Glad it's getting some love. One of my favs from that album. MJ back to creamy rnb on that one.

Much prefer it to "Butterflies", which fair enough, got alot more praise at the time.

Of course, one would assume "Heaven can wait" woulda been a single. We shall never know

thesexofit said:

RODSERLING said:

Was very surprised when Sony announced they promoted Butterflies and Heaven Can Wait in the US, instead of the European singles. I thought it was a commercial suicide and would never work. I was wrong.

I'm not sure what is popular in European countries has to do with the USA. If Mike did a duet with Garth Brooks, then it would likely be a big hit in the US, because Garth is a big name here. It does not matter if country music is popular in the UK or wherever. In the same way, This Time Around would be a successful single in the US, because Notorious B.I.G. is on it and hip hop is one of the most popular genres. Much of Mariah Carey's career is releasing collabo singles with rappers. I've heard that A-ha is very popular in Europe, but they're a "one hit wonder" in the US.

MickyDolenz said:

RODSERLING said:

Yes, but Butterflies and Heaven Can Wait are not featuring with big names, and they were clearly not the kind of things that were broadcast in European radios.

But was New Jack Swing popular in Europe? How about Bobby Brown? They were in the USA, so Mike worked with Teddy Riley on Dangerous. Michael Jackson is an American singer, so I would think he would primarily focus on what is popular in his home country, It's not like he did music that was mainly popular in the UK like "drums & bass". As far as I know, the blues and R&B was not that popular in Europe until British acts like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, & early Fleetwood Mac started doing it. The Beatles also had some country style songs and traditional Indian music sounds, which were probably not well known in European countries either.

RODSERLING said:

By the way, This Time Around was a flop on the radio

It was never released as a single in the US. There was a promo single for DJs, but no commercial single to buy. At that time, Billboard only counted physical singles in their singles charts. If an album track got heavy radio play, it still would not chart, because nobody could buy it. If somebody wanted it, they had to buy the album. Isn't She Lovely was never a single in the US, because Stevie Wonder did not want it edited down to fit on a 45. If you put too much time on a 45, it would lose sound quality. Also a lot of Top 40 stations would not usually play longer songs, but R&B radio would. I used to hear the entire 15 minutes of Rapper's Delight. But Isn't She Lovely got a lot of radio airplay and it is one of his best known songs.

MickyDolenz said:

RODSERLING said:

There were many airplay charts, and This Time Around never really took off. Billboard's Dance Music/Club Play Singles[7] 18 Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay[8] 23 Billboard Rhythmic Top 40[7] 36 It was even worst than for They Don't Care About Us, that was banned from the radios. That's part of the reason why it wasn't released on physical singles.

But airplay charts don't really mean anything and not every radio station is tracked. That would be impossible to do. There's way too many different radio formats in the US. The USA is a large place, and some songs and/or artists might only be played in certain areas of the country. Genres like zydeco & Tejano are more popular in the south. There's gospel radio. In general, gospel and Christian rock songs were not always released as physical singles. College radio is more likely to play lesser known acts & genres that don't get played on commercial radio and even local bands/singers. Even with a particular genre, there's different radio formats like AOR, alternative rock, college rock, indie rock, classic rock, Americana, heavy metal, and so on.

MickyDolenz said:

RODSERLING said:

Then what are implying? There were some states where the track was a hit?

Yes, certain cites and/or states can have hits primarily to itself. They're called "regional hits". Radio stations that play salsa, Tejano, & merenge are more likely going to be popular where there is a Latino population (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, etc) and less popular if a town is primarily rural white people. A radio station that plays Bollywood movie songs is going to be in an area where there is a larger Indian population. "Southern soul" is more likely to be played in southern states than northern ones. House music is more likely to be popular in New York City than in Waco TX. Not everything played on the radio is tracked, If I listen to a college radio station, there's songs that they may play often, but is played on no other station. The stations that are tracked are more likely to be owned by Clear Channel or iHeart. That's why I said airplay charts don't mean anything. I remember there used to be 2 local Top 40 stations, one played more rock music than the other. And the other played more dance music and adult contemporary. But they were both the same radio format. The US isn't like a place that only has one radio station like the BBC.

MickyDolenz said:

So the streams went up a bit for that song and that means it's a worldwide hit? Don't ge me wrong, it's quite remarkable that it gets some attention after 21 years, especially considering that invincible is by far his worst album, but I've not heard anything about it until I saw this thread here. I even googled the title and no media outlet really talked about it. The streams went up a bit and maybe, those numbers are remarkable for this specific album, but they're not much compared to others. To me it seems like the streams went up because some kids on tik tok made an awful remix for a mediocre song.

RODSERLING said:

When an album is falling in the charts, and its current radio single doesn't take off, and nobody knows that song, maybe it's just because the song is a flop on the radio.

Just because a song is not a radio hit does not mean nobody knows it. There's thousands of albums released every year all over the world in many languages. Just because you don't know the music does not mean it's a flop. If people knowing about songs and/or artists can only be known because it got a lot of radio airplay, then how do jazz records sell? A lot of it is instrumental and instrumental music rarely got Top 40 radio airplay, especially past the 1970s. Same for gospel music, blues, folk, techno, or death metal. In the 1960s acts like Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass and Kenny G in the 1980s sold a lot of albums doing instrumentals. I've never heard any opera on Top 40, and there's an audience for that. I've never heard Baby Shark on the radio either, yet it has over 10 billion views on Youtube. Which is a lot more views than all of those old radio hits. The Beatles & Michael Jackson don't have any videos that are 10 billion. Neither does currently popular acts like Adele & BTS.

