I know everybody thinks his first 3 releases are classics, a good portion also feel Dangerous is his best work since Off the Wall, however I think a majority of non-fans agree History is where his quality dropped drastically. This is the true END of MJ the artist, the man who could do no wrong musically.

For one thing this album had a lot of filler tracks unlike his first 4 releases, this album had about half filler tracks!

Also, way too many producers, the album is all over the place. Why did MJ ditch Teddy Riley when Dangerous became his 2nd best selling album of all time? That makes no sense. He cut out all of Teddy's tracks for History and used Jam/Lewis(WTF!).

What are the strong tracks? You are not alone, Scream, Stranger in Moscow, Tabloid Junkie, They Don't Really Care about us, and D.S. Of which YANA, Scream, and Stranger are classics.

The history era sucks, for one thing the videos aside from scream were crap, nothing as fun as remember the time, or ground breaking like black or white, etc. Nada. The less mentioned about that ridiculous You are not alone video the better...

HIs remix album BOTDF's non-remix tracks are entirely comprised of dangerous era tracks like Ghosts, Is it Scary, Blood on the Dancefloor, and Superfly Sister. All are dangerous rejects.

Next, all his songs are angry and pissed, it get's monotonous, one are two tracks like scream are fine, but the WHOLE album?! Give me a break!

The token rock track D.S. which is an enjoyable track is ass compared to classics like Beat it, Dirty Diana, and Give in to me....

Atleast Invincible had some wonderful tracks like Whatever Happens, Break of Dawn,etc that strayed from the forumla. History is by the book, and it's not even good pop, it's just MJ yelling into the mike over some beat....

Then they packaged the album with a greatest hits collection and made it more expensive. It's advertising showed that MJ was king of the world, while that may have been true during Bad and Dangerous, by 1995 that molestation case had hurt his career bad, History was his comeback album, let alone king of the world!

So you have bad music videos, 1 or 2 catchy tracks tops, 1/2 filler, too many producers, nearly all are paranoid/angry tracks, expensive, and not to mention reeking of ego?

A big disappointment. He ought to scrap the whole album, add teddy's tracks and re-release it....
[This message was edited Tue Apr 13 21:21:47 2004 by SylvesterStalloneMJ]

no...

and can we sorta bulk all these mj album quality threads into one broad question?

no, okay....fair enough....yet we all only have a few threads and posts allocated per day...dont force us to ration..


PLEASE!! I BEG OF YOU!!!

Too many producers? im reading the booklet and it was mostly done by mj aside from R.kelly and jimmy jam INVINCIBLE had too many producers!

History to me was masterful
its under-apreciated and was clouded by the scandal
but it was a great C.D. Minus a few tracks
the History/Dangerous re-jects on blood on the dancefloor were gems and should of been put on the original album
probably would of sweetened it more
History shows mj as a Musician an amazing song Writer
and wondeful singer
then there are the trax that ae less appealing
i believed those tracks need a few listens
like little susie,childhood,smile
masterful songs like Stranger And Moscown, they don't Care about us
is what makes it great
we had this discussion in npgmc
we agreed that with History
MJ really stayed true to the Art of music Rather then trying to zoom at the top of the Pops
but his creativity sparked in it
If MJ was more concerned with the art rather then Chasing thriller
he might find what hes looking for
Mj has really grown as a song writer the C.D. shows it

in invincible the only songs that were his were the lost children and speechless
not his fault , matolla did the song selection out of 150
he picked 2?
i get mixed feelings with invincible
it didn't feel like a mj C.D.
u miss the traemark HEE HEE's and Oh lawd and Lisps
[This message was edited Tue Apr 13 22:10:21 2004 by Luv4oneanotha]

I was disappointed with 'History'.A few good songs,but most of it sounds like a typical mid-90s R&B album."Earth Song" is great,though.

It could of been his best album. The singles were his best set set of singles of a single album. But some of the album tracks were shite, Come Together, Smile, Childhood etc. If you could take the singles plus Little Susie, 2 Bad and Money (Not a great song but a real solid album track) and replaced the rest you would have a great album. I would of loved to hear some of those Teddy Riley tracks.
The problem with the videos were there were no real dance videos. And the You are not alone video is like being clubed to death with his ego. The rest were pretty good though.
Promotion was all wrong, it was more of a personal record than the "Thriller" type record it was being marketted as. A growth in his artistry I think. Invincible was a step backwards cause it was back to 90% romance which I despise.

First of all... cool it with the MJ threads for a while. I'm a huge MJ fan and even i'm sick of it.

But to answer the quetion: It was an album he NEEDED to put out. It's his most personal and angry album ever. He needed to get a lot off of his chest. He was just straight up angry.

I think for the most part the songs are cool. There are maybe 4 songs that I think are just average. The rest are great IMO.

What's amazing is this album sounds so relevant today with the current case. It's almost like he is speaking about the current case on the album instead of 93. It's kinda creepy. He even takes a jab at the current DA who is prosecuting him (D.S., AKA T.S., AKA Tom Sneddon).

