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

I get that not everyone will like it. To each his own. There's no denying it was a success, and IMO, a great album. His last for me but I find it more impressive from a creative standpoint than Thriller or Off the Wall. That doesn't mean I think it's better than those albums but Jackson's innvolvement in the song writing was more extensive. From a Micheal Jackson creativity standpoint I consider this his best.

My Junior High daughter came home from dance recently all excited about this song Man In The Mirror. That's staying power.

 

It was actually recorded in 1984. And Captain EO was filmed in 1985.

Love this - although the mix released is from 1988. The 1985 mix has a more "Thriller-era" vocal and funkier guitar.

The justifacation at the was was because Japan and Australia didn't get the Victory Tour. Make of that what you will.

Honestly, I don't really consider this a Quincy-produced album. Yes, it's his studio band and yes, he certainly had input - but the main producers on this were John Barnes, Matt Forager and Bill Bottrell.

 

Smash Hits review for The Way You Make Me Feel. November 1987. Good week for singles.

 

Love Bad. I actually might prefer it to Thriller, since I like more of the songs on Bad than Thriller. "Bad", "Leave Me Alone", "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Dirty Diana", "Man in the Mirror", "Liberian Girl", "Smooth Criminal" and "Speed Demon" are absolute highlights for me. They always receive rotation on my music playlists wherever I'm travelling, exercising or just relaxing. Not a huge fan of the "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Another Part of Me" or "Just Good Friends", but they are solid tracks. I think this album ties with Katy Perry's Teenage Dream for most songs to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It sold 10 million copies in the US as of 2017 and has sold nearly 40 million worldwide.

"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" while I love could have benefited with a different female singer. Siedah Garrett is a good singer, but her voice is very similar to MJ's and as such you can't tell at first who is singing what part. I wish he had gotten someone like Madonna, Whitney Houston or Cyndi Lauper to duet with him on that song.

Ranking the songs for me:
1. "Dirty Diana"
2. "Smooth Criminal"
3. "Man in the Mirror"
4. "Bad"
5. "Liberian Girl"
6. "I Just Can't Stop Loving You"
7. "Speed Demon"
8. "The Way You Make Me Feel"
9. "Just Good Friends"
10. "Another Part of Me"

 

I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating....

So, supposedly, Michael intended "Bad" to be a 3-LP set with 30 songs (which Epic felt wouldn't sell well). He never devised a track list for this, as far as anyone seems to know, but I carefully pieced together one myself that sounds like a decent, flowing album. Admittedly, I had to stretch the available material a bit thin, but give this a shot.

SIDE ONE
01) Bad
02) The Way You Make Me Feel
03) Speed Demon
04) Liberian Girl
05) Just Good Friends

SIDE TWO
01) Another Part Of Me
02) Man In The Mirror
03) I Just Can't Stop Loving You (English version)
04) Dirty Diana
05) Smooth Criminal

SIDE THREE
01) Leave Me Alone
02) Abortion Papers
03) I'm So Blue
04) Don't Be Messin' Round
05) Streetwalker

SIDE FOUR
01) Cheater
02) Fly Away
03) Price Of Fame
04) I Just Can't Stop Loving You (Spanish version)
05) Scared Of The Moon

SIDE FIVE
01) We Are Here To Change The World
02) Al Capone
03) Loving You
04) Come Together
05) Free

SIDE SIX
01) Do You Know Where Your Children Are
02) Someone Put Your Hand Out
03) I Just Can't Stop Loving You (French version)
04) Groove Of Midnight [we only have Siedah's version, with MJ's backing track - but there are snippets of Michael singing this floating around, which you can mix in if you're clever! )
05) Who's Bad [reprise - basically, the 12" mix starting after the 'false fade']

 

Yes! I want an official CD set of this, like yesterday.

 

Probably worth mentioning that the Bad "Down" version is drastically different from the Dangerous "Out" one.

 

Is the Bad-era version on YouTube?

 

Yeah, I didn't know about "Someone Put Your Hand Down" - the test pressings of the Bad Special Edition included the usual Dangerous-era version, I believe.

 

Some of my favorite groups and singers there .

 

Not that I'm aware of - I don't think it's been leaked.

It's not a complete vocal anyway - so it's doubtful that we'll get an official release ay time soon.

 

Had this happened, it would have been interesting to see what singles came out. Do You Know Where Your Children Are would be a good choice, Price of Fame as well, and Streetwalker might be a good choice as well.

Can't see him including Abortion Papers either way though - way too political for where he was at then.

 

"Price Of Fame" even got a Pepsi-tie-in version, so that was likely.

 

It did? On a promo release to promote the Bad tour? Can you find the release? I'd like to see that.

 

Better than that. A music video.

 

Interestingly, it was never actually released. They used a rerecorded version of Bad instead.

They should have used this version as a Pepsi tie-in promo during Bad 25. But that would have made too much sense for the Estate.

 

Ah, okay I was going to say that I'd never seen this before (with Price Of Fame) and you'd think I would have... I guess that explains why! Yeah, releasing it for Bad 25 would have made sense.

 

It probably is better than Thriller but he had become a cartoon by Bad. Hard to stomach that video and take him seriously. Why pretend to be something you are clearly not? More sad than bad. He completely lost the plot after this. Strange that he seemed to preserve his legacy better than the much more deserving Prince.

 

Yeah, but Prince just lost his mind in an entirely different way and got his head lodged way too far up his own rear end and loved that smell.

Fame and isolation turned them both into crazy drug addicts and it's just sad.

 

True, i guess, but Price holds up much better, far more breadth and maturity, in my view.

 

Yeah, people seem to forget that Michael put out albums with *years* between them, and everything past "Bad" was extremely questionable in terms of worth.

 

Looking back it is hard not to think his lack of material hurt him, especially in the 1980s, when people like Prince were dropping about 4 albums in between Thriller in 1982 and Bad in 1987. In a different world I think he should have toured Thriller instead of going back to the Jacksons, and then released the follow up to Thriller (perhaps an EP between the two to satisfy demand) in late 1985, comprising some of the standout Thriller outtakes re-recorded, and a combination of new material and then the Bad stuff - have it be 10-12 songs. From that point, at least for the rest of the 80s, he should have been releasing a new LP every 2 years or so. Given all the utterly fantastic unreleased stuff that was left wasting away in his vault, he easily could have been putting out some great albums then.

For me personally, it always made more sense why Michael Jackson was weird (and he always was weird), where as Prince I literally never got why he was so strange and I think a lot of other people feel the same way. The constant (every year) output of Prince's music also did him a lot of harm - he never really gave people time to appreciate his music before putting out (in my opinion) increasingly worse records from roughly Graffiti Bridge on.

 

If you grew up with the first name "Prince" you'd probably turn out weird too.

 

Who has the story to how Jimmy Smith ended up playing dx-7 "organ" on the title track?

 

Quincy Jones recommended him after Michael Jackson decided he wanted an organ solo on the Bad track. Apparently he put down an additional organ solo on a different track which was never released and has yet to see the light of day.