CynicKill said:

I'm impressed.

MichaelJackson5 hijacked this thread like a BOSS, and with such ease to boot.

How Do you do it?

Sho'nuff did!

SoulAlive said:

I can't believe all the bullshit I am reading on this thread.The Bee Gees' Spiris Having Flown album was one of the biggest albums of 1979.There were three number one singles on that record! Stop trying to re-write history

That isn't saying much considering how poor album sales were in 1979. Once the HeeBeeGeeBees released their parody, it was officially over for the Gibb brothers in pop music for over 10 years until One managed to be a hit in 1989.

Barry Gibb didn't need to sing in his falsetto voice on a ballad like Too Much Heaven...he used his lower voice on How Deep is Your Love and it was way better because of it.

The Bee Gees did manage to write hits for Streisand, Dionne Warwick and Kenny Rogers. But US radio stations wouldn't touch You Win Again with a ten foot pole back in 1987 despite it being a great song.

CynicKill said:

I'm impressed.

MichaelJackson5 hijacked this thread like a BOSS, and with such ease to boot.

How Do you do it?

When your a troll its always easy to hijack threads

I am very excited to get home from work today to introduce myself to theesee HeeBeeGeeBees.

SoulAlive said:

^^the album sold around 35 million copies around the globe.Those figures are nothing to sneeze at.

This dude said that Bad wasn't a commercial success because it sold less than Thriller.

Doesn't surprise me that he would think an album selling 35 million copies isn't good.

MotownSubdivision said:

MotownSubdivision said:

SoulAlive said:

^^the album sold around 35 million copies around the globe.Those figures are nothing to sneeze at.

This dude said that Bad wasn't a commercial success because it sold less than Thriller.

Doesn't surprise me that he would think an album selling 35 million copies isn't good.

In my mind...........if you can get 500,000 plus people to buy your album, it is a success.

That is separate from how much it cost to produce, marketing and other considerations.

[Edited 12/10/15 12:29pm]

SoulAlive said:

MotownSubdivision said:

This dude said that Bad wasn't a commercial success because it sold less than Thriller.

Doesn't surprise me that he would think an album selling 35 million copies isn't good.

Yeah,that guy is crazy most artists would love to have a "flop" album like that,lol Any album that sells millions of copies is a success.It doesn't matter if their previous album sold more.

Especially when your previous release is the greatest selling album of all time. Such a fair comparison

Graycap23 said:

MotownSubdivision said:

This dude said that Bad wasn't a commercial success because it sold less than Thriller.

Doesn't surprise me that he would think an album selling 35 million copies isn't good.

In my mind...........if you can get 500,000 plus people to buy your album, it is a success.

That is separate from how much it cost to priduce, marketing and other considerations.

True. I don't think MJ had that problem until Dangerous though when he got really bad (no pun intended) at meeting album deadlines.

Graycap23 said:

MotownSubdivision said:

This dude said that Bad wasn't a commercial success because it sold less than Thriller.

Doesn't surprise me that he would think an album selling 35 million copies isn't good.

In my mind...........if you can get 500,000 plus people to buy your album, it is a success.

That is separate from how much it cost to produce, marketing and other considerations.

[Edited 12/10/15 12:29pm]

>

I think it's a general frame of reference until albums started selling Mega in the 70's. I think "Frampton Comes Alive" was the starting point.

But I think there's a reason gold certification started at 500,000. That's a LOT of albums.

NorthC said:

Don't shoot the messenger.

A troll is not a messenger. There was no need to bring Mike up in the 1st place, since the OP was not about him unless he's the "Woman Of The Year" the letter mentions. And what he looks like has nothing to do with the Billboard letter at all.

MickyDolenz said:

MichaelJackson5 said:

MickyDolenz said:

A troll is not a messenger. There was no need to bring Mike up in the 1st place, since the OP was not about him unless he's the "Woman Of The Year" the letter mentions. And what he looks like has nothing to do with the Billboard letter at all.

Don't blame me for diverting this thread. You are the one who's first post was that Billboard had a history of making certain artists look more popular than they were. I said it might explain why MJ had 5 No.1s from Bad when most of the American public were not too fond of him by 1987. Then you wanted a debate with me but you came up empty when push came to shove.

First off, let me start out by saying I'm am not a Micheal Jackson fan in any way, shape or form. But, as far as "Bad" is concerned, there are still a couple of tracks off that album that stay in regular rotation on Adult R&B radio to this very day, which is more than I can say for most other songs that were hot back in '87 and have been tossed aside by radio or only being played on those weekend nights when they are "digging thru the crates".

MichaelJackson5 said:

Don't blame me for diverting this thread. You are the one who's first post was that Billboard had a history of making certain artists look more popular than they were.

I said the record labels sometimes paid stores & radio DJs what to report and that they sometimes bought their own records, not anything about Billboard itself. Payola is no big secret and is related to the topic. Most records get on the radio by payola, so picking out Mike out of the thousands of acts over the decades makes no sense, like only he benefited from it and nobody else has. You also brought up Mike in the Commodores thread when no one else had said anything about him, even putting up his tour schedule. So what's your excuse there?

