The Pale King: Reviewing Michael Jackson's latest last album
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Timbaland and J-Roc's studio mastery has only marginally improved some of the unfinished demos.
Culled from unfinished and previously unworthy archival material, Michael Jackson’s new posthumous compilation is a pop séance. Timbaland and J-Roc’s studio mastery only marginally improved some of the unfinished demos that come with the deluxe edition of Xscape (Epic). Most notable is “Slave to the Rhythm,” which admittedly needs Timbo’s touch to live up to its title. But “Blue Gangsta,” a throwaway joke on its own, becomes a bad one overtop trap drums.
What’s worthwhile here are the reminders of what a unique vocal stylist Jackson was, scatting on the pretty “Loving You,” gasping and grunting on “A Place With No Name.” That tremulous tenor by which he conveyed, by moan or by snarl, both desire and desolation is employed most powerfully on “Do You Know Where Your Children Are,” about a sexually abused and exploited 12-year-old runaway girl (feel free to squirm) and “Xscape,” an inchoate version of “Scream.” Together, they address the two principal obsessions of his adulthood — the sufferings of the very young and the spiritual deprivations of his staggering fame — and unleash the hee hee heees! and woos! everyone was waiting for.
The standing ovation his hologram received at the Billboard Music Awards feels like a metaphor for pop-cultural exhaustion so easy to reach for it must be bullshit. The beat goes on, and it was a fitting echo of what his last performances were like anyway, watching a ghost try to keep up with the flesh and blood man he used to be. It’s too precise, graceless, the ghost can do nothing new; all it has within are the dead man’s memories. If you like your pop heroes in their spectral phase then listen to the end of “Love Never Felt So Good” for the svelte voice of a 25-year-old Michael whispering in your ear from beyond the grave, “All right, that’s fine, that’s it.”
