Thanks for these facts. I am surprised though that Xscape has only sold 1.2 million. I assume you are talking about the album and I thought it would have sold more by now.

HAPPYPERSON said:

Love Never Felt So Good is #1 on the U.S. Adult R&B chart for 5 weeks in a row.

Love Never Felt So Good has now sold almost 1.8 million singles worldwide.

Xscape has sold over 1.2 million copies worldwide.

Loving You is the next single to be released in the UK on August 11th

A Place With No Name is rumored to be the next single in the U.S. on the same date.

The 1987 ‘BAD’ album re-entered the official UK album charts at #15 two weeks ago (outselling ‘XSCAPE’ that week) after Google made it their Album of the Week on the Google Play store.

If you could change the tracklist to any MJ albums, what would they look like?

Victory:

Torture

Buffalo Bill

One More Chance

Victory (with Freddy Mercury)

Wait
State of Shock (with Jagger)

Body

There Must Be More To Life Than This

*************************************

Bad:

Bad

The Way You Make Me Feel

Streetwalker

Liberian Girl

Another Part of Me

Man in The Mirror

I Just Can't Stop Loving You

Cheater

Dirty Diana

Smooth Criminal

Leave Me Alone

********************************

Dangerous:

Jam
Why You Wanna Trip On Me
In The Closet
She Drives Me Wild
Remember The Time
Do You Know Where Your Children Are
Heal The World
Black or White
Someone Put Your Hand Out
Monkey Business
Who is It
Slave To The Rhythm
Give Into Me
Will You Be There
Gone Too Soon
Dangerous

*******************************

Invincible:

Unbreakable
Break of Dawn
Another Day
Heaven Can Wait
A Place With No Name
You Rock My World
Butterflies
One More Chance
Speechless
Cry
The Way You Love Me
Threatened
Invincible
Whatever Happens
We’ve Had Enough
Xcape

[Edited 7/28/14 21:15pm]

Janet, the youngest in the family is very very smart. She was more like a tough kid. She was real rough. I mean she was rough. What do they call them… yes … tomboy. She was a tomboy. She could whop all the girls. Really rough and really really smart. She is really easy nowadays. She has mellowed. She is now married and living a good life with her husband.

I always felt that she was a natural when it came to acting. She did that movie, with the late Tupac Shakur. I thought it was a very good movie, and I was very proud of her performance. As great and known as a singer as she is, I think the world has yet to recognize her extremely great talent as an actress that surpasses her singing. She wants to have a good part in a strong action movie. I can’t wait to see her in one.

She did surprise me once, picking me as her date to the premiere of the movie she did with Eddie Murphy. Now Eddie is a great friend and I consider him one of this generation’s greatest comedians, but right in the middle of watching the movie, as proud as I was of Janet, I never let her know that. She asked me what I thought and I remember telling her “You should be bigger than this. You should be the lead actor in the movie and carrying it”. I know the comment upset her, because she became quiet and I knew it. But i know her so well, that I knew she was going to channel that anger to prove that she could do better and was right. She came back even stronger with greater movies. And you have not seen the best of her yet. That’s my girl.

When I suffered 4 strokes last year, and was in the hospital recovering, only two people in my family traveled all the way to see in the hospital. My granddaughter Brandi (Jackie’s daughter and my baby girl Janet. She sat right next to me as I lay in bed, spent time with me, talking about a lot together. It meant a lot to me. I lay there listening to her as she talked about how she was going to get married. I am happy for her and wish her nothing but the best ! I never tell you this, but I am proud of you Janet.

Joe FINALLY acknowledges his beautiful very successful daughter...

jANET jACKSON-Al Mana.

xlad said:

Plans are in the works to name a school in Michael Jackson's Indiana hometown for the late pop star. The Gary Community School Board on Tuesday approved a memorandum of understanding with Jackson's mother, Katherine Jackson. The agreement that Katherine Jackson signed last month says the district wants to inspire children to excel in the arts and education. http://www.cbsnews.com/ne...l-for-him/

.