Cinny said:

MickyDolenz said:

I thought it was either Slippery When Wet by Bon Jovi or Licensed To Ill by the Beastie Boys (at least in the US).

Ooh, that hits home. That's is a more accurate memory.

I heard Bon Jovi on the radio way more than U2. Although in the neighborhood where I lived, it was the Beasties, since rap was the thing. There wasn't many who listened to pop radio like me, rather than the R&B station or Video Soul only like my folks and 98% of the people around me.

MickyDolenz said:

MichaelJackson5 said:

Don't blame me for diverting this thread. You are the one who's first post was that Billboard had a history of making certain artists look more popular than they were.

I said the record labels sometimes paid stores & radio DJs what to report and that they sometimes bought their own records, not anything about Billboard itself. Payola is no big secret and is related to the topic. Most records get on the radio by payola, so picking out Mike out of the thousands of acts over the decades makes no sense, like only he benefited from it and nobody else has. You also brought up Mike in the Commodores thread when no one else had said anything about him, even putting up his tour schedule. So what's your excuse there?

In the 70s and 80s before Soundscan, Billboard charts were tabulated by having the magazine contact record stores across the country to survey what was selling and what wasn't so if a record company was paying stores to report higher sales than actual, they'd reach artificially higher positions on the singles and album charts.

And considering the remarks Terrence Trent D'arby made about Jackson's power at CBS/Epic, MJ came to mind as an artist who's record company would do almost anything to keep the perception that he was still a red hot artist during the late 80s.

MJ comes to my mind because I followed his chart positions during the Bad (and even Dangerous and HIStory Eras) and it was surprising to see him land 5 consecutive No.1s when the record buying public didn't seem too keen on him at the record stores I visited from 1987-1989. Even when I purchased my copy of Bad on August 31, 1987 there were no lineups. Racks upon racks of Bad were available.

I mentioned him in the Lionel Richie thread because he and MJ shared similar career paths, starting out at Motown, branching out and peaking commercially at the same time from 83-85 which is why they led the American pop industry to help Africa, co-writing We Are The World. They were two of the biggest black artists in America at the time.

They also both followed up their most popular albums with albums devoid of the R&B elements which made them superstars in the first place.

I posted the Victory and Bad Tour schedules to emphasize to MotownSubdivisions how many fans MJ had lost by 1987 going from stadiums to arenas within just three years. That was a little out of place and belongs in the MJ thread but some fans in that thread would rather believe the king of pop bullshit than reality.

[Edited 12/10/15 20:20pm]

SoulAlive said:

^^the album sold around 35 million copies around the globe.Those figures are nothing to sneeze at.

I haven't fouund one link that claims Spirits Having Flown sold 35 million worldwide. Wikipedia list total sales at 20 million.

lol @ Prince tweeting out this mess

SoulAlive said:

but is it really necessary to drag Michael into threads that aren't even about him? There is an MJ sticky for you to discuss him

Thank you. I've always praised this site (org: Non-Prince) for its diversity, musical knowledge and sophistication. For the a couple of years now, this site has spiraled down to being a kiddy "Teen Beat". MJ has a sticky, take that shit over to that sticky / thread.... type and talk away.

I can assist anyone who wants to buildi/ construct a Website about MJ and his whole fucking family. I'll help you build it but I will not help maintain the website.

Good Fuckin Grief !!!

TD3 said:

I can assist anyone who wants to build/ construct a Website about MJ and his whole fucking family. I'll help you build it but I will not help maintain the website.

http://www.mjjcommunity.com

MichaelJackson5 said:

duccichucka said:

These are not reasons! For example: you think "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" didnt deserve
to be a number one because it lacked proper "star power." That' such an arbitrary way to
assess the merits of a song becoming number one. There are TONS of songs that became
number one with singers who didn't have "star power."

You say "Bad" is a weak song; but there are TONS of "weak songs" (I wish you would define
this term, but I know what you mean) that became number one. You also criticize "Bad" for
lacking street cred; this is ridiculous. There are TONS of songs that became number one that
didn't have "street cred."

Your reasons for considering "Dirty Diana" unworthy of any special distinction like being number
one is also ridiculous. Just because metal fans were turned off by this tune doesn't mean that
it doesn't deserve a number one ranking - another arbitrary way for assessment on your part.

Asking me to tell you why these songs deserve to be number one is not my point. My point
was to only discover how you determine a song deserves to be number one. And it looks like
your criteria for songs becoming number one doesn't really have any consistency and doesn't
appeal to some type of musical standard. All you are doing here is just telling us why you
don't like these songs. But there are TONS of songs that became number one despite you
or me disliking them. But here's my real point:

I don't think there is a sturdy blueprint that is inviolable and can tell us how/why a song becomes
number one - it's almost like a crap shoot, for the public's taste is just so fluid and dynamic.
I appreciate how thoughtful your posts are, though. This forum is filled with dimwits and nitwits.

