Michael Jackson

It was Aug 31, 1987, when Michael Jackson released an album that made history. Bad soon became the second best-selling album at the times (the first was and still is Thriller, always by… Michael Jackson!). After Off the wall and Thriller the King leveraged for the third and last time the collaboration of Quincy Jones. Hard to say whether it’s better Thriller or this new album; the albums are quite different, Michael himself was a different person after 5 years, grown and changed both from an artistical and personal perspective, in a pop world that he contributed to create with Thriller, and that now featured new stars like Madonna and Prince, in the US, and with all the Brit pop of Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, and others. Moreover, in 1982 Thriller just needed to fill the 40 minutes of a vinyl record, while this album had to fill also the 70 minutes of a cd. Anyway, it’s a fact that Bad entered in history as well, and it’s still one of the key albums (and videos) of the 80s

I love Michael Jackson because he is a legend. A freakin’ legend! But even legends should not get automatic passes for everything that they put out. All legends are susceptible to creative misses, or sometimes even being out of touch with the ‘times.’ To the best of my knowledge, Michael Jackson’s 2001 album Invincible was his last album that had all-original music. Of course, a more recent album like 2014’s XSCAPE does have re-done recordings (that were basically old unproduced songs that were remixed for the production), but he wasn’t alive when this was released, so it is a little bit of a different situation. With Invincible, the album is not unlistenable, yet suffers from not offering much more than it’s few singles, such as “You Rock My World”, “Cry”, and “Butterflies.” Yes, these singles, especially “You Rock My World” and “Butterflies”, are actually classics today. Whenever these songs come on, I can’t help but start rocking my shoulders, or when I am really feeling it, doing my best Michael Jackson impersonation. But many of the other songs I feel just either sound too similar to one another, or severely lack that ‘hit’ factor. Such a shame, because look at the timing: this album came out in 2001. Meaning, in the 10 years between this album and MJ’s death, he didn’t add anything that I know of to his catalogue. Yes – it is sort of frustrating. But thank god for his ‘eternal’ catalogue – always there for fans like me.