The Michael Jackson School for Kids Who Love Jesus Juice and Want to Do Other Stuff Good Too featuring headmaster Latoya Jackson and head of security Joe Jackson. Uniforms donated by Jermaine Jacksun (relation).

.

The VICE photos are hella interesting. There is a second article with a slideshow, also a fun article about Arnie Klein's estate sale including a large canvas of Jesus holding Michael Jackson's burning body.

[Edited 7/31/14 10:23am]

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Joe Jackson Pens Open Letter To his very gifted daughter MR.S JANET JACKSON-Al Mana.: ‘I’m Proud Of You’

Janet, the youngest in the family is very very smart. She was more like a tough kid. She was real rough. I mean she was rough. What do they call them… yes … tomboy. She was a tomboy. She could whop all the girls. Really rough and really really smart. She is really easy nowadays. She has mellowed. She is now married and living a good life with her husband.

I always felt that she was a natural when it came to acting. She did that movie, with the late Tupac Shakur. I thought it was a very good movie, and I was very proud of her performance. As great and known as a singer as she is, I think the world has yet to recognize her extremely great talent as an actress that surpasses her singing. She wants to have a good part in a strong action movie. I can’t wait to see her in one.

She did surprise me once, picking me as her date to the premiere of the movie she did with Eddie Murphy. Now Eddie is a great friend and I consider him one of this generation’s greatest comedians, but right in the middle of watching the movie, as proud as I was of Janet, I never let her know that. She asked me what I thought and I remember telling her “You should be bigger than this. You should be the lead actor in the movie and carrying it”. I know the comment upset her, because she became quiet and I knew it. But i know her so well, that I knew she was going to channel that anger to prove that she could do better and was right. She came back even stronger with greater movies. And you have not seen the best of her yet. That’s my girl.

When I suffered 4 strokes last year, and was in the hospital recovering, only two people in my family traveled all the way to see in the hospital. My granddaughter Brandi (Jackie’s daughter and my baby girl Janet. She sat right next to me as I lay in bed, spent time with me, talking about a lot together. It meant a lot to me. I lay there listening to her as she talked about how she was going to get married. I am happy for her and wish her nothing but the best ! I never tell you this, but I am proud of you Janet.

Joe FINALLY acknowledges his beautiful very successful daughter...

jANET jACKSON-Al Mana.

Aw that's really sweet. I do kind of remember janet being funny when asked about her dad shortly after this appearance, I figured it was something like that though I kind of understand why he's like that. He had his way of toughening her up even if most jackson fans don't consider it orthodox. Anyways, it was always sweet how she brought family members to movie premieres.

[Edited 7/31/14 17:35pm]

Neverland Ranch for sale

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2014/07/31/michael_jacksons_neverland_ranch_restored_to_original_elegance_headed_for_sale.html

purplethunder3121 said:

..and then there was one.

purplethunder3121 said:

URBAN-EXPLORING MICHAEL JACKSON'S NEVERLAND RANCH

By Jules Suzdaltsev 2014

On November 18, 2003, Michael Jackson’s 3,000-acre primary residence, Neverland Ranch, was searched by 70 police officers from the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department after accusations that Jackson had molested some children (The People of the State o...ph Jackson). Following this, Jackson abandoned his estate, saying it had been “violated," and three years later the property went into foreclosure.

While the Ranch floated in real estate limbo, a group of photographers snuck onto the grounds and explored the abandoned kingdom, returning several times between December 2007 and March 2008. I spoke to the photographers to see what they saw. (Because tresspassing is illegal and I was feeling nostalgic for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they will be referred to as Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello. A fourth member contributed photography and was not interviewed.)

...

VICE: What inspired you guys to explore Neverland Ranch?

