Michael Jackson

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I bought this. I kinda like it. The first half anyway is like some kind of weird paranoid masterpiece. One song after another articulates Jackson's persecution complex.

I never liked "Scream" as a single when it was out but it sounds quite fine today; like crazy industrial dance pop. Jackson's vocals are pretty impassioned ("they're kickin' me down! I gots to get up!"). Late in the song he repeatedly, effectively, pleads "stop ya pressuya!"

Following that is the controversial but no less effective "They Don't Care About Us." Throughout, the production is very detailed, danceable and harsh.

"Stranger in Moscow" is also his best ballad since "Human Nature."

Around the prolonged end of "Earth Song" the record loses its momentum. Though "D.S." (Dom Sheldom is a cold man) is pretty loony, eccentrically entertaining for its own sake. "You Are Not Alone" is also good if you can shake away the mental image memories of the video that featured naked Michael and Lisa Marie Pressley.
Ending the album with a cover of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" is an inspired touch.

The scary as shit cd insert art and celebrity testemonials to Michael Jackson's christ-like achievements are another issue entirely but
I was not expecting to find the music as captivating as I did. Definitely a significant step up from "Dangerous," and in light of his recent publicized descent into peadophilic madness, more so worth the reappraisal. I can't be the only one who enjoys disc 2 of HIStory.

― theodore fogelsanger, Tuesday, 15 June 2004 22:59 (twenty-two years ago)

"You Are Not Alone" is also good if you can shake away the mental image memories of the video that featured naked Michael and Lisa Marie Pressley.

To say nothing of Michael's entirely creepy outtie. Bleccchhhhhh!

But really.....what about the elephants?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 23:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I once won tickets to an MJ concert for a mate of mine by winning a radio MJ impersonation contest. I rewrote the lyrics to You Are Not Alone to be about how he really, really, really didn't molest all those children, and sang them in a terrible falsetto. So I have a soft spot for that song.

It was impressive that someone of his stature would put out something as starkly ugly as "They Don't Care About Us". Video didn't work though.

― edward o (edwardo), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Nixon had a persecution complex, too.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I've got mad love for "Money" and "Stranger In Moscow."

― Brian Wilson (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 00:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I like how the liner notes get creepier and creepier with each page, like a shadow slowly swallowing a room.

― Brian Wilson (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 00:36 (twenty-two years ago)

some of the weirder stuff on the album tops Tricky at his own game (at least on some level).

― Brian Wilson (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 00:37 (twenty-two years ago)

few lyrics rival "Morphine" (though it's not on the album proper but on the followup ep)

He got flat baby
Kick in the back baby
A heart attack baby
I need your body

A hot kiss honey
He's just a bitch baby
You make me sick baby
So unrelying

I'm such a swine baby
All down the line daddy
I hate your kind baby
So unreliable

A hot buzz baby
He's one of us baby
Another drug baby
You so desire

Trust in me
Trust in me
Put all your trust in me
You're doin' morphine
Hoo!

They got place baby
Kicked in the face baby
You hate your race baby
You're just a liar

Your every lick baby
Your dog's a bitch baby
You make me sick baby
You soul survivor

She never cut from me
She never cut baby
I had to work baby
You just a rival

Always to please daddy
Right up and leave daddy
You're throwing shame daddy
So undesirable

Trust in me
Just in me
Put all your trust in me
You're doin' morphine

Go'on babe

Relax
This won't hurt you
Before I put it in
Close your eyes and count to 10
Don't cry
I won't convert you
There's no need to dismay
Close your eyes and drift away

Demerol
Demerol
Oh God he's taking demerol
Demerol
Demerol
Oh God he's taking demerol

He's tried Hard to convince her
To be over what he had
Today he wants it twice as bad
Don't cry
I won't resent you
Yesterday you had his trust
Today he's taking twice as much

Demerol
Demerol
Oh God he's taking demerol
Hee-hee-hee
Demerol
Demerol
Oh my Oh God it's Demerol
Hee Oooh
Oh!

He got shit baby
Your dog's a bitch baby
You make me sick baby
You are a liar

Is truth a game daddy
To win the fame baby
It's all the same baby
You're so reliable

Trust in me
Trust in me
Put all your trust in me
She's doin' morphine
Hoo!
You just sit around
just talkin' nothing
You're takin' morphine
Hoo!
Go'on baby
You just sit around just talking about it
You're takin' morphine Hoo-hoo!
Just sit around just talking nothing about it
You're takin' morphine
You just sit around just talking about it
You're taking morphine
You just sit around just talkin' nothin'
And takin' morphine
Hoo-hoo
I'm going down baby
You're talkin' Morphine
Go'on baby!
Hoo! Hoo!
Morphine!
Do it!
Hoo!
He's takin' morphine
Morphine!
Morphine!

