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Dec 9, 2010The material on Michael is not by any means a deep dive into the Jackson archives; nearly all the songs are culled from the last five years of his life.
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Jan 11, 2011Who knows whether the notoriously megalomaniacal Jackson would approve of this album-people on both sides of that argument have valid points-but as a start-to-finish collection of songs it's more enjoyable and less filler-stuffed than anything he's released since Bad, a minor miracle given the circumstances.
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Dec 15, 2010The result is shockingly better than might be expected - and in some ways superior to his final regular studio album, 2001's uneven and bloated Invincible.
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Dec 13, 2010If his family and creditors truly cared about Michael Jackson's legacy, they would now let it and him rest in peace. And chimps will fly...
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Dec 14, 2010We'll never know what Jackson really would've done with these songs but this is the first of, no doubt, many guesses we'll get that hopefully won't yield diminishing returns.
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Jan 10, 2011While nothing on this record comes close to rivaling any of his past material, you can't deny the urge to indulge yourself in something labeled, "new Michael Jackson," and that's where Michael succeeds.
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Dec 15, 2010This far less satisfying collection of gussied-up outtakes and posthumously completed tracks shifts the focus back to the packaging that progressively dehumanized Jackson.
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Dec 15, 2010This is not a Michael Jackson album. Jackson was one of pop's biggest fussbudgets: Even when his songs were half-baked, the production was pristine. He would not have released anything like this compilation, a grab bag of outtakes and outlines assembled by Jackson's label.
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Dec 10, 2010Michael rarely serves up anything that will have its listeners making a b-line for the dance floor.
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Dec 10, 2010If there is a heaven, and if Tupac, Cobain, Presley et al made it through the gates, chances are they're consoling a wincing, visibly embarrassed Jackson, cursing his inability to bolt the demos drawer in Neverland's vaults just that little bit tighter.
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Jan 3, 2011Michael Jackson's career might have plummeted in the last 20 years, but in death, his cultural significance and nostalgia offer enough so that new music is greeted with hushed reverence. It's enough reason to continue listening, instead of simply dismissing.
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Dec 22, 2010On the balancing strength of those two songs [Dangerous & Much Too Soon], Michael manages to dodge the bullet enough to be kind of enjoyable. But it's worth remembering that both songs date back to the 1980s.
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Dec 14, 2010Disappointing swansong from the King of Pop.
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Dec 13, 2010It's not that Michael is embarrassing, it's just below par, a warehouse for songs that languished in the vaults for decades because they didn't quite measure up.
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Dec 13, 2010At the very least, the album doesn't tarnish his legacy, although it adds nothing to it either.
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Dec 14, 2010Michael mostly reflects the paranoid, musically out of touch, deeply unhappy person he became -- and who many fans would just as soon forget.
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Jan 13, 2011Jackson's progressiveness and laser-aimed focus on perfection was always the foundation of everything he ever did and resonated through every song he ever made....Given the patch-work necessary to piece Michael together posthumously, it's impossible to imagine that this is a collection of songs Michael intended to deliver.
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Dec 10, 2010Michael's real problem isn't the late star's indisguisable weirdness, but a paucity of decent material.
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Q MagazineFeb 1, 2011The problem here isn't sullying Jackson's memory and reputation: he was perfectly capable of doing that himself. The problem is that Michael simply isn't good enough. [Feb. 2011, p. 108]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 44 out of 81
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Mixed: 21 out of 81
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Negative: 16 out of 81
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Sep 10, 2011
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Feb 14, 2011
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Dec 31, 2010