...
Leonardo: It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I was aware that the park had been abandoned for quite a while, and I knew that Jackson was in Dubai at the time and that he wasn’t able to pay his electric bills. So, my understanding was that it would be a short-lived opportunity. I usually drive along the 101 freeway, and I decided, I have a few extra hours, I’m just going to go check it out. It just so happened that the day I was out there, it was pretty windy. It was a good cover because there were guards on-site, and the wind sort of blocked out my noise. I was able to sneak in without being heard. I had no expectation to make it in, but I just wanted to see.

...

...

What was the weirdest shit you saw?

...
Raphael: [Laughs]

...
Leonardo: Raphael is laughing because everything we saw was pretty weird. To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of Michael Jackson, but I knew that he was an important American historical figure. At the time, most people probably didn’t realize that he was part of history, and I knew that there was the potential for everything that was associated with him to be quickly lost. Without our documentation, I think it would’ve been a huge loss. So, I thought it was important to do that as quickly as we could, before it was gone.

.
Raphael: Are we talking about going into his house? Is that part of the story?

.

Please.

.
Raphael: We haven’t really told anyone about it... OK, the strangest thing to me was the little boy in pajamas sitting on the moon logo, everywhere. Like, it amazes me how much it resembles the DreamWorks logo. That thing was painted on the ground, like, 60 feet wide. It was on the signs, on the bumper cars, it was on the coach station where they parked the coach, one on the ground.

.
Donatello: That’s his creepy logo, right?

.
Raphael: It’s got a little boy sitting on it in those footie pajama things. Isn’t the back open, or is that only on some of the paintings? [Laughs]

Oh my God.

.
Donatello: The other thing was that he collected memorabilia that had his likeness on it. He had Pepsi bottles and books and other promotional material in boxes. He also had stacks and stacks of fan mail, and one piece that really grabbed me was the prosecuting attorney of his molestation case with devil’s horns drawn on. That was just laying on a tabletop—maybe a Pac-Man table?

/
Raphael: You read his fan mail?

.
Donatello: We were flipping through some of it.

.

How did you guys get into his house?

.
Raphael: We probably don’t want to talk about the details about how we entered.

.

Was it difficult?

.
Leonardo: We didn’t have to break any laws, because it was open. It was all open. The house was open.

.

Wow.

.
Raphael: One thing that really sticks out in my memory was drinking his grape soda from that walk-in kitchen storage area and then very carefully wiping the fingerprints off the bottle and hiding it in the bushes.

.

Wait, you drank his juice?

.
Raphael: I was thirsty and he had all of this grape soda, and I thought I’d just drink something from his house.

.

Was it actual grape soda?

.
Raphael: Yeah! It was actual grape soda. In the kitchen there was this “Children of the World” menu. Everything in there was geared toward children. I’m not sure he had any, but…

.

He did.

.
Raphael: That menu, on a permanently-printed chalkboard with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and macaroni and cheese, that sticks out in my mind. And the strange hodgepodge of shit that he had bought that didn’t have any relation to his house. His entire house was filled with these expensive looking, one-off, semi-artistic things.

.

.

Semi-artistic?

.
Raphael: These weird mirrors on this four-foot by four-foot platform. And that would be next to some Roman statue-looking thing. Next to that would be an eight-foot-tall oil painting of Michael Jackson himself. There were all of these paintings inside the house.

.
Donatello: There’s one where he’s leading a procession of children.

/

What was the vibe in the house?

.

Donatello: I was really on-edge and uncomfortable, mostly because I was worried that someone might find us in there and I think it’s just such a breach of privacy. It was so compelling to do it; I couldn’t not go in because the opportunity was there. But at the same time, it just felt wrong. It was this constant friction between fascination and, I’ve got to get the fuck out of here, I shouldn’t be in here.

.
Leonardo: That’s true. We all felt that way. We [as urban explorers] don’t normally ever go in peoples’ houses.

.
Raphael: It’s all usually industrial, or old schools, or things that aren’t people's personal residences. At one point, I got so fed up with the weirdness that I went outside and I tried to loosen them up by banging on the door. I had a flashlight in my hand, and made it look like I was busting them. We fuck around with each other quite a bit, but Donatello was furious that I did that.