I don't want to offend fellow MJ fans here. But when it comes down to it, Michael Jackson had much less star power in America after he changed his face.

Most of his African American fans stopped supporting Bad. That's a huge demographic there.

The majority of white suburban teenage girls also didn't find him appealing any longer and teenage boys followed.

Nobody at my college was talking about him or playing his music. There didn't seem to be much support from young adults.

The adults, which Thriller and OTW appealled to, were also abandoning him in droves.

The only group that he had a grip on were young kids 14 and under. That's why his 4 part Pepsi commercial, The Price of Fame, played out like a video game.

The storyline for the Smooth Criminal video was equally childish. These young kids made up the majority of his fan base in America.

This is why MJ needed Whitney Houston for IJCSLY. It's why he wanted Prince for Bad. He probably realized around mid 1986 that he was taking a huge gamble with his surgical transformation. And he miscalculated with that gamble.

So while lesser songs have reached No.1, MJ songs and especially his videos, limited his potential for massive No.1 hits or even one week chart-toppers.

Most of the singles from the Bad album had a short chart run and tapered off very fast straight out of the Top 40 on the pop charts. Stations played the singles heavily the first 4-5 weeks so the possibility of payola is definitely there given that most people no longer professed to be Michael Jackson fans in the United States....at least not openly in public. Most folks were embarassed to even admit liking him or his music from 1987 onward so probably weren't calling stations to request his songs.

So it is odd that a man whose primary fans were pre-pubescent children managed 5 consecutive No.1 singles when that demographic has never dictated radio play to such an extent.

There were skits on Saturday Night Live in the late 80s poking fun at Michael Jackson, and in a vicious fashion. It wasn't "cool" to like Michael Jackson after all the strange stories and plastic surgery that made him nearly unrecognizable to his former fans.

Check out this new report the day of the album's release:

There is absolutely nothing in this post that explains why MJ's other songs don't sound like
number one material, on top of you making big ass assumptions about MJ's interaction with
the music biz with/and his art.

SoulAlive said:

but is it really necessary to drag Michael into threads that aren't even about him? There is an MJ sticky for you to discuss him

NOOOO

We don't want him in the sticky either! Its a troll. Its trying to instigate drama.

duccichucka said:

MichaelJackson5 said:

I don't want to offend fellow MJ fans here. But when it comes down to it, Michael Jackson had much less star power in America after he changed his face.

Most of his African American fans stopped supporting Bad. That's a huge demographic there.

The majority of white suburban teenage girls also didn't find him appealing any longer and teenage boys followed.

Nobody at my college was talking about him or playing his music. There didn't seem to be much support from young adults.

The adults, which Thriller and OTW appealled to, were also abandoning him in droves.

The only group that he had a grip on were young kids 14 and under. That's why his 4 part Pepsi commercial, The Price of Fame, played out like a video game.

The storyline for the Smooth Criminal video was equally childish. These young kids made up the majority of his fan base in America.

This is why MJ needed Whitney Houston for IJCSLY. It's why he wanted Prince for Bad. He probably realized around mid 1986 that he was taking a huge gamble with his surgical transformation. And he miscalculated with that gamble.

So while lesser songs have reached No.1, MJ songs and especially his videos, limited his potential for massive No.1 hits or even one week chart-toppers.

Most of the singles from the Bad album had a short chart run and tapered off very fast straight out of the Top 40 on the pop charts. Stations played the singles heavily the first 4-5 weeks so the possibility of payola is definitely there given that most people no longer professed to be Michael Jackson fans in the United States....at least not openly in public. Most folks were embarassed to even admit liking him or his music from 1987 onward so probably weren't calling stations to request his songs.

So it is odd that a man whose primary fans were pre-pubescent children managed 5 consecutive No.1 singles when that demographic has never dictated radio play to such an extent.

There were skits on Saturday Night Live in the late 80s poking fun at Michael Jackson, and in a vicious fashion. It wasn't "cool" to like Michael Jackson after all the strange stories and plastic surgery that made him nearly unrecognizable to his former fans.

Check out this new report the day of the album's release:

There is absolutely nothing in this post that explains why MJ's other songs don't sound like
number one material, on top of you making big ass assumptions about MJ's interaction with
the music biz with/and his art.

The Bad album was catered towards little kids. The songs lacked the intangibles and sophisticaion to be No.1 and they only reached it either through payola or due to the tail-end of Thriller's momentum. Without Thriller, there's no way this album comes close to generating 5 No.1 hits. Real No.1s usually last more than 14 weeks in the Hot 100 charts. And Jackson alienated his key supporters such as blacks, adults, tweens, rockers. There wasn't a single large and influential demographic that was still fans of him.

The only demographic which supported him were little kids and very young prepubescent teenagers. Top 40 radio has always catered primarily to white teenage girls and they were no longer interested in Michael Jackson and his new face, new skin color.

MichaelJackson5 said:

mjscarousal said: