlier eras, you are just going to have an issue with his later work. Well whatever, opinions are just that. Opinions.

So then as the Q&A progressed, he started going on about how MJ should have released more work seeing how it worked for R.Kelly and Prince and then people will forget about all the drama. Unfortunately, this old man got to be the last question for the panel so I lost my chance to challenge that claim. Needless to say, I couldn't totally get behind what he said, and I was going to ask him if he had his head in the sand between 1993-2001. Even when HIStory was released I remember how the media was still on his ass pretty hardcore. Then, when it didn't sell like Thriller they started calling it, and him, a failure, again. He didn't even tour in the US and even though that was tragic, I really don't blame him for not doing so. (That is if that decision was totally his.)

The difference in the situations between R.Kelly, Prince and MJ are HUGE ones. R.Kelly isn't even on the same cultural wavelength as Prince is and even then, Prince is nowhere near the same cultural wavelength as MJ. There's no one size fits all solution, especially when taking into account the way that each of those artists worked and the circumstances & situations surrounding them.

I just think it's a little unbelievable that these black American scholars would come to an Academic discussion and totally not be completely well versed in the subject matter. Then these, are more than likely, the first idiots to get up there and complain about how black people and musicians are nearly, omitted from history or not regarded with the same worth as their white peers. Oh shit, really? I wonder why? If you can't be bothered to take one of the biggest black American historical figures in recent history seriously, then how can you expect others to as well? All that money to pursue a degree in higher education and for what? Did you burn out all of your working brain cells doing your thesis work?

Utter bullshit.

The only two presenters who did anything that resembled any real research and work at that entire symposium was this professor from Nigeria and this white American male journalist who was doing a presentation of the chitlin' circuit in Chicago and managed to bring out all of the people the Jackson 5 worked with at that time. The rest of them were utter shite, save for the two doing the presentation on dance, but even then the black American professor who was doing it totally disregarded anything post-Thriller/Bad. How can you do a presentation of MJ's dance when you totally disregard the Panther dance from Black or White?! Like wtf? That's like if I were to do a presentation on Pablo Picasso and totally leave out 'Guernica' simply because 'I didn't like it.' (Quoted from the professor when asked why she didn't include it.) Whenever I read up on anything on the Beatles or Elvis, you best believe that the researchers do their damndest to make sure that everything is properly researched and everything is accounted for. EVERYTHING. It's not as if black people are getting their heads blown off or being hung for reading books anymore. There's no excuse this time.

If we don't do anything properly for MJ in terms of recording and evaluating his place into history than who will? This isn't even isolated to him, this goes for so many black American acts that have existed save for Jimi Hendrix. There's really no excuse, for this, wtf are black music journalists and scholars thinking?! They want to preserve him, but only pre-Bad Michael as even evidenced in the BBC documentary. His ENTIRE career matters. ALL OF IT. When you discard everything after Bad as if it didn't exist, you are ignoring 2/3rds of his career as a solo artist. That's more than half of it. You are ignoring his growth and evolution as an artist. You are ignoring Michael Jackson, the artist, when you do that. The fact that anyone would do this and then have the audacity to volunteer themselves to do any kind of scholarly work on him is un-fucking-believable. In all of my years of schooling in art & history I have, never, come across some shit like this. Never. The fucked up thing is that they didn't even state what time periods they were covering, nor this dude. They just casually ended it as if that was it.

It is just so fucking frustrating. I posted a youtube link here where this white professor from a college in upstate NY talked about his place in music and even counted Dangerous era Michael. That's a whole lot more acknowledgement than most of those presenters did for the symposium in Chicago.

I just don't understand what it is. Well, at least the one at Berkeley College in California was far superior. Also, thank god that they taped it and posted it online for everyone to see. It was nice to see some people could look at the man's career with unclouded eyes.

/rant

[Edited 11/21/10 0:56am]

I agree. I've never understood the "Everything after Thriller was wack" stance people like Nelson George have. I remember reading his recent book on Thriller (which I need to put on Amazon ) and thinking "Did he just skip 1987-2000?". I've always felt that Michael became a BETTER songwriter and even a better vocalist, although he became more inconsistent after Thriller

between 1984-2001 he became a stronger songwriter and his songs talked about different topics (not just paranoia, lost love, and dance records, but also also child neglect, the state of the world, racism, depression, drug abuse and the suffocation of celebrity)

If you dismiss everything after Thriller, you're dismissing so many songs and moments that made Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson

But then again, I'm one of those people who in a second can listen to When I Come Of Age, Take Me Back, Blues Away, and Lovely One then switch to We've Had Enough, Jam, Much Too Soon, Morphine, Heaven Can Wait, and They Don't Care About Us in a snap

Most of people who say that are disgruntled Ex-fans who still stuck in the 80's......

I loved MJ in all eras

Who Is It, Stranger In Moscow, Break Of Dawn, Butterflies, Money, Smile, Dangerous, In The Closet, Remember The Time.... all classics. Hell, I'll say it: I think Unbreakable is a masterpiece too.

Someone Put Your Hand Out and On The Line are amazing tracks, should've made his album releases.

So much stuff from the 90's and this past decade were amazing. We've Had Enough, Another Day, Blue Gangsta... outtakes better than 90% of pop music smash hits.

I reckon there will be a couple of gems on the new album too. I'm particularly interested in Best Of Joy and Hollywood Tonight.

everything is so subjective though and people latch on to ideas and clihe's like cattle. It's hard to make people see things any different. I can't believe how some Prince fans and critics have always always derided his current output, whether it was sign o' the times, lovesexy, parade or later albums as having been a letdown. Some of these albums are now classic. I'm not saying prince hasn't laid plenty of turds but it gets so skewed. Elvis is usually thought of as going downhill after the fifties but some of my favorite songs of his were the ones just before his death. People just like to talk, that's all. Only thing mike didn't do was release more material as an adult. In some ways that was good, he always strove for quality, but had he been more liberal, I think we'd have alot more great music to cherish (along with the not so great). I haven't like most of what I heard of Mike's early stuff outside of the hits but that's just me, lots of you people like it and I can't say I've listened to enough of it to give a fair opinion. The Motown hit machine wasn't known for having solid albums from every artist. Of course Mike was prodigious as a producer and writer, writing hits in his teens.

bboy87 said:

Superstition said:

I got it for $27.99 or something like that on Amazon.com. Its supposed to be delivered on Monday.

Mine hasn't shipped yet

already have it since friday man.

Unholyalliance said:

silverchild said:

A new analytical discussion about Michael's impact on Black culture, pop culture, and his many musical achievements by Michael Anthony Neal:

I remember this guy. He was @ that Chicago symposium. Everything was going fine up until, again, he stopped talking about MJ around Thriller or so. As if the man didn't have a career afterwards. Then we got to the Q&A and he started saying that everything post-Thriller sucked, basically, and that the only good song on Invincible was Butterflies. He said that Invincible was about the same quality as something Brian McKnight could have released. =/ Just like Nelson George, who I talked to briefly, @ another one, claimed that the only good song on HIStory was You Are Not Alone (the only song I fukkin' hate on that album). This is when I just came to the conclusion that if you are a, serious, r&b and funk fan, especially from the earlier eras, you are just going to have an issue with his later work. Well whatever, opinions are just that. Opinions.

So then as the Q&A progressed, he started going on about how MJ should have released more work seeing how it worked for R.Kelly and Prince and then people will forget about all the drama. Unfortunately, this old man got to be the last question for the panel so I lost my chance to challenge that claim. Needless to say, I couldn't totally get behind what he said, and I was going to ask him if he had his head in the sand between 1993-2001. Even when HIStory was released I remember how the media was still on his ass pretty hardcore. Then, when it didn't sell like Thriller they started calling it, and him, a failure, again. He didn't even tour in the US and even though that was tragic, I really don't blame him for not doing so. (That is if that decision was totally his.)

The difference in the situations between R.Kelly, Prince and MJ are HUGE ones. R.Kelly isn't even on the same cultural wavelength as Prince is and even then, Prince is nowhere near the same cultural wavelength as MJ. There's no one size fits all solution, especially when taking into account the way that each of those artists worked and the circumstances & situations surrounding them.

I just think it's a little unbelievable that these black American scholars would come to an Academic discussion and totally not be completely well versed in the subject matter. Then these, are more than likely, the first idiots to get up there and complain about how black people and musicians are nearly, omitted from history or not regarded with the same worth as their white peers. Oh shit, really? I wonder why? If you can't be bothered to take one of the biggest black American historical figures in recent history seriously, then how can you expect others to as well? All that money to pursue a degree in higher education and for what? Did you burn out all of your working brain cells doing your thesis work?