Actually... HIStory is the reason I didn't buy Invincible. It's like "hey here's a collection of angry songs I can't relate to". After shit like "D.S", I wasn't about to start pumping a track called "Privacy" or whatever that one about paparazzi was. "Childhood" I guess is a song very near and dear to Michael's heart, but it's not like I really care to listen to that. Fa real doe.

HIStory is a great album, though not as good as the 4 first MJ's albums. But almost as good. It has a few crappy songs, a few good songs and a few great songs. Actually, I think MJ had his first bad song in Dangerous-album. The 3 first ones were full of at least ok songs. But when he started to use samples and rap parts...

But Dangerous is a HUGE album. It has so many GREAT songs...but it has also a couple of bad songs. History is like Dangerous, but even more bad songs. But just listen to Earth Song or They Don't Care About Us...oh god, you know thaty those 2 songs were supposed to be in Dangerous-album? I wonder why he didn't use them...with them Dangerous would have been the greatest album EVER. That's my opinion.

I can not listen to whole album all the way through like his other albums! The 2CD thing really killed this albums potential! I already had all of disc 1 as had most of the world! That was a very bad,crap marketing by sony/MJ and those greedy bastards deserved an album which could of and would of done better and proberly would of sold 20 million (thats disc 2 by the way) if album was 1cd only! Charging doulbe th price was unfair and put many casual buyers off, but the album was still very sucsessfull by other artists standards but it did suffer because of this! (Should of released "2 bad" as a single too!)

Anyway, "Scream" is cool as is "History" (the track) and "Stranger in moscow"! "Stranger..." proves how good MJ the producer can be, the track is polished to perfection by Mj alone!

The real killer track is album cut "2 Bad", which to me is one of his best songs ever, and possibally one of the funkiest songs ever! That track is fun and has my man Shaq rapping in the middle after that awesome breakdown! Intro samples Run dmc which is also cool!

If he relesased albums every 2 years or so, people would forgive an album like "History" as this represents how angry he was over the 1993 case! But as he left it SOOOOO LONG people look at his previous album and think, that was pretty shit! Also all the hype and pressure would be off mike if he released an album every 2 years and hype and pressure is what brings his albums down! People expect it to be brillient because he has been years and years on it and it turns out just to be good or average! The publis expect his album to be perfect as the gap has been so long! Plus its very unfair on his fans!

thesexofit said:[quote]The 2CD thing really killed this albums potential! I already had all of disc 1 as had most of the world! That was a very bad,crap marketing by sony/MJ and those greedy bastards deserved an album which could of and would of done better and proberly would of sold 20 million (thats disc 2 by the way) if album was 1cd only! quote]

This had nothing to do with Mj - he was unhappy about it being a double also - reason being he thought ppl wouldnt be able to afford it!!!

IMO this album is some of the finest music/songwriting the man has ever put out - genius!!

The running order is a bit fucked and I'd have removed four or five songs but for the most part it's a good collection. Yeah, it's an angry record but he was an angry man. Dunno why Money and 2 Bad weren't released as singles. Error.

Money.....that was a great song.....i used to play that one over and over

I was never much of a fan of Dangerous, only because the New Jack Swing stuff on it sounds painfully dated. MJ is by no means the only person who ditched Teddy Riley in the 90s.

History probabbly would have fared better if he didn't do that god-awful short movie with him as a statue and hundreds of soldiers marching around him - then slap a picture of the whole thing right on the cover, to remind you of how full-of-himself he could be.

There's some very nice songs on History. I could have lived without the greatest hits disc, but oh well - it was an interesting packaging idea, since many people had probabbly already wore out their old MJ albums anyhow by that time.

I quite like History. It was the first album I heard. I bought it for the hits cd and I didn't think I'd like the new stuff. But I do. The only track I don't like is the cover of "Come Together". Wasn't that recorded many years before? Maybe late '80s?

It seemed very "angry" 2 me. I couldn't really get into it. Crtics gave good reviews i think, if that matters any.....i thought "Little Susie" was the worst thing he ever made on there....also only Michael could only dance 2 stuff like Earth Song...

HISTORY was the last "michael jackson" sounding album.

Invincible was terrible.

HIStory is his most revealing and autobiographical album, one of the most, if not the most artistic work he's done.
If Dangerous was daring, he took it even further with HIStory. It's a brave album.

Come Together was recorded in 1987/88 and it was included in Michael's Moonwalker video (to whoever asked it).

Off the Wall and Thriller are great. The rest of the albums suck, with one song on each one devoted to him whining like a multimillionaire pussy bitch how the media is all mean to him...boo fucking hoo.


