The Ultimate Collection [Sony/Epic] [Box] by Michael Jackson

King Of Pop.

To a lot of folks, the fact that Michael Jackson chooses to call himself that (and in turn, has other people call him that) speaks volumes about his overinflated ego. But if you stop and think about it, how unjustified is it? Granted, he wears his influences on his sleeve-James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Fred Astaire. He's not an innovator in the model of a Stevie Wonder or a Prince. But still, the man has certainly turned popular music on it's ear several times. He's a gifted singer, a superb dancer, an underrated
songwriter and producer who, unfortunately, will wind up in history books with a title that doesn't exactly befit his contribution to music.

Freak.

I may be a fanboy, but I'm not an idiot. The man himself has contributed heavily to what may be the biggest fall from grace in the history of pop culture. The saddest thing about the skin-bleaching and the plastic surgery addiction and the molestation scandals is that it causes people to view him not as a singer or as a musician, but as a public spectacle sideshow trainwreck. And, oh yeah, he sings and dances too. Hopefully, "The Ultimate Collection" will do some small part in correcting the man's image in the court of public opinion.

While I'm certainly convinced that you need "Off The Wall" and "Thriller" at the bare minimum as essential albums in any genre of music, what "The Ultimate Collection" offers is a bit of an MJ smorgasbord. It's a relatively inexpensive (for a box set, anyway) starting point for an MJ beginner that offers little tastes of every era of his career. If you're a dedicated fan, there's no reason for me to tell you why you should buy this. Hell, chances are you have it already. It has the daunting task of stuffing the highlights from 35 years of music onto 4 discs (with a concert DVD as a bonus). It serves it's purpose fairly well. Although I certainly can argue with the track selection, the essentials are here. Some songs are conspicuous in their absence, but just about every track included has some justification for being there.

I've tried to explain my fanboyosity in various other MJ reviews, and I don't think I've ever totally come up with an accurate reason for why this man means so much to me. As I mentioned in a U2 review I posted a while back, the best singers are the ones that make you feel something inside.
When Bono sings, it's like he's taking your feelings and putting them through his mouth. Michael serves the same purpose for me. I've been singing and dancing to the man's music probably since I was 3. The man's voice has the ability to communicate emotion, whether it be anger, paranoia or loneliness. This is something we probably shouldn't take for granted in a world of disposable pop singers vocalizing empty lyrics in dispassionate fashion. Although, in some weird way, we might have Michael to
blame for that too.

I feel as though I still haven't sufficiently explained the cause of my devotion. There just might not be a proper explanation. All I can tell you is-put aside your preconceived notions and listen to the man sing. You might
be surprised how much you enjoy it.

"We were born to entertain..."

How many 11-year olds do you know that have the capacity to make the kind of records that kicked off Michael's career at Motown? Hasn't been one before or since. What's striking about these early songs (several of which Sony managed to license from Motown for this collection) is not only how knowing and nuanced his singing is (keep in mind that the guy was eleven when the first of these songs were recorded) but how much those damn songs POP! "I Want You Back" roars out of the speakers with an urgency that rivals just about anything else made in the Sixties. Michael, from the beginning, was a singer who took equally from the shouty grunting of James Brown and the smooth crooning of Jackie Wilson, adding a bit of Diana Ross's shy coo for the slower numbers, melding his influences to create a sound all his own. "I'll Be There" and "Ben" remain essential.
Although "Ben" has been banished to the hall of corn (and, let's be real here, it is a song about a rat), Michael's performance is goose-bump worthy. What would be a big ball of fluff coming out of the mouth of any other singer has an unexpected poignancy coming from the mouth of Michael. "Dancing Machine" and "Enjoy Yourself" aren't awful songs, but they're fairly generic in terms of what
most disco songs sounded like during that period. But Michael turns the songs into showcases for his voice. During his adolescent phase, his voice had a playfulness to it that made it seem like MJ would be the perfect dude
to hang out with at a party-something that would continue on his first adult solo album, "Off The Wall".

"Let the madness in the music get to you...life ain't so bad at all...when you're livin' off the wall"

By the time he reached legal age, Michael Jackson was obviously on a mission. Despite the fact that the Motown singles were great songs, he wanted to express his own voice, and the efforts from his early adulthood wound up producing two of the greatest albums of all time.

The genesis of all this was really The Jacksons' first self-produced LP, 1978's "Destiny". The album's breakthrough was the song "Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)", which re-established the former teen idols as adult stars. The song's relentless arrangement and Michael's breathlessly
exuberant vocal made it a dance classic. It's included here in it's full LP version as well as a demo version which ends on the hilarious spoken line "I want The Bee Gees to hear this sh*t."

Then, Mike met Quincy. Over the course of the next decade, these two men collaborated on some classic music. Although MJ deserves the lion's share of the credit for the music here, Q's contribution can not be discounted. The full-throttle frenzy of Mike's jump into adulthood was balanced by Quincy's sympathetic musical ear (and his connections to some of the best songwriters & musicians around). Their first collaboration, 1979's "Off The Wall", completely captures the eyes-shooting-wide-openness of self-discovery. It's sensual ("Rock With You"), exuberant ("Off The Wall"), and occasionally painful ("She's Out Of My Life"). Along with the first single, "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" (a song whose mumbled intro lurching into full-bodied orchestration fully encapsulates the release that Michael must've felt upon gaining his independence from his family), "Off The Wall" became THE standard by which black pop was measured, rightfully earning it's place among the classics of modern music.

"No one wants to be defeated..."

If "Off The Wall" was the standard for Black music, then "Thriller" was the standard that all pop music would follow, PERIOD. Which is weird from this fanboy's perspective, because "Thriller" (I think) is somewhat inferior to "Off The Wall". At any rate, "Thriller" wond up securing Michael a place in the history books-and it's songs are unforgettable-"The Girl Is Mine", "Billie Jean", "Beat It". It might be a hard thing to separate the quality of these songs (well, OK, maybe not "The Girl Is Mine"), from the stunning success of the album, or in the case of the latter two, the videos. But "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" (and to a lesser extent, "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Thriller", deserve their place as all-time pop classics, not only because of their historical significance, but because they're good songs. Songs that are just as compelling in 2004 as they were in 1983.

"Who's bad?"

Unfortunately, Michael has spent the two decades since trying to replicate "Thriller", a task that has seen him occasionally reach the same heights as he did with his first two official solo efforts, but also occasionally saw him embarrass himself.

The drop-off isn't as bad as most people would say it was. Michael's post-"Thriller" work is inconsistent, but usually not awful. "Bad" saw MJ & Q substituting electronics in place of actual instruments, giving the music a bit of a colder feel, but Michael still tackles all the bases here. "Smooth Criminal" was the funky murder-mystery, "Dirty Diana" was yet another successful stab at quasi-arena rock, and then there's "Man In The Mirror". Despite lyrics that scream of hackwork, this song features one of the most obvious examples of MJ throwing himself into a song emotionally. His call-and-response with the gospel choir at the song's end is nothing short of amazing, and this song does a great deal in validating Mike's entry as one of the great soul singers of our time.

"I have to find my peace 'cause no one seems to let me be"

The 90s and 00s were definitely not kind to Michael on a peraonal level, but there was still enough good music to pull us fans through. 1991's "Dangerous" found MJ updating his music with hip-hop textures, as best referenced on 1991's "Jam", a track that finds Michael speed -singing about the state of the world over a busy new-jack arrangement, while "Remember The Time" slowed things down slightly and brought back the romantic Michael of the "Rock With You" era. These years slowly marked the return of MJ the balladeer, as evidenced on 2001's remarkable "Butterflies" (proof that the man still has it, even without a nose), and 1995's "You Are Not Alone"-not much of a song, but a fantastic vocal performance. This era's highlight would have to be "Stranger In Moscow"-a haunting ballad that must have been written at some point around the time of the first molestation accusations. Michael again uses his voice to convey a very palpable sadness. During this song, you can almost picture the man walking through the rain, trying desperately to come to terms that this is what his life has come to. It's more clear-eyed and less whiny than songs like "Childhood", which just ends up sounding like a pity party, set to a Disney-esque musical arrangement.

And this is where we come to the point where the MJ fans can all come to the table and argue over what should've been included and what should've been omitted. Although i'm certainly not a fan of songs like "Childhood", I breathed a very big sigh of relief when I realized that "Heal The World" (easily MJ's worst single ever) was not included. I cant really quibble with the track selection, but I-from a fan's perspective-can say that I wish Michael could've found a place for "Human Nature" and "Will You Be There", for starters. And isn't it time that "Say Say Say" and "Somebody's Watching Me" appeared on a Michael Jackson album? Just sayin'. And where the hell is "Scream"?

Omissions aside, fans will rejoice in the fact that there's an ample amount of rare or unreleased material here. This material veers sharply in quality. Among the demos here, some songs are fully fleshed out, while others still have Michael "hmm"-ing where lyrics should be. Being that I'm not particularly interested in the man's creative process, I'd have been a helluva lot happier with actual songs. Still, there's some good stuff here. "You Can't Win" is one of two songs here from Michael's 1978 movie debut, "The Wiz", and it unfolds into a full-on funk vamp, which, if I remember correctly, was edited, called "Can't Get Outta The Rain", and used as the B-side for a couple of MJ songs, including "The Girl Is Mine". "Sunset Driver" is from the same period, an enjoyable dance jam that's instantly dated, (definitely sounds like post-"Off The Wall", pre-"Thriller"), but is still worth a listen.

Demo versions of "PYT" and "Dangerous" reveal songs significantly different from what wound up as the finished product. While "Dangerous" was pretty much given a high-tech retooling from a musical standpoint (the lyrics are more or less the same in both versions), "PYT" is a completely different song. The original version sounds like a high-quality Stevie Wonder outtake. It's much more moody than the "Thriller" version. Elsewhere, you get Mike's attempt to join the Latin-pop explosion (the Robin Thicke-produced ballad "Fall Again"), a pretty beat ballad from the "Dangerous" era ("Someone Put Your Hand Out"), a few generic dance tracks ("Cheater", "Monkey Business"), and the album closer "We've Had Enough", which, despite it's gneral claims about the state of the world, still sounds more like a "see what they're doing to me!" whinefest in the manner of many of the "HIStory"-era songs.

For those who, like me, wish to never hear the original version again, there's also a demo version of "We Are The World" featuring Michael singing solo, as well as the well-sung (if awfully generic) Babyface production "On The Line", which appeared in the Spike Lee film "Get On The Bus". The album's most intriguing rarity is "Scared Of The Moon", an oddity from the "Thriller" era that shows that a) Michael was listening to a lot of "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", and b) he was kinda creepy even then. This haunting piano ballad is pretty damn interesting.

Once you get past the music, there's still some good stuff here. Even bad MJ concerts are entertaining, and while I might've preferred a show from the "Bad" tour, the DVD of a 'Dangerous" tour stop in Bucharest, Romania, is worth checking out if you didn't catch it when it aired on HBO about 10 years back. The booklet that comes with the box offers the usual historical info (although, to be fair, some of it is incorrect), as well as an essay by noted pop critic/journalist Nelson George (who wrote a couple of fanzine books on the Jacksons back in the "Off The Wall" days) that chronicles Michael's progression from talented child star to accomplished musician.

The acoomplished musician part may stand as a shock to some of the more elitist folk who think that you have to compose every lyric and play every instrument in order to be a true talent. Mike has definitely proven himself a more than capable songwriter and producer ("Billie Jean" alone can stand as a testament o his chops in those departments). What should stick out the most here is the breadth of genres he's tackled over the course of his career. Soul. Disco. Funk. Rock. Pop. He's an incredibly versatile performer, something that also makes him an extremely difficult artist for others to cover (think anyone out there is gonna try to tackle "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough"? Doubtful).

This whole collection has an air of sadness to it. I would love for Michael to be the phoenix rising out of the ashes and enjoy much more success, but I'm enough of a realist to know that the possibility of that happening is quite slim. Even if there wasn't the public perception of the man as a self-deluded freakazoid (or the threat of potential incarceration), there's also the fact that the man's 46, a few years past the sell-by date of a commercially relevant rock star. So this compilation seems like the final stamp on a career, something that brings me more than a little sadness when I consider how much the man has meant to my life.

However, if he's gonna go, then what a way to go! "Ultimate Collection" does a damn good (if not perfect) job trying to condense 4 decades of high-quality music onto four discs. The only reason this set won't get the chance to convert the unconvinced is because a) it's a box set and that'll set ya back a decent chunk of change and b) I don't know that there's anyone left that can listen to this guy's music without the mental image of him as a nutjob-particularly those who were either too young to remember Michaelmania or weren't born yet.

Whether you consider him a benign oddity, a self-possessed egomaniac, or a ghoulish monster, it can't be denied that Michael Jackson is one of the most influential entertainers of al time. Blessed with an underrated voice, formidable songwriting and production chops, and a talent as by far the greatest showman of his generation, "The Ultimate Collection" is a well-put together document of his rise to fame...and his fall from grace.




"The Ultimate Collection"-Michael Jackson

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Repeat: At the very least, Discs 1 and 2 in their entirety.

Skip: A handful of the unreleased/demo tracks. There's a reason why they're demo/unreleased tracks.

Great Music to Play While: Wondering when "chamone" and "ma ma se ma ma sa ma ma coo sa" are going to be added to Webster's dictionary.