Utter bullshit.

The only two presenters who did anything that resembled any real research and work at that entire symposium was this professor from Nigeria and this white American male journalist who was doing a presentation of the chitlin' circuit in Chicago and managed to bring out all of the people the Jackson 5 worked with at that time. The rest of them were utter shite, save for the two doing the presentation on dance, but even then the black American professor who was doing it totally disregarded anything post-Thriller/Bad. How can you do a presentation of MJ's dance when you totally disregard the Panther dance from Black or White?! Like wtf? That's like if I were to do a presentation on Pablo Picasso and totally leave out 'Guernica' simply because 'I didn't like it.' (Quoted from the professor when asked why she didn't include it.) Whenever I read up on anything on the Beatles or Elvis, you best believe that the researchers do their damndest to make sure that everything is properly researched and everything is accounted for. EVERYTHING. It's not as if black people are getting their heads blown off or being hung for reading books anymore. There's no excuse this time.

If we don't do anything properly for MJ in terms of recording and evaluating his place into history than who will? This isn't even isolated to him, this goes for so many black American acts that have existed save for Jimi Hendrix. There's really no excuse, for this, wtf are black music journalists and scholars thinking?! They want to preserve him, but only pre-Bad Michael as even evidenced in the BBC documentary. His ENTIRE career matters. ALL OF IT. When you discard everything after Bad as if it didn't exist, you are ignoring 2/3rds of his career as a solo artist. That's more than half of it. You are ignoring his growth and evolution as an artist. You are ignoring Michael Jackson, the artist, when you do that. The fact that anyone would do this and then have the audacity to volunteer themselves to do any kind of scholarly work on him is un-fucking-believable. In all of my years of schooling in art & history I have, never, come across some shit like this. Never. The fucked up thing is that they didn't even state what time periods they were covering, nor this dude. They just casually ended it as if that was it.

It is just so fucking frustrating. I posted a youtube link here where this white professor from a college in upstate NY talked about his place in music and even counted Dangerous era Michael. That's a whole lot more acknowledgement than most of those presenters did for the symposium in Chicago.

I just don't understand what it is. Well, at least the one at Berkeley College in California was far superior. Also, thank god that they taped it and posted it online for everyone to see. It was nice to see some people could look at the man's career with unclouded eyes.

/rant

[Edited 11/21/10 0:56am]

yeah that sounds very upsetting and you're making a lot of good points, there is so much to mj's career from big boy to hold my hand

Timmy84 said:

dag said:

[img:$uid]http://img263.i.../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://img442.i.../img:$uid]

I love these photos, especially the one in the middle.

mozfonky said:

everything is so subjective though and people latch on to ideas and clihe's like cattle. It's hard to make people see things any different. I can't believe how some Prince fans and critics have always always derided his current output, whether it was sign o' the times, lovesexy, parade or later albums as having been a letdown. Some of these albums are now classic. I'm not saying prince hasn't laid plenty of turds but it gets so skewed. Elvis is usually thought of as going downhill after the fifties but some of my favorite songs of his were the ones just before his death. People just like to talk, that's all. Only thing mike didn't do was release more material as an adult. In some ways that was good, he always strove for quality, but had he been more liberal, I think we'd have alot more great music to cherish (along with the not so great). I haven't like most of what I heard of Mike's early stuff outside of the hits but that's just me, lots of you people like it and I can't say I've listened to enough of it to give a fair opinion. The Motown hit machine wasn't known for having solid albums from every artist. Of course Mike was prodigious as a producer and writer, writing hits in his teens.

The fact of the matter is that MJ musical legeacy is based on the first 20 years of his career. You take away the first 20 years, your left with just 3 albums and full of sensation and controversy. You take away the J5/Jacksons era, the OTW and Thriller era your not left with much musically. The icon which is Michael Jackson was consolidated during the Thriller era. All the subsequents albums were based on hype and comparisons with Thriller, which was unfair but that was the way it was. I mean critics were still comparing Dangerous & History to Thriller, rather than the Bad album. With Thriller he left a blueprint, which everything else was compared to.