.
[This message was edited Thu Apr 15 3:36:51 2004 by RupertZ]

I love disk 2 of the HIStory album. For me it's the ultimate 'post-Thriller-MJ' album. Sure it's a big ego trip and sure it sounds angry, but it was in such a way that i really enjoyed it. Let's run through it:
1. Scream (really great!)
2. They Don't Care About Us (really great!)
3. Stranger in Moscow (amazing!, really)
{what an opening sequence btw, i don't think i heard an album ever since that got me so excited}
4. This Time Around (decent, i guess. But out of place, and lacking the originality of other cuts)
5. Earth Song (amazing! nobody but MJ could've pulled that one off! He wrote and produced it, and it's classic)
6. D.S. (decent. I don't think it would've made the cut by normal MJ standards, but i guess he wanted to get the message accross, and he likes to have Slash play a guitar solo )
7. Money (good. It's not my kinda song, but it's again a different style that he made his own)
8. Come Together (good. ok, people shouldn't cover the Beatles, u cannot win. But i liked the energy a lot)
9. You Are Not Alone (good. Not really in synch with the rest of the album, and apart from the vocals, it's clear this is not an MJ-track. It is however a great R'nB ballad, and the delivery is flawless)
10. Childhood (decent. Sometimes i'd wish he never put these kinda songs on his albums. But than i realise there are 14 other songs for us to enjoy. Also, it's not a bad song, at all, it's just not something that you put on a pop album. Songs like Childhood, Little Susie, The Lost Children, ... are very MJ-world-in-your-face obsessions, presented in such a way that you cannot escape the message. There's just no audience for that.
11. Tabloid Junkie (good. It's not a track the will stuck in your head, but it's a great album track (for this album, at least). Again he's experimenting with sound and melody, taking it to the extreme and still crafting a song from it.
12. 2 Bad. (decent. I absolutely hate the production on this one, the beat, the raps, the intro, everything. But the song has an amazing hook, and the version you hear in the Ghosts short film prooves this)
13. HIStory (Great! Again, an only-MJ can do this kinda track. It's hard to imagine how much work goes in crafting a soundpiece (what it really is) like this.
14. See 10. But also listen to it with your stereo on max. It's heartbreaking and amazingly done if you let the emotions take you over.
15. Smile. It's a great finish to an amazing album. He overdoes it, which is a pitty, but his voice, oh my.

Now i'm gonna listen to it again

I wouldnt say HIStory was dissapointing, considering after the allegations everyone said he was over HIStory was a pretty cool comeback and reply; the album starts off really angry and aggressive, then when you were starting to get really sick with mjs rants and raves a track like stanger or yana would throw you back.
I think its heavily misguided: it seemed MJ just wanted to say to everyone he was pissed off and he was innocent, because perhaps many people couldn't relate it or didnt like to hear him moan so much (it is quite irratating). the album was just a reply it didnt really say anything new and almost ten years later hes saying the same things on Invincible. there was some really strong tacks on there, (i can think of 8) but surely one of his producers or even just friends must have said to him to lighten up a little, Im curious how well mj would write if he didnt have all this drama in his ilfe lol

To me, songs like They Don't Care About Us, Stranger In Moscow and Earth Song are some of the best of his whole career. It was his most un-eaven album until Invincible came out, but it was still the sh*t IMO. And he did prove that he was still kang when everybody said he was finished. Which other artist could come back from child molestation allegations and sell like HIStory did? And I have faith that once he is through with this case, he will do it again.

i prefer HIStory to Invincible.


yeah, it gets irritating hearing him sing over and over about how targeted he is, and how unfair his life is. but at the time, at least, it was new and kinda fresh, even if you got sick of it after about 5 songs.

on Invincible, he's still singing about that. and all same, annoying stuff he's always singing about.

HIStory at least has some edge. Invincible is him just rehashing the same stuff.

WildStyle said:

That's 4sho. Only he can still place invincible on a chart at no 1, even if for a very brief time. Only MJ could still tour and pull in thousands of people after 1993. But i agree with some1 here, he should stop moaning and groaning about himself being the "victim" on these albums, and take it back where he started....i mean every album after Thriller has had a track like "privacy", but under a different guise.

WildStyle said:

R. Kelly.

VoicesCarry said:

In the end Talent Overides Contreversy
Pied Piper is making bail money

Luv4oneanotha said:

And he needs bail money for....? The dude isn't even in jail.
[This message was edited Fri Apr 16 4:19:04 2004 by VoicesCarry]

VoicesCarry said:

R. Kelly has never done MJ numbers. Also alot of people don't even find anything wrong with what R did (it was a girl, it was a BLACK girl). But that's a whole other subject . But I do see your point.

WildStyle said:

Good Point
i don't find it wrong lol
but thats just me lol

WildStyle said:

Just some interesting stats:

R (1997) - 8 million
12 Play (1993) - 6 million
R. Kelly (1995) - 5 million
Dangerous (1991) - 7 million
Invincible (2001) - 2 million

We like to think of "MJ numbers" as being what Thriller and Bad shifted, but those are exceptions in a noteworthy career.

Chocolate Factory sold comparably to HIStory (3 million vs. 3.5 million). Also Invincible, come to think of it. Yes, HIStory is certified 7x platinum but as it's a double album it has actually shifted only half that amount. In the same way that Shania Twain and OutKast have been "certified" for 10 million, but have only sold 5 million apiece. The US is about the only place where MJ's numbers have been affected by his scandals.
[This message was edited Fri Apr 16 9:35:09 2004 by VoicesCarry]

Luv4oneanotha said:

Oh yeah, statutory rape is 100% A-OK