― (Jon L), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 03:05 (twenty-two years ago)

damn

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 05:40 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, wow.

demerol.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 05:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Again, someone who'd be better off dating Momus.

― maria b (maria b), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 09:49 (twenty-two years ago)

The title track is also very unheralded. Cut 'n' paste Michael.

― Crickets Dance On Tequila Booty (Barima), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I loved "They Don't Care About Us" when it first came, but I didn't dare to say it out loud, because at that age (16) it wasn't cool to admit you like Michael Jackson.

There was weird thing about the video: MTV showed a version of it which was shot in Brazilian slum and the chorus was sang by the inhabitants, whereas the Finnish TV showed a version where MJ was in a prison, and the chorus was sang by the prisoners. Was there a MTV policy that you couldn't show videos that took place in prisons or psychiatric hospitals, because they also didn't show the version of Busta Rhyme's "Woo Haa", where Busta was a patient in a mental asylum? If there was such a policy it's changed now, because they did show that new Metallica video.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 12:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I loved "They Don't Care About Us" when it first came, but I didn't dare to say it out loud, because at that age (16) it wasn't cool to admit you like Michael Jackson.

i remember once saying something ambivalent about michael jackson in junior high and being ridiculed for it. like really ridiculed, in full junior high fashion.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:07 (twenty-two years ago)

like "you love alanis!!" style?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:28 (twenty-two years ago)

ok, well there weren't any wedgies.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:30 (twenty-two years ago)

some things never change!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

(that seemed like a good punchline but it doesn't really make any sense)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I Think The Evil Is You

― (Jon L), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember them floating the statue of him down the Thames, seeing it pass outside the window of the library. I think I may well have been more concerned about getting some geography done at the time, though.

― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 22:55 (twenty-two years ago)

I had some insane middle aged woman phone me up at work the other day asking if I knew when Michael Jackson's trial date was (I work in a rehearsal studio rather than a newspaper or law firm like you might expect from her request). When I told her I didn't know or care she flew off the handle, accusing me of being a kiddie fiddler myself. When I then told her I was indeed a child molester she became apoplectic with rage and ranted at me for several minutes. One thing she said stayed with me :

"He's the future. He's above his time."

Not that any of this is really relevant to the discussion but I think that phrase needed to be shared.

― udu wudu (udu wudu), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 23:03 (twenty-two years ago)

HIStory is waaay underrated. Somewhere along the line stupid people thought They Don't Care About Us was anti-Semetic and after that the album and its promotion seemed to fizzle out.

I think HIStory's actually MJ's most adventurous album. Apart from You Are Not Alone, and perhaps the awful Earth Song and HORRIBLE Childhood, nothing else on it suggests "Oh please, oh please, let this song be a hit!" Scream perplexed most top 40 listeners I know when it first came out. They just didn't know what to make of it, because it sounded quite different from everything else they were used to.

Lots of songs on HIStory honestly do draw me in.

I like the layers of sound, the beats, the razor-sharp production on 2Bad, HIStory, Tabloid Junkie, Scream and They Don't Care About Us. (This Time Around and DS, on the other hand, sound like New Jack Swing by numbers and don't do much for me at all.)

Stranger In Moscow's just lovely.

Little Susie and Smile are typical Michael Jackson but in a good way, unlike the horrors of Childhood and Earth Song.

So to the original poster, no, you're not the only one who likes Disc 2.

― syntaxfree (syntaxfree), Thursday, 17 June 2004 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Michael Jackson is perhaps the one artist in the world who would really improve his batting average by adopting a "we're gonna take it back to what matters: the MUSIC" attitude

NB every other artist is explicitly prohibited from adopting this generally very rank & inadvisable attitude

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Thursday, 17 June 2004 17:35 (twenty-two years ago)

eighteen years pass...

this album contains one of the most shocking songs i have ever heard-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXFSjcjK73M

"this time around" feat. the notorious b.i.g.

the album was one of my most anticipated in memory (even now). i was losing interest in everything except hiphop and there was nothing on the tracklist indicating any guests. the first time i heard the album, i was already feeling this song but when biggie showed up, i completely lost it.

i had loved mjj since the 80s of course, and continued to love him well into the 90s. in my world at that time, it was definitively not cool to like him anymore. of course, i also did not give a fuck what anybody thought so when i heard biggie (arguably *the* most important/popular figure in hiphop at the time), it was validation for me.

"...and i know my n/gga mike like that - BAYBEH!!"<-i had no clue what "punk" was at that point, but holy hell, that was punk af.

― "guys, remember andy?" remember him?! i am him!! (Austin), Saturday, 31 December 2022 03:35 (three years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.

Michael Jackson - HIStory