.

.

.That’s ridiculous.

.
Donatello: I don’t remember that. It must’ve been such a bad memory.

.
Raphael: I scared the shit out of you.

.
Leonardo: I remember that vividly, actually. I didn’t find anything that creepy about the whole thing. I found it really odd and different, but I wasn’t scared at any moment. I think none of us were really scared. Mostly we felt like we shouldn’t be invading the privacy of someone else. But I never felt like I was afraid of any of the things that he put out there. It just seemed really exotic and different. There are far more odd things in this world than what Michael Jackson was.

.
Raphael: The whole thing was just really an adventure, and going somewhere that nobody’s ever seen, and seeing all of this stuff, it was right after he left the country because of the molestation charges. So in our mind, it was like looking at everything more from that angle. There’s the kids’ stuff, there’s toys everywhere, there’s the huge arcade—a giant child-magnet.

.
Donatello: I don’t know. I don’t want the whole gist of this interview to back up those allegations toward the guy.

.

That’s OK. I was actually going to ask how much of the property you ended up being able to see?

.
Donatello: We pretty much saw everything except for the petting zoo area. We went to the arcade, the mansion, the amusement park rides, the railroad train station, all of the statue areas…

.

I’m shocked that you guys weren’t caught.

.
Donatello: We’re kind of professionals. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but… We do this a lot. We do a lot of research and recon. But also, it’s surprisingly low-key because there’s a guard truck down by the road, and we just avoided that guard truck, and once you’re past that, you’re in the valley, and you’re on your own, and it’s pretty desolate.
Raphael: Surprisingly, we just roamed about the grounds. Casually.

It’s a pretty huge space, isn’t it?

.
Raphael: Really big. We didn’t even get to the zoo, because it’s so far away.

.
Donatello: One other interesting thing—we did go in Michael's room, but both of the kids’ rooms were locked from the outside.

.
Raphael: We decided not to get into the kids’ rooms, because it didn’t seem right.

.

What about his toy room?

.
Raphael: It was maybe 60 feet by 30 feet, and filled with every toy you could imagine. Life-size Lego models, Darth Vader—all sorts of awesome toys.

.
Donatello: The other thing I remember is that there were game stations set up all around the house. Imagine those consoles for Super Nintendo that you might find at the Best Buy store, but set up with all different systems.

/

Was there anything adult in there? It all sounds like mostly kids’ stuff. And weird art.
[Laughter]

.
Raphael: There were a lot of big, lounge-y spaces with couches and all the strange art objects.

.
Donatello: I remember seeing really normal things, change lying on a coffee table and a little office space with a computer and typical home stuff.

.

Roughly how many rooms did he have? It's a mansion. It must’ve been fucking huge.

.
Leonardo: He probably had ten rooms, I would say. The mansion itself was not as huge as you’d think, but there were all of these other smaller buildings that we didn’t really go in.

.

Isn’t there a massive clock in the garden?

.
Donatello: Oh, dude, there’s all kinds of crazy shit in the garden.

.
Leonardo: Didn’t you take a picture of the clock with the hands stuck, and then you realized later on that you took the picture within three seconds of what the hands were stuck at?

.
Donatello: I did! There’s this clock that’s stopped around 2:55, and I just happened to snap the shot almost exactly at that same time, without even realizing it until a year later.

.Pretty serendipitous. Although, how did you know that it had been stopped?

.
Donatello: The power had been cut off, and the hands weren’t moving.

.

The house didn’t have any power?

.
Donatello: If I remember correctly, there was no power in the mansion but the water was working.

.

Did you guys use the bathroom?
[Laughter]

.
Donatello: I think we checked the water or something because we were just curious if it worked. What’s weird is that within his house, there was no dust. It was immaculate. The carpet was vacuumed, and there was no dust on any of those crazy sculpture or statues. That’s kind of why we were on edge—like, people are here. A lot of things were covered in vinyl-type tarps to protect them. But it was obvious that someone was in there cleaning, I would say, at least once a week, by how clean it was.