Wait a minute, let's not go too far here: MANY soul lovers and R&B lovers are huge fans of J5/Jackson/Off The Wall Michael Jackson. That's a good solid ten years of output. It's easy to think that The Jackson 5 struggled a bit during their last days at Motown, and that the first two Jacksons albums underperformed (though there ARE gems on both the self-titled album and Goin' Places). But that happened relatively quickly: the J5 exploding on the scene and Off The Wall being released all happened within a 10-year span.

Bad, Dangerous and HIStory produced a shit-ton of amazing songs, videos and moments. Even Heal The World, which is a mixed bag among fans - some love it and some think its overly sappy - still managed to be an anthem of sorts, and it seems most casual fans or even non-fans actually enjoy the song. I've had a lot of people who I converse with about Mike who aren't necessarily big fans mention that song. It's strange.

Everyone remembers the Black or White video and Remember The Time videos. You Are Not Alone was a well-recieved R&B classic.

Thriller is a gift and a curse, in that it really paved the way for some of his future material and maybe saved us from some majorly spotty material, but it was a curse in that it may have derprived us of some other songs in the same line as I Can't Help It or the smooth funk of Billie Jean. And of course, it was a curse in that nobody could give a review of his future albums without mentioning that they didn't sell ten trillion copies lke Thriller; they only managed to sell a paultry billion.

But I don't think it's fair to try to whittle away the J5/Jacksons Material, Off The Wall era or the subsequent eras that were full of number one songs, iconic music videos, and flat-out good music.

The talent this dude had all the way until the end is actually quite unfathomable. Dancing, singing... I hear the talk about Breaking News and his voice not sounding the same or whatever... I listened to Black Or White from This Is It sung live and it almost sounds like the record did, which was taped 18 years prior at that point. He wasn't even giving it his all in those rehearsals, and he was nailing it. Imagine if it was night 1 of the concerts, or if he was doing another full-on album with those legendary sessions of his.

People know and love MJ's material from the start of his career until the end, even if some people aren't smart enough to realize it. I don't believe its been lost in the shuffle or anything. Every artist has an artistic peak, as do most celebrities or athlete's. That's just normal. Non-fans know Mike from Thriller, but will recognize his other songs. Just like if you mention Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, they'll think of Ooh Baby Baby or Tears Of A Clown, but they'll likely also recognize Cruising or Quiet Storm. If you mention Stevie, it's likely Superstition or My Cherie Amour, though they'll recognize For Your Love and Part-Time Lover. Mike's main subtitle is Thriller, but I guarantee you they'll know ABC, I'll Be There, I Want You Back, Remember The Time, You Are Not Alone.

Marvin Gaye probably is an exception because you might get someone who mentiones a number of songs from his solo career.

Damn, I'm going off the rails here. What were we talking about?

[Edited 11/21/10 7:28am]

[img:$uid]http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k524/Ali-23/mj1189.jpg[/img:$uid]

Superstition said:

Wait a minute, let's not go too far here: MANY soul lovers and R&B lovers are huge fans of J5/Jackson/Off The Wall Michael Jackson. That's a good solid ten years of output. It's easy to think that The Jackson 5 struggled a bit during their last days at Motown, and that the first two Jacksons albums underperformed (though there ARE gems on both the self-titled album and Goin' Places). But that happened relatively quickly: the J5 exploding on the scene and Off The Wall being released all happened within a 10-year span.

Bad, Dangerous and HIStory produced a shit-ton of amazing songs, videos and moments. Even Heal The World, which is a mixed bag among fans - some love it and some think its overly sappy - still managed to be an anthem of sorts, and it seems most casual fans or even non-fans actually enjoy the song. I've had a lot of people who I converse with about Mike who aren't necessarily big fans mention that song. It's strange.

Everyone remembers the Black or White video and Remember The Time videos. You Are Not Alone was a well-recieved R&B classic.

Thriller is a gift and a curse, in that it really paved the way for some of his future material and maybe saved us from some majorly spotty material, but it was a curse in that it may have derprived us of some other songs in the same line as I Can't Help It or the smooth funk of Billie Jean. And of course, it was a curse in that nobody could give a review of his future albums without mentioning that they didn't sell ten trillion copies lke Thriller; they only managed to sell a paultry billion.

But I don't think it's fair to try to whittle away the J5/Jacksons Material, Off The Wall era or the subsequent eras that were full of number one songs, iconic music videos, and flat-out good music.

The talent this dude had all the way until the end is actually quite unfathomable. Dancing, singing... I hear the talk about Breaking News and his voice not sounding the same or whatever... I listened to Black Or White from This Is It sung live and it almost sounds like the record did, which was taped 18 years prior at that point. He wasn't even giving it his all in those rehearsals, and he was nailing it. Imagine if it was night 1 of the concerts, or if he was doing another full-on album with those legendary sessions of his.

People know and love MJ's material from the start of his career until the end, even if some people aren't smart enough to realize it. I don't believe its been lost in the shuffle or anything. Every artist has an artistic peak, as do most celebrities or athlete's. That's just normal. Non-fans know Mike from Thriller, but will recognize his other songs. Just like if you mention Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, they'll think of Ooh Baby Baby or Tears Of A Clown, but they'll likely also recognize Cruising or Quiet Storm. If you mention Stevie, it's likely Superstition or My Cherie Amour, though they'll recognize For Your Love and Part-Time Lover. Mike's main subtitle is Thriller, but I guarantee you they'll know ABC, I'll Be There, I Want You Back, Remember The Time, You Are Not Alone.

Marvin Gaye probably is an exception because you might get someone who mentiones a number of songs from his solo career.

Damn, I'm going off the rails here. What were we talking about?

[Edited 11/21/10 7:28am]

I am not sure whether your post referred to what I have said or to some other poster. My point of view is talking as someone that remembers MJ with the Jacksons, is that his work after Thriller wasn't that much, anyway, regardless whether you think it was better than his earlier work. If your basing his music legeacy on his post Thriller material there wouldn't be much of a musical legeacy. He did over 13 albums with his brothers over a 15 year period. He also did 5 solo, albums including otw and thriller. However alot of post-thriller fans either disregard the bulk of his earlier work or don't know about it, and just moan about Dangerous not getting as much recognition as Thriller.!! Everyone knows about the Bad, Dangerous and History it's just that not everyone thinks they are as good as his previous work and I for one am one of them.

I'm still scratching my head how the hell a great producer like Teddy Riley produced the mess called " Breaking News ".......

It was MJ's touch all the way on previous albums ?

whatsgoingon said:

Superstition said:

Wait a minute, let's not go too far here: MANY soul lovers and R&B lovers are huge fans of J5/Jackson/Off The Wall Michael Jackson. That's a good solid ten years of output. It's easy to think that The Jackson 5 struggled a bit during their last days at Motown, and that the first two Jacksons albums underperformed (though there ARE gems on both the self-titled album and Goin' Places). But that happened relatively quickly: the J5 exploding on the scene and Off The Wall being released all happened within a 10-year span.

Bad, Dangerous and HIStory produced a shit-ton of amazing songs, videos and moments. Even Heal The World, which is a mixed bag among fans - some love it and some think its overly sappy - still managed to be an anthem of sorts, and it seems most casual fans or even non-fans actually enjoy the song. I've had a lot of people who I converse with about Mike who aren't necessarily big fans mention that song. It's strange.

Everyone remembers the Black or White video and Remember The Time videos. You Are Not Alone was a well-recieved R&B classic.

Thriller is a gift and a curse, in that it really paved the way for some of his future material and maybe saved us from some majorly spotty material, but it was a curse in that it may have derprived us of some other songs in the same line as I Can't Help It or the smooth funk of Billie Jean. And of course, it was a curse in that nobody could give a review of his future albums without mentioning that they didn't sell ten trillion copies lke Thriller; they only managed to sell a paultry billion.

But I don't think it's fair to try to whittle away the J5/Jacksons Material, Off The Wall era or the subsequent eras that were full of number one songs, iconic music videos, and flat-out good music.

The talent this dude had all the way until the end is actually quite unfathomable. Dancing, singing... I hear the talk about Breaking News and his voice not sounding the same or whatever... I listened to Black Or White from This Is It sung live and it almost sounds like the record did, which was taped 18 years prior at that point. He wasn't even giving it his all in those rehearsals, and he was nailing it. Imagine if it was night 1 of the concerts, or if he was doing another full-on album with those legendary sessions of his.

People know and love MJ's material from the start of his career until the end, even if some people aren't smart enough to realize it. I don't believe its been lost in the shuffle or anything. Every artist has an artistic peak, as do most celebrities or athlete's. That's just normal. Non-fans know Mike from Thriller, but will recognize his other songs. Just like if you mention Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, they'll think of Ooh Baby Baby or Tears Of A Clown, but they'll likely also recognize Cruising or Quiet Storm. If you mention Stevie, it's likely Superstition or My Cherie Amour, though they'll recognize For Your Love and Part-Time Lover. Mike's main subtitle is Thriller, but I guarantee you they'll know ABC, I'll Be There, I Want You Back, Remember The Time, You Are Not Alone.

Marvin Gaye probably is an exception because you might get someone who mentiones a number of songs from his solo career.

Damn, I'm going off the rails here. What were we talking about?

[Edited 11/21/10 7:28am]

I am not sure whether your post referred to what I have said or to some other poster. My point of view is talking as someone that remembers MJ with the Jacksons, is that his work after Thriller wasn't that much, anyway, regardless whether you think it was better than his earlier work. If your basing his music legeacy on his post Thriller material there wouldn't be much of a musical legeacy. He did over 13 albums with his brothers over a 15 year period. He also did 5 solo, albums including otw and thriller. However alot of post-thriller fans either disregard the bulk of his earlier work or don't know about it, and just moan about Dangerous not getting as much recognition as Thriller.!! Everyone knows about the Bad, Dangerous and History it's just that not everyone thinks they are as good as his previous work and I for one am one of them.

No, there is a legacy after Thriller. Bad, Dangerous, HIStory.. three mega albums. They probably sold a combined 100 million copies. You throw Invincible and other projects like Blood On The Dancefloor, Ghosts, etc. in the mix and you have something really big going on.

If you're just saying you like the Thriller-era Mike best, or J5-era Mike or Off The Wall/Thriller combined, that's cool. That's the great thing, he has one of the most diverse ranges of music around. Old-school Motown soul, Philly-soul, Disco/Soul/R&B, Pop, Rock, New-Jack.. there's a lot of stuff in there, and everybody has their favorite era. I grew up on Bad/Dangerous/HIStory, so I'm fond of that era. I go back and enjoy his earlier work as well. Triumph and Off The Wall are two of my favorite albums.

It's normal for an artist to have an era... Thriller is undoubtedly Mike's pinnacle of success. But you seem to be contradicting yourself - you say a lot of fans don't think much of Mike's later work, but then you mention people thinking his later stuff is overlooked an whine about his earlier work or don't know about it.

That just goes to show his fanbase is more scattered and partial to different eras than you may think. I've heard people say they prefer J5 Mike over any of his adult solo material period, including Off The Wall and Thriller. There are people who think Thriller and everything after it commercialized Mike too much. There are people who prefer the Jacksons Destiny/Triumph/Victory material over the J5 material. There are people who prefer 90's Mike over 70's/80's Mike. It's ltierally all over the place.

Superstition said:

whatsgoingon said:

I am not sure whether your post referred to what I have said or to some other poster. My point of view is talking as someone that remembers MJ with the Jacksons, is that his work after Thriller wasn't that much, anyway, regardless whether you think it was better than his earlier work. If your basing his music legeacy on his post Thriller material there wouldn't be much of a musical legeacy. He did over 13 albums with his brothers over a 15 year period. He also did 5 solo, albums including otw and thriller. However alot of post-thriller fans either disregard the bulk of his earlier work or don't know about it, and just moan about Dangerous not getting as much recognition as Thriller.!! Everyone knows about the Bad, Dangerous and History it's just that not everyone thinks they are as good as his previous work and I for one am one of them.

No, there is a legacy after Thriller. Bad, Dangerous, HIStory.. three mega albums. They probably sold a combined 100 million copies. You throw Invincible and other projects like Blood On The Dancefloor, Ghosts, etc. in the mix and you have something really big going on.

If you're just saying you like the Thriller-era Mike best, or J5-era Mike or Off The Wall/Thriller combined, that's cool. That's the great thing, he has one of the most diverse ranges of music around. Old-school Motown soul, Philly-soul, Disco/Soul/R&B, Pop, Rock, New-Jack.. there's a lot of stuff in there, and everybody has their favorite era. I grew up on Bad/Dangerous/HIStory, so I'm fond of that era. I go back and enjoy his earlier work as well. Triumph and Off The Wall are two of my favorite albums.

It's normal for an artist to have an era... Thriller is undoubtedly Mike's pinnacle of success. But you seem to be contradicting yourself - you say a lot of fans don't think much of Mike's later work, but then you mention people thinking his later stuff is overlooked an whine about his earlier work or don't know about it.

That just goes to show his fanbase is more scattered and partial to different eras than you may think. I've heard people say they prefer J5 Mike over any of his adult solo material period, including Off The Wall and Thriller. There are people who think Thriller and everything after it commercialized Mike too much. There are people who prefer the Jacksons Destiny/Triumph/Victory material over the J5 material. There are people who prefer 90's Mike over 70's/80's Mike. It's ltierally all over the place.

I was talking about his earlier work, fans don't seem to know much about his earlier work, prior to Thriller/OTW and they don't seem to want to know. Their main beef is that work like Dangerous don't get as much credit as Thriller. Well why can't albums like Destiny get as much credit as Thriller or the Jackson 5 Third album, you see it works both ways. The difference between his albums post thriller is to do with record sales. They sold alot more than the likes of Destiny and Triumph, but record sales don't necessary mean they were better albums.

[img:$uid]http://img14.im.../img:$uid]

Superstition said:

whatsgoingon said:

I am not sure whether your post referred to what I have said or to some other poster. My point of view is talking as someone that remembers MJ with the Jacksons, is that his work after Thriller wasn't that much, anyway, regardless whether you think it was better than his earlier work. If your basing his music legeacy on his post Thriller material there wouldn't be much of a musical legeacy. He did over 13 albums with his brothers over a 15 year period. He also did 5 solo, albums including otw and thriller. However alot of post-thriller fans either disregard the bulk of his earlier work or don't know about it, and just moan about Dangerous not getting as much recognition as Thriller.!! Everyone knows about the Bad, Dangerous and History it's just that not everyone thinks they are as good as his previous work and I for one am one of them.

No, there is a legacy after Thriller. Bad, Dangerous, HIStory.. three mega albums. They probably sold a combined 100 million copies. You throw Invincible and other projects like Blood On The Dancefloor, Ghosts, etc. in the mix and you have something really big going on.

If you're just saying you like the Thriller-era Mike best, or J5-era Mike or Off The Wall/Thriller combined, that's cool. That's the great thing, he has one of the most diverse ranges of music around. Old-school Motown soul, Philly-soul, Disco/Soul/R&B, Pop, Rock, New-Jack.. there's a lot of stuff in there, and everybody has their favorite era. I grew up on Bad/Dangerous/HIStory, so I'm fond of that era. I go back and enjoy his earlier work as well. Triumph and Off The Wall are two of my favorite albums.

It's normal for an artist to have an era... Thriller is undoubtedly Mike's pinnacle of success. But you seem to be contradicting yourself - you say a lot of fans don't think much of Mike's later work, but then you mention people thinking his later stuff is overlooked an whine about his earlier work or don't know about it.

That just goes to show his fanbase is more scattered and partial to different eras than you may think. I've heard people say they prefer J5 Mike over any of his adult solo material period, including Off The Wall and Thriller. There are people who think Thriller and everything after it commercialized Mike too much. There are people who prefer the Jacksons Destiny/Triumph/Victory material over the J5 material. There are people who prefer 90's Mike over 70's/80's Mike. It's ltierally all over the place.

I think i might be in a minority but I find it very difficult to single out any era from his body of work. I love OTW as much as History and everything in between and feel that every album he did was quite different but all to the same standard (although I feel Invincible was his first album to lack the magic of all his previous work).

I like to look at his work as a sort of artistic journey, of him always trying to develop a new sound while still somehow being distinctively MJ. Guess I'm lucky to like it all!

dag said:

[img:$uid]http://img14.im.../img:$uid]

So free....so beautiful....

Vision doesn't get released in Canada until November 22nd!

One more day...

seeingvoices12 said:

Most of people who say that are disgruntled Ex-fans who still stuck in the 80's......

I loved MJ in all eras

[img:$uid]http://maryluvs.clicdev.com/f/html/emoticons/wub.gif[/img:$uid]

SherryJackson said:

Vision doesn't get released in Canada until November 22nd!

One more day...

[img:$uid]http://imgur.com/1CNoh.png[/img:$uid]

Teddy Riley says he believes Michael is still alive.

I guess his credibility regarding the authenticity of "Breaking News" just went out the window, then

Militant said:

Teddy Riley says he believes Michael is still alive.

I guess his credibility regarding the authenticity of "Breaking News" just went out the window, then

Whaat..

Michael got that ponytail on point in that Picture.