Michael Jackson's 'Bad': 34 Years Later*

“Bad” continued Michael Jackson's reign as the king of Pop of the 1980s.
Michael & Quincy took the success of "Thriller" and decided to continue the formula that made it the best selling record of all time.
The problem is that they pushed the formula too far in places.
While "Off The Wall" and "Thriller" are pretty much timeless Pop/R&B music, this album is very much a product of its time. The production is a bit too polished and mechanical for my taste. Still though, this is a Michael Jackson album from the late 1980s, so it's bound to have several moments of "sublime Pop perfection” and you get it here with songs such as the magnificent “Man In The Mirror”, “Liberian Girl”, the rock inspired “Dirty Diana”, the catchy and groovy “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “Smooth Criminal”.
I really like the duet with Stevie Wonder too, even if it’s definitely not a masterpiece.
Both “Off The Wall”, “Thriller” and “Dangerous” are better albums as far as I’m concerned..

 

yea-in retrospect , this album has held up better then 95% of the things that were big during the same time

 

I've always thought that while Thriller had incredible highs, it also sort of crashed and burned with some of the lows (i.e. that god awful Paul McCartney collaboration). Bad doesn't have a song that uh, bad but it just doesn't hit the heights of his older work.

The production on his stuff starting with this album got really cold and mechanical which has aged really poorly. More of an issue with his next album Dangerous where songs were made up of a shítty New Jack Swing beat with some grunty vocals and that was that.

 

I agree that although Bad is a good album, it is very much a production of its time. Thriller is much better and timeless. I have never really liked Off the Wall for some reason. One thing I noticed is the change of MJ's singing: he sounded great on Off the Wall and Thriller, but on Bad, he seemed to push his singing too much (sometimes screaming a bit).

 

I don't think there are enough personal, heartfelt songs on Bad. That combined with the cold production creates some listening fatigue.

 

Looking back now over 30 years now Bad had some solid tunes. It was always a cold septic listen. I just wish the digital was ditched for analog it would have benefited Bad immensely. An album for the times big 80's but some of the music still has a current viability 2018. IMHO

 

Even though I like the mega-hits on Thriller more than the mega-hits on Bad, I like the album tracks on Bad more than the album tracks on Thriller.

Overall I think Bad is a very good pop album, and is even better than than the Thriller album before it.

I love "Dirty Diana" and "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", and "Another Part Of Me", "The Way You Make Me Feel" and "Man In The Mirror" are all terrific pop songs.

The End.

 

the title track is on some tv commercial these days...

I grab my remote and hit mute every single time the commercial comes on..


Bad does have some really good tracks on it though.

 

Yeah, it's an awful song lyrically. Just absolute ****e. I feel the same way for Black or White from his next album - they're just absolutely banal given the stuff he was capable of.

 

In those days you either loved his music or you hated it. For a lot of music lovers MJ was the symbol of commercial music produced to please as much people as possible. And I agree with that.
The guy gave the premiere of one of his videos to MTV under the condition that they start calling him king of pop.
https://www-buzzfeed-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/perpetua/why-michael-jackson-is-called-the-king-of-pop?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE=#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=Van %1$s

 

Well, I mean, if the glove fits...

 

Pop yes but not much royalty IMO

 

It's alright, but I pretty much stop at Thriller, myself.

 

"Bad" has the worse lyrics. Some of it would be embarrassing to sing, and unlike "Black or White" it doesn't include a change-the-world message. Michael Jackson stopped improving as a lyricist around the time of the album and only showed flashes of great writing occasionally after Bad.

 

Black or White started a trend of bad "save the world" songs with him. It's also a super cheesy stab at rock - Beat It was convincing, a great song in its own right, and Dirty Diana wasn't a bad take on hair metal, but Black or White is just sort of ... limp.

 

I agree with all that. The best thing I can say about "Black or White" is that the intro to the music video is amusing.

That brings up the point that, starting in the Bad era, too many of Micheal's videos were pretentious. I think he was thinking of himself too much as a star and not enough as a musician.

 

I seem to recall that there were literally dozens of completed songs for BAD, which was culled from the studio haul. Can anyone confirm this memory and, if true, is there any chance we'll hear them?

As for the album itself, I don't hear a big change from THRILLER to BAD. They're fraternal twins to my ears . . . Love the video for "Leave Me Alone."

 

MJ was planning on a triple album for his follow-up to Thriller, and wrote 62 songs towards that effort. No where near number were actually recorded - probably less than half, and not all of that half were completed beyond a bare bones demo.

A few years back for the 25th anniversary they did release Bad 25 which had a good few of the completed tracks left over (Don't Be Messin Round, I'm So Blue, Abortion Papers, Free, Price of Fame, Al Capone, Streetwalker, Fly Away). That release is still available, so you should look into getting it if you're interested in hearing those.

 

Solid album with lots of great singles. Did not like the drum sound nor the more mechanized feel of the rhythms. That may have been more state-of-the-art at the time, but it made for worse music. From this point on, Quincy Jones was considerably less interesting as a producer, and each successive record he made had diminishing returns. "Bad" also had 3-4 very forgettable (bad?) tracks. That was different from Thriller, which maybe had 2 bad tracks.

Didn't like the first single with Siedah Garrett when I was younger, but I appreciate the melodic songcraft more now.

The Way You Make Me Feel was a pretty cool song, but it's pretty much destroyed by the drum part. Kills the vibe almost entirely, and it just doesn't groove very well.

Bad (what a bass line), Dirty Diana (Steve Stevens brings the darkness), and Smooth Criminal (mechanical, but a really nicely-written song) help save it for me.

Another Part of Me and Man In the Mirror were probably the best songs. "Man" is just about perfect as is. Another Part of Me would have benefitted from a less-shrill synth sound for the lead riff, and it ESPECIALLY would have benefitted from having Jeff Porcaro on drums (who was a master of that kind of groove). I don't know if that groove was really in John Robinson's wheelhouse, but perhaps. In any event, the programmed drum part is better here than on The Way You Make Me Feel, but it still sucks some of the life out of the song.

 

I'd say the lyrics are pretty awful (can totally see why Prince passed as a duet). But that bass line? Really a cool idea. The verse is much better that the chorus on "Bad."

 

I actually love the production on it - it has a mechanical sheen but some real funk to it - not a bad instrumental at all. I just have trouble not associating it with that awful leatherman video along with the lyrics.

 

Agree. This and Smooth Criminal are two of the more programmed-drum pieces that actually work. But overall, the album really lacks the great feel that both Thriller and Off the Wall had. Moving away from real drummers was a very negative trend in 80s music.

 

No doubt. Those two earlier albums had some real funk to them - some urban bite. I do notice that it's a trend for popstars to follow up their big album with a colder, more calculated sound that falls flat - I guess you could call it the Bad effect.

 

If Dirty Diana was a Zappa song people would have regarded it as a parody on Hair Metal. Very little rock fans take it seriously.

 

Prince was not the person duets type of person anyway except maybe if his own compositions needed it.