.

/

But he hadn’t lived there for a while…

.
Raphael: I think that’s what signified to Leonardo that he was OK to go in there.

.
Leonardo: The house is foreclosed, it’s basically derelict, defunct. That’s when it hit my radar.

.
Raphael: It’s probably obvious that we really only go to abandoned and defunct sites.

.

You don’t seem like paparazzi.

.
Raphael: We're paparazzi of bridges, maybe.

.

Thanks, guys.

A "giant child magnet". Indeed.

purplethunder3121 said:

he's sooo adorable

alphastreet said:

purplethunder3121 said:

he's sooo adorable

I had a big crush on Michael AND Barry back then...

It's more like a sweet, adorable crush, and during Bad, it was a naughty-naughty one

if the estate really wants to honor MJ's legacy

they need to release this one single tour

the world of the past 27 years have never seen this Michael Jackson, and that's fact

the best live performance show and tour MJ ever did

it would rock the planet

but I doubt that it will ever happen

way too much politics in effect

Scorp said:

if the estate really wants to honor MJ's legacy

they need to release this one single tour

the world of the past 27 years have never seen this Michael Jackson, and that's fact

the best live performance show and tour MJ ever did

it would rock the planet

but I doubt that it will ever happen

way too much politics in effect

Thats what i'm saying.A sencond leg Destiny Tour show, A Triumph Tour show, and A Victory Tour show should all be top priority releases. I will never understand how those shows havent been released yet.

dm3857 said:

Scorp said:

if the estate really wants to honor MJ's legacy

they need to release this one single tour

the world of the past 27 years have never seen this Michael Jackson, and that's fact

the best live performance show and tour MJ ever did

it would rock the planet

but I doubt that it will ever happen

way too much politics in effect

Thats what i'm saying.A sencond leg Destiny Tour show, A Triumph Tour show, and A Victory Tour show should all be top priority releases. I will never understand how those shows havent been released yet.

it's all about the image that's inhibiting this footage from seeing the light of day

too much politics, it would blow the lid off of everything

Scorp said:

if the estate really wants to honor MJ's legacy

they need to release this one single tour

the world of the past 27 years have never seen this Michael Jackson, and that's fact

the best live performance show and tour MJ ever did

it would rock the planet

but I doubt that it will ever happen

way too much politics in effect

It would make for a perfect 30th anniversary release. I do think this is superior to Bad tour in many ways, but want to see a clearer copy of the dallas show, I think it was. It amuses me how these have all leaked online and the solo tours are still pumped up by diehards and used in mashups more than these. Despite all the red tape at the time of these shows, they had great energy onstage as a family.

[Edited 8/4/14 20:50pm]

alphastreet said:

Scorp said:

if the estate really wants to honor MJ's legacy

they need to release this one single tour

the world of the past 27 years have never seen this Michael Jackson, and that's fact

the best live performance show and tour MJ ever did

it would rock the planet

but I doubt that it will ever happen

way too much politics in effect

It would make for a perfect 30th anniversary release. I do think this is superior to Bad tour in many ways, but want to see a clearer copy of the dallas show, I think it was. It amuses me how these have all leaked online and the solo tours are still pumped up by diehards and used in mashups more than these. Despite all the red tape at the time of these shows, they had great energy onstage as a family.

[Edited 8/4/14 20:50pm]

MJ was at his best on state when he performed w/his brothers because they were the ultimate self contained unit

all his solo tours include elements of what he did during the Triumph Tour

when he would disappear off the stage after singing working day and night then reappearing in a cloud of smoke for Black and White during the Dangerous Tour

that came from what he did during the triumph tour after disappearing in a trapped cage that Randy threw him in after sining Working Day and night and appearing in a cloud of smoke for don't stop til you get enough

all they would have to do is release these shows on DVD and the show would do all the talkin

dm3857 said: