Michael Jacksons Off The Wall Album Review

Michael Jackson wanted this album to be the best it could be. He needed someone with great experience and had met Quincey Jones on the set on the movie "The Wiz" and Quincey produced the album.

Michael wanted the sound of the album to be different from that of the Jacksons who had just had there biggest album success with "Destiny".

Michael wanted songs that were good for him to sing and that he could move to. In came Rod Temperton who penned "Rock With You" a big hit, "Burn This Disco Out" and the title track.

During the sessions Quincey approached Michael with "Girlfriend" saying how well suited that song would be for him. Little did he know Paul had written the song for Michael a couple of years previous and even sung it to Michael at a party.

"Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" was the first song Michael had written himself as a whole and became US No1 hit single. "She's Out of My Life" a heart wrenching ballard.

Tracklisting:

1. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
2. Rock with You
3. Working Day and Night
4. Get on the Floor
5. Off the Wall
6. Girlfriend" (McCartney)
7. She's out of My Life" (Tom Bahler)
8. I Can't Help It
9. It's the Falling in Love
10. Burn This Disco Out

For every artist that finds massive success in the music market (and for this review’s purpose, more “definitive” acts), there’s usually a specific album that propels them into the public eye and an audience with wide-open arms. Nevermind helped make Nirvana huge seemingly overnight, and established them as one of the biggest names in grunge. The hiring of almighty Bruce Dickinson coupled with the release of The Number of the Beast would transform Iron Maiden from a “quite successful” band to the definitive metal juggernaut they are now.* And although rapper Jay-Z made his best album the first time (in 1996), it was five years later when The Blueprint would re-establish him as one of most critically and commercially successful hip-hop artists.

After being part of the Jackson Five for more than half a decade (and being recognized as a musical prodigy by Rolling Stone, among others), Michael starred in a musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz (“The Wiz”) and formed a relationship with composer Quincy Jones, who agreed to produce Jackson’s solo debut. Off the Wall would be the first album to generate four top 10 singles, and set the stage for Jackson to cement his place in history with the follow-up Thriller.

A few listens to Off the Wall should leave no doubt as to why it became such a huge success. Save for one exception, the album consists of bouncy and energetic R & B influenced pop (or quite poppy R & B) with close to no filler. Much like Thriller, it opens in grand fashion. “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” wastes almost no time in grabbing your attention, with horns, strings, and guitar forming a rhythmic foundation for Jackson’s calm falsetto. At the two and a half minute mark, another horn section gives way to a short guitar solo. Although it does get repetitive to a slight degree, “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” nonetheless accomplishes a feat that seems so uncommon in pop music – a high quality song with a running time just over six minutes. None of the nine tracks following it will quite match this opener, but rest assured that several of them come close.

Not only does “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” open Off the Wall on a high note, it exhibits all the major strengths of the album. Horns, strings, electric guitar, and real drums are among the various instruments forming the sonic template for nearly the entire album, which means that Off the Wall doesn’t suffer from poor production – it’s quite the opposite. Not only does it sound excellent from a this production standpoint, but there are also enough instrumental hooks to make the music almost work well without a strong vocal performance. However, there’s no reason to worry about that.

As good as the music is, it’s Michael’s performance that truly elevates the pop here from good to excellent. There’s an irresistible charm that Jackson exudes almost every second that he’s singing, and a bare minimum of one great hook to be found in each song (save “She’s Out of My Life”). Jackson’s rather natural falsetto is far from annoying, his singing voice is far above average, and his delivery is spot on. Off the Wall sounds like the man is just having fun, and doing one heck of a job in the process

Although Michael Jackson the performer is much better than Jackson the songwriter, that doesn’t mean the songs he writes are weak in any form. On the contrary, his two songwriting contributions to Off the Wall, “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” and “Working Day and Night”, are both standout tracks, and “Get on the Floor” (co-written by Louis Johnson) is pretty good as well. Yet another comparison to Thriller is the star power present (or rather, behind) two of the songs. “Girlfriend” and “I Can’t Help It” are written by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder respectively; the former is a lighthearted song that might have fit in on an album like Help!, and “I Can’t Help It” kicks off the final trio of songs after the lone ballad “She’s Out of My Life”.

There’s one exception to almost every strength of Off the Wall, and that is “She’s Out of My Life”. Here, Jackson and his songwriting team opt for the ballad route, and the results are pretty average at best. The lyrical theme of a man heartbroken has potential, but instead of being emotional and heartfelt, Jackson sounds whiny, almost like a child who just needs a couple minutes to get over a slight physical injury. Backing synths don’t really help either, and thus “She’s Out of My Life” sticks out like a sore thumb placed in the middle of the album.

The last great strength of Off the Wall – consistency – is also the reason it’s bettered by Thriller. As mentioned before, nothing quite matches the opener “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”, but the rest of the album stays at such a high quality you don’t necessarily notice. But even the best song isn’t able to reach the benchmark set by the 15-minute midsection of “Thriller”, “Beat it”, and “Billie Jean”. Superior or not, it should be obvious why the album made Michael Jackson a pop superstar: it’s catchy, fun, and well written, and with a running time shortly over 42 minutes, it’s too short to really get tedious. It’s not his best, but it still comes fairly close, and considering the artist in question, that’s saying a lot.

