Last night, a new Michael Jackson single premiered at that weird radio awards show thing where they pretend that people actually like radio nowadays (spoiler alert: no one “hearts” radio). But there was a pot of gold at the end of that stupid radio rainbow – a new (old) Michael Jackson song called “Love Never Felt So Good.” Survey says: It’s pretty damn good!
Yep. That’s right, gentle readers. A second posthumous MJ record is on its way, arriving in stores (do stores exist anymore?) May 9. The disc entitled Xscape follows 2010’s Michael, which as far as posthumous albums go, wasn’t so bad despite all the controversy and junk. But I guess controversy and the Jackson Estate kind of go hand in hand.
Please, spare me all of the “Michael wouldn’t have wanted this” nonsense. You’re right and it’s true, but no artist as mega as The King of Pop can pass away and be pardoned from posthumous releases. The music industry (and the Jackson Estate) is far too greedy to not capitalize on a tragedy like this. So hey. Here’s a new MJ tune. You can listen or not listen at your discretion.
The track sounds like classic Michael circa 1983. Then they did a version of Justin Timberlake pissing all over it. A deluxe edition of the album will include all of the songs in their original forms in case you aren’t so down with the bullshit contemporary production that will probably suck the soul out of the original mixes. If you’re a die-hard fan, chances are you’ll at least want to stream it a couple times.
Here’s the single in its original form, and below that, the inferior Timberlake edition.
Posthumous music is always a mixed bag. One of my favorites is the Karen Carpenter solo album. It was shelved by her label in 1980 for not cutting it, and finally saw the light of day in the ’90s. One word: DISCO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUyiebRgGE
Some of it is pretty bad (to me, it’s of the “so bad, it’s good” variety), but some of it’s among her best. Still happy I can listen to it nonetheless, and the bad songs are surprisingly uplifting.
To get on topic, however, I like the approach they’re taking of putting modern production touches on it, similar to Notorious B.I.G., but it makes me nervous they have a multi-album deal… I suspect they’ll be scraping the bottom of the barrel at a certain point. And this album’s not even 10 tracks, IIRC.
I guess I’m more of a purist…I’d rather hear any existing Michael material sound as close to his vision as possible, even if it is dated. But that’s just me! They probably want to make some $$$ so they’ve got to modernize it.
I’ll check out some of the Karen Carpenter!
They should probably do both – CDs have enough room – why not include both the original demo/cut and the modernized? Could be a really cool way to make both happen.
With Carpenter, her brother released some of the music in a remixed form over the years, while the 1996 album release had the tracks as her and Phil Ramone (her producer) had OK’d it. So that sort of accomplishes the same goal.
So as it turns out there’s a deluxe edition on iTunes with the original versions. They clearly know what they’re doing 🙂
Totally. Glad the originals will exist our there too! Apparently the regular version was removed from YouTube.
This song was playing when my radio alarm went off this morning. 100% forgettable.