Jackson 5 / Michael Jackson / The Jacksons Album-by-Album Thread

My faves are Happy, Euphoria and Morning Glow.

 

I recall With A Child's Heart & Happy from the radio. I was only 11 but I remember thinking that Michael's recent singles were a bit wimpy. The last MJ single that really hit me was I Wanna Be Where You Are.

 

Interesting guitar he got there. Body is acoustic but the head looks like stolen from an electric instrument.^^

 

Music & Me is one of my favourite songs, though I've never heard the album (really must find the time to listen to the earlier stuff).

The instrumentation in this track floors me.

 

Music and me is great song.
I like his version of All the Things You Are too.

 

"Music & Me" and With A Child's Heart" but I like everything on the album! MJs third solo album is IMO much better than the two that came before it.

 

That's pretty common knowledge. "them wedding bells are breaking up that old group of mine". He married the boss's(Berry Gordy) daughter.

 

Music & Me is an amazing song. But I can't help but feel kind of sad when I listen to it. Same goes for With A Childs Heart, for that matter.

 

Yes. Mentioning this fact is hardly a "spoiler"; this was a big news item at the time.

 

There are people who don't know that's though. I really hate that people want to keep jumping forward in this thread.

 

I completely skipped by this album. Never knew it existed until the digital age. In April 1973, I was into hit radio. Nothing from this album came close to it. To this day, i've never heard it.

 

I really hate that, too. I have never tried to jump ahead.

 

I have never seen this album in the wild, I don't know if it wasn't a big seller, a less than robust pressing, etc. I heard it in the early 2000s, caught up to some of the songs through the years.

"Happy" is a gorgeous song, Michael did my favorite version. Michael was especially great during this era, he could reflect true, cogent emotion better than his adult contemporaries, that had to be tough for a "kid."

"Morning Glow" and the cover of "With a Child's Heart" are great too. I love to hear those early '70s production values.

 

Definitely not a big seller. It peaked at #97 on the BB 200.

 

Good lord, ha...

 

I understand that the Jackson period between 1973-1979 is unknown or boring to a lot of people, but if you're going to have an album-by-album thread that runs in chronological order, you have to go through it. And, the long-time Jackson fans know about Jermaine's situation, but there are people, probably like you, who don't know. Isn't this kind of thread supposed to be about education as well?

I say discovery is a fun part of a thread like this where details and trivia is revealed as they happened in sequence.

What i'm wondering is how many readers of this thread have been motivated to investigate the Motown era that never knew about it before. We can't assume that only fans are interested in it.

 

Minor trivia. Lots to cover and explore.
Spoiler:
Micheal becomes the biggest star on the planet, gets weird and dies.

 

I never knew that 'Music and Me' existed until I saw it a couple of years ago. I found it in a record store unopened. I felt like I was 4 years old and it was Christmas. My parents always bought me Jackson 5/Jacksons records when I was a child.
....Great memories.

 

I agree completely, and you know I'm only joking with you. I wish I had more time to get to know some of the early albums better. Mostly I've been able to give them a one-time play on Spotify, and then it's onto the next album. Starting with the Epic material, I have nearly all of the full-length albums on CD.

 

Now I'm going back to 69 with this originally unreleased gem

 

I think this album was released during MJ's awkward stage and its my least favorite solo album of his. He doesn't sound very comfortable singing the material and his voice is changing a lot here. I prefer the next album to this.

 

Truth be told, I'm really only interested in the J-5's Motown (and Steeltown!) years. It's the Epic years that bore me.

However, when I answered the OPs question about Jermaine, I had no idea it was a spoiler. If we were doing a Stones album-by-album thread and somebody wondered why Brian Jones disappears ca. 1969, I wouldn't be ahead of the pack by mentioning that Brian left the band (and consequently died). Do I have to pretend that it's 1965 and no one can see this coming?

I guess, to me, a true "spoiler" would be talking about the deep cuts on album #6 when you haven't finished chewing on album #2. (That's just a metaphor, folks. Don't go figuring out which records were the J-5's sixth and second albums; there is no hidden message there.)

 

I'm all about going in chronological order when it comes to discussing the albums and singles, but I didn't see the harm in asking my question about Jermaine. To most of us, it's very old news anyhow, and I could've easily obtained the info from the Internet. I probably had read about Randy replacing Jermaine a long time ago, but it just didn't stick in my memory.

 

I know. I just take music very seriously.

 

The Epic years bore me only because that era has been rammed down our collective throats, and, the first two Epic Jacksons albums aren't interesting. They contain a few good songs between them, but I never play them. But, they have to be done. The other reason I wince at the Epic era is because it's all most people who were born in that era know about, and their collective dismissal of the Motown era annoys me.

It's part of the fun of an album-by-album thread to pretend you're going through history in sequence again. Jumping ahead encourages the other posters to do the same, and it pretty much obliterates the whole thread. A lot of people did the same thing on the current Madonna thread until it got to the era they liked.

We already did them, anyway. They were "ABC", and "Looking Through The Windows".