Michael Jackson, Blood On The Dance Floor Album

BLOOD ON THE DANCE FLOOR
'Blood On The Dancefloor' came just 2 years after 1995s 'HIStory', not unusual for most artists perhaps, but this was Michael 'It takes me 5 years to make an album' Jackson we are talking about. So why the relatively quick release? Well it isn't a proper album of sorts, for the most part its a remix album of 'HIStory's hits front loaded with 5 'original' tracks. The first question on most peoples minds was almost certainly why? 'HIStory' whilst a very successful album by almost anyone elses standards was a fairly hit and miss affair in the most part, paling in comparison to his previous 4 albums ('Off The Wall', 'Thriller', 'Bad' and 'Dangerous'), so why on earth would it deserve a remix album? Well to put it bluntly it didn't, but I'll elaborate...

The album begins with the title track and only real single. In typical Jackson fashion it has a surging beat drawing you in from the get go finally breaking in a catchy, if slightly odd lyrically, chorus. The style is very reminiscent of the New Jack Swing style of 1991s 'Dangerous', and nor is this a coincidence- The song was written, and almost certainly recorded aswell during the in credibly creative 'Dangerous' sessions in 1990 ('Earth Song' was also recorded then), almost 7 years before. The fact that it still hit number 1 in the UK says something about how ahead of his times Jackson had been on that album. However the fact that he was bringing out old material also perhaps suggests he was losing his touch musically (something that was also apparent on 'HIStory' and I would theorize is linked to the 1993 incident).

The other 4 'new' songs on the album are also very likely other off cuts from the 'Dangerous' sessions also, certainly 2 or 3 had existed as demos in the early 90s. Unfortunatly none are anything as good as 'Blood On The Dancefloor'. 'Morphine' and 'Ghosts' share very aggressive, angular verses that don't really endear themselves to your ears, 'Morphine' does contain one moment of absolute genius (around 3.00)- a beautiful piano interlude with Jackson pining 'Oh God hes taking demorol' (a reference to the fact that he had recently checked out of rehab) that really should have formed the main structure of the song. 'Is It Scary?' on the otherhand comes off as a lame attempt to recreate 'Thriller', though its still probably the second best of the new songs.

The remix section, which constitutes the main body of the album, is as I said made up of 8 songs from 'HIStory', all mixed by different DJs. Ive never been a big fan of the many Jackson remix songs around, however there is one here that is not only a great song but actually massively improves upon the original. 'HIStory' mixed by Tony Moran is an example of how remixes should be done. Gone are the irrritating sound bites of news clips from the original song, instead the verse and chorus lyrics (which are actually very strong) are set to an infectuous dance beat. Ive never been fond of straight up dance songs in principle but this is the exception. Unfortunatly the other remixes don't come anywhere close to this, most simply taking Jacksons original song and adding a fast paced drum beat to it eg 'You Are Not Alone' or 'Stranger In Moscow'. Some do, however, add some interesting instrumentation to the songs, like the swing of 'Scream Louder' or the fairly effective guitar/hip-hop version of '2 Bad'.

Overall is without a doubt Jacksons weakest album (yes even worse than 'Invincible'), although personally I don't really view this part of Jacksons official cannon considering it is mostly remixes and outtakes from previous albums. There is little indication even of how much part Jackson, a notorious perfectionist, had in throwing together the ramshakle collection of material. It is probably best viewed as a companion piece to 'HIStory'. Sony, however, clearly did see this as any other Jackson release since its 'poor' sales (6-7million- still the second biggest remix album) resulted in him being demoted from top class priorities. But nevertheless, this is truly a poor collection of material with only the title track and the 'HIStory' remix worthy of purchase (or download). Even as a massive Jackson fan I havent bought it. Hope you enjoyed the read, but avoid this one like the plague unless you are an avid fan.

This 13 track album was released in May, 1997 and contained 5 new songs in addition to 8 remixed tracks from the HIStory album.

Due to the fact that Michael was touring at the time of recording the album, many of the tracks were recorded and mixed in countries around the globe such as Sweden, Switzerland and Germany.

The album was originally planned to be a promotional tool for the European leg of the HIStory tour, and for this reason was not widely publisized in most of the world. The album ended up being widely successful around the globe, despite the low promotions, with the album and/or the title single reaching #1 in over 10 countries.

There were two singles released for this album. The first one 'Blood On The Dance Floor' was released around the world, and the second single 'History/Ghosts' was released in Europe and Australia.

To date the Blood On The Dance Floor album has sold 4 million copies world wide.

The track listing of 'Blood On The Dance Floor' is as follows:

1. Blood On The Dance Floor (written by Michael Jackson)
2. Morphine (written by Michael Jackson)
3. Superfly Sister (written by Michael Jackson)
4. Ghosts (written by Michael Jackson & Teddy Riley)
5. Is It Scary (written by Michael Jackson, James Harris & Terry Lewis)
6. Scream Louder - Flyte Time Remix (written by Michael and Janet Jackson, James Harris & Terry Lewis)
7. Money - Fire Island Radio Edit (written by Michael Jackson)
8. 2 Bad - Refugee Camp Mix (written by Michael Jackson)
9. Stranger In Moscow - Tee's In-House Club Mix (written by Michael Jackson)
10. This Time Around - D.M Radio Mix (written by Michael Jackson)
11. Earth Song - Hani's Club Experience (written by Michael Jackson)
12. You Are Not Alone - Classic Club Mix (written by R. Kelly)
13. History - Tony Moran's History Lesson (written by Michael Jackson)

Blood On The Dance Floor Single