Fuelled by the MJ hologram at the Billboard awards,
and because she’s a lifelong Jackson fan, Ter immediately went out and bought
the “new” album. That was a week ago. In that time, we have both fallen to our
knees at further evidence of his creative prowess, not to mention in love with
the songs themselves.
Ordinarily, I cringe at albums released after an
artist’s death. It’s hard to perceive such an exercise as anything other than a
cash cow for the estate; a last-gasp attempt to grab what they can from
desolate fans, and sometimes that’s exactly what it is.
“Xscape” is different, and not because I’ve always
liked MJ’s music. The project team took part in a documentary that describes
how they all came together as recording professionals, former colleagues and
die hard MJ fans. They talk about their conditions for signing on, and describe in detail the remixing of the eight original songs featured on the
album. The album includes the originally-recorded versions as well, as the
vocals were complete at the time of MJ’s death. If he had lived, he would have
been in the studio with these guys, and every song would have sounded exactly
as it actually does. There are no disposable tracks on this album. Even the
original recordings are exceptional—the production team have merely shot them
into the stratosphere using their talents to complement the master’s. Jackson
did nothing by half measures. He laid the foundation for this piece as if he
planned its release in 2014. So it’s no surprise to me that everyone involved
has stated quite seriously that each of them felt his presence in the studio as
they worked.
This is no cheap ripoff culled from vocal fragments
scattered throughout the vault. This is a real album of real songs—and sure, it
could be the former and still top the charts and scoop all the awards because
it’s Michael-freaking-Jackson, but when it does sweep the Grammys, I
won’t be rolling my eyes in disgust. This record deserves to win.
It’s almost a cliché, how creative geniuses lead such
agonized personal lives yet produce phenomenal art. Granted, if you’re not an
MJ fan, this won’t mean much to you, but he’s not the only tortured talent whom
the world eventually destroyed. In the film The Devil’s Violinist, a
dying Niccolo Paganini refuses the last rites, but when the priest admonishes
that he must be prepared to face God’s grace, the dissolute violinist replies,
“Let me tell you something of God’s grace. He gave me a gift, then abandoned me
in a world that couldn’t understand it.”
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