ThatWhiteDude said:

MickyDolenz said:

RODSERLING said:

I happened to hear Baby Shark 30 times a day. Just depends on the age of your kids😄 Sure, the 20 millions people who bought History surely must know about This Time Around. But what I meant was the song didn't take off on the radio, and it didn't sell the album too. So maybe because Sony didn't really push for that somg, maybe because MJ didn't do a video, or maybe it wasn't the right time to release it. But if you take another song from this album, They Don't Care About Us, it got no airplay in the US, but became a kind of a hit when it got viral in the of the 2000's. So This Time Around don't even have the popularity of a song like Heaven Can Wait

How many #1 songs from the 1910s or 1920s can you identify? I'd guess that more people today would know Bad To The Bone, which wasn't a big hit, over a big hit single from 1926. There's probably thousands of old forgotten hits. Oldies & classic rock radio only play certain songs and/or artists over and over (Don't Stop Believin', Freebird, Every Breath You Take, Funky Cold Medina, etc). They don't play everything that was popular in the past. Many people know TV show theme songs, which weren't usually singles. If they watched the show every week (or almost everyday with programs like soap operas, reruns, or game shows), then they know the songs. I think a lot of people know the main theme from the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, which had no Top 40 airplay. There was a disco version of Star Wars by Meco that got radio airplay though. I know the tune from the Ms. Pac Man arcade game if I hear it. It wasn't on the radio.

MickyDolenz said:

RODSERLING said:

Really, I can't understand what was happening in Sony's head to promote This Time Around

It wasn't promoted and it wasn't released as a single in the USA. Only a promo single for DJs was pressed. A lot of promo singles and/or albums for different artists were made and the albums/singles were never released. Anyway you must not know the popularity of Notorious B.I.G. (or hip hop in general) if you think This Time Around is a bad choice for a single. Biggie Smalls pretty much put out only one album while alive but there was a biopic made about him. Puff Daddy's tribute song to Biggie (I'll Be Missing You) was a huge hit in the USA. There was also a promo single for We Be Ballin', which is a song by Ice Cube & Shaq with Michael Jackson singing the hook. Technically, it was a remix for Ice Cube's We Be Clubbin', but Mike is not on that version. We Be Ballin' was never released or played on the radio, but the original song did get airplay

MickyDolenz said:

RODSERLING said:

This Time Around was promoted, there were a lot of remixes made by Sony *. There was also a sticker on the promo singles to link it to the HBO concert, further canceled, and that's the whole story for me. A single that is not promoted cannot have so much remixes and make sone charting s anyway.

A promo single is not a commercial single. A single is something people can buy in a store like a 45, a 12", a cassette single, or a CD single. I have a promo album by a girl group called LuvHer. They were discovered by Sisqó from Dru Hill. Only a single was released, but the album was cancelled and then the group broke up. They even performed the single on Soul Train. A promo is something that is made for radio and club DJs. It is given to them to play, they don't buy it. Promos always have something stamped on it saying "not for sale", although some used record stores would sometimes get copies. Albums or singles get cancelled all the time. Jermaine Jackson recorded an album with the MBFB guys in Philly during the mid 1970s, but Berry Gordy cancelled the album. Probably because The Jacksons were working with the same guys when they were doing the Gamble & Huff albums. Prince's Black Album was cancelled in the 1980s, but some copies had been printed. Madonna did a collabo with Tupac. The song was released on the Bedtime Story album, but Tupac's part was left off. But the collabo version has leaked.

RODSERLING said:

The point is, you don't release a commercial physical single of a promo single that don't get airplay.

It didn't get played because it wasn't promoted. "Promotion" is code for payola. That's pretty much how songs get on commercial radio, the labels "pay for play". That's why most hits come from artists on major labels, who can afford to pay a bunch of radio stations. They have power too, that how CBS threatened to remove their other artists like Journey & Bruce Springsteen if MTV would not show the Billie Jean video. MTV would show few if any Black performers in the beginning. Even David Bowie talked about it. Also Black artists usually had to "crossover" to pop radio and it wasn't done with most. A small label generally can't afford to pay or has much clout. At one time, some radio DJs or station programmers could choose what they wanted to play, like a Frankie Crocker or Alan Freed. Even then, it sometimes involved payola. Alan Freed would get songwriting credits on some songs, although he had nothing to do with writing. So he got royalties instead of a 1 time fee like most payola. As royalties, he was less likely to get in trouble than with a payout. It wasn't always money, they might have gotten cars or drugs or women or fur coats. I think James Brown would pay DJs himself during the 1960s. Major labels would also pay radio stations and record stores to say a record or song was more popular or less popular than it really was. The labels would make a record fail on purpose for a tax writeoff, to teach the artis a lesson, or if they knew the artist was getting ready to leave to go to another label. Like Motown didn't do much promotion on the later Jackson 5 albums because they were going to CBS Records. Motown also sued the group & their father Joe Jackson and said they owned the name "Jackson 5". That's why they were renamed "The Jacksons". Teena Marie wanted to leave Motown in the early 1980s, but they wouldn't let her out of her contract, nor release any records from her. She sued and won, and there was even a law named for Teena's case (Brockert Initiative). A similar thing happend to Tori Amos at Atlantic Records. When Michael Jackson started talking about "Tommy Matolla is the devil", Epic stopped promoting Invincib;e

When I heard the song for the first time (I could've been 11?), it made me cry. I'm OK with it now though.

MickyDolenz said: