Album Review: Michael Jackson- Xscape

So I think pretty much everyone had a collective feeling of apprehension when it was announced earlier this year that another posthumous Michael Jackson collection would be released—this time, taking eight unreleased songs from Jackson’s vault of material, and handing them over to contemporary producers to “update” their sound prior to unleashing them on the world.

The end result of that is Xscape, and the good news is that it is not the train wreck it could have been. Instead, in the revision and tinkering to the songs selected for this collection, it continues to showcase how ahead of his time Jackson was as a songwriter and performer, and that in 2014, even with fancy modern/contemporary production values and tricks, his voice, and his ideas, are shockingly relevant.

Because Jackson’s sound shifted so dramatically over the course of his (adult) solo career, it can be somewhat difficult to pin point where many of these songs originated from. The stand out of the bunch is clearly the opening track: disco-infused jam “Love Never Felt So Good,” a song that dates back over thirty years, placing it in the golden era of Jackson music. The original version of “Love Never” is just Jackson singing along to simple piano accompaniment, while the 2014 version allows the intended groove to really shine through without ever becoming completely derivative of the sound Jackson attained on Off The Wall. It also does more justice to such a well-written pop song than what Johnny Mathis did to it when he recorded it in 1984.

The modernization of these songs never fails per se, but in some cases, it seems like the original unreleased track should have been left alone—“Loving You” also probably dates back to the late 70s or early 80s, based on Jackson’s voice, as well as the dated sounding instrumentation. But it sounds amazing, fun, and to an extent, quaint. The updated mix on “Loving You” replaces the antiquated keyboards and drum machines with very “big” sounding synth bursts and current drum breaks—the kind of thing you often here in Top 40 hits.

That “big” kind of sound radiates throughout a bulk of Xscape—and there are moments when you compare the originals to their modernizations, you can really tell how bloated and overblown pop music has become in 2014. Latter day Jackson was obviously weighed down by the trappings of the times it came from—specifically the arrangements found on his final studio album Invincible.  But in contrast, listening to the original versions of these tracks, they sound rather sparse and almost minimal when placed side-by-side by these revisions.

There aren’t really any bad songs on Xscape but there are certainly tracks (both originals and revisions) that are more successful than others, and it’s sequenced so that it’s a tad top heavy with the stronger material. The “I didn’t know she was your wife” tale on “Chicago” seems like it’s a tad longer than necessary, but both the trap-drum included remix and the rather basic original both are great as a “story song.” The same goes for the America-borrowing “A Place With No Name,” while in the second half, the preachy “Slave to The Rhythm” and “Do You Know Where Your Children Are?” are still both catchy as hell, reminding you that even when Jackson isn’t 100% on, he’s was a great songwriter.

I was slightly worried that two versions of the same song would be a little much, but it is kind of fun listening to both the original Jackson tracks along with their revisions. However, one thing that Xscape could do without is the tacked on Justin Timberlake remix to “Love Never Felt So Good.” Just because Timberlake jump stared his solo career over a decade ago by singing songs intended for Jackson, doesn’t mean dude can just hop on this track, sing the second verse, throw in some ad-libs about dancing, and add in some additional percussive instruments.

Xscape’s intended audience is slightly unclear to me. There certainly are Jackson completists out there, and they more than likely heard all of these original tracks in bootlegged form at one point or another—so are they going to want to hear updated versions?

Releasing both these modernized versions in an attempt to appeal to a 2014 listening audience, along with the originals in an attempt to appeal to longtime fans of Jackson is an interesting, and slightly perplexing move on the part of Sony Music. There’s probably a reason that these eight songs were left on the cutting room floor of the albums they were intended for, or in the case of “Love Never Felt So Good,” never fully realized and left in a demo state for thirty plus years. Jackson would have more than likely never cobbled together these songs from various times in his career and released them in the form of what basically could be an EP—which is why allowing modern producers to remix them gives them a more cohesive feel, musically anyway.

Overall, this is a much more welcoming listen than 2010’s maligned Michael, a rough collection of material written and recorded in the late 2000s, much of which was unfinished at the time of Jackson’s passing. While Xscape is incredibly listenable, many of the songs somewhat inessential, except for the pure pop gold of “Love Never Felt So Good” which is among Jackson’s strongest material, posthumously released or otherwise, and as a whole, it is worth listening to at least once through, and comparing the differences between what the intended sound of these songs was, and what they sound like now.

Xscape is out right now, via Sony.