Hello,
I got the idea for this blog as I was writing one of my 80s music blogs, I started listening to "Bad" and I had forgotten how many great songs that CD has. There are 11 songs on "Bad", all of them are great.
What to do when you make an album that eventually sells by some estimates up to 65,000,000 copies? (Just think about that for a minute, 65 million copies of an album!) How do you proceed if your last record includes the classics "Thriller", "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and "PYT". Every song on "Thriller" is great. What do you do when there's intense pressure on you and very few people think you can make lightning strike again? If your Michael Jackson, you shrug your shoulders, work on your next album for five years, don't let yourself cower and make the classic but sadly under appreciated "Bad". Also to up the ante you put 11 songs on "Bad", when there are only 9 songs on "Thriller".
Jackson answered the call following "Thriller" by creating another absolutely amazing CD. "Bad" didn't sell as many copies as "Thriller", it "only" sold 45 million copies. (Thanks to Wikipedia.org for sales information.) But I suggest to you that "Bad" is just as good of a CD as "Thriller". "Bad" features some of Michael Jackson's strongest songs. Those songs include "Dirty Diana", "Smooth Criminal", "Man In The Mirror", "Bad", "Just Good Friends" and 6 other Jackson classics.
Here's the video for the complete "Bad" CD, While this video does show how great each song is, it doesn't deliver the same butt kicking as a great sound system.
I'm also including videos for each individual song:
1) "Bad": (This is the full 16 minute version of "Bad", directed by Martin Scorcese. And yes that's Wesley Snipes as one of the gangsters.)
The actual video:
2) "The Way You Make Me Feel" (with Britney Spears):
3) "Speed Demon":
4) "Liberian Girl": (And all these years I thought it was "Librarian Girl".) This is sung for a girl from the African country Liberia and is a very sweet song:
5) "Just Good Friends" (Duet with another musical genius Stevie Wonder):
6) "Another Part of Me":
7) "Man In The Mirror":
8) "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" (with Siedah Garrett):
9) "Dirty Diana":
10) "Smooth Criminal":
Jackson's version of "Smooth Criminal" kicked butt, but Alien Ant Farm took this song to the next level:
11) "Leave Me Alone":
Michael Jackson was producing other amazing songs during this time. On the 25th anniversary edition of "Bad", there are many other good songs. My favorites of those additional tracks are below.
"Free": (This song goes to the next level when it reaches the chorus. Such a great song and this is an outtake for Michael Jackson!)
"Price Of Fame": Wanting privacy and to be left alone was a constant theme in Jackson's music and sadly I don't ever think he achieved in his lifetime.
"Al Capone":
"Streetwalker":
"Fly Away":
"Speed Demon" (Remix By Nero):
While Thriller was certainly Michael Jackson's peak and "Bad" is also a classic album, sadly after that Jackson's musical descent began. Although he still made great songs, for instance"Black or White", "They Don't Care About Us", "Heal The World" and "Remember The Time. However he was never able to reach the heights of "Bad". Four years later he released "Dangerous", which only sold half of what "Thriller" sold. That meant it sold 32 million copies, but still rapidly decreasing in sales.
In 1995 he released his greatest hits CD, "History", which sold about 20 million copies. Six years later, in 2001, he released the last CD that he made while alive and had control over, which is the ironically titled "Invincible". It has been anything but in terms of sales. Although most people would kill to sell 10,000,000 CDs, for Michael Jackson that was his lowest sales since his pre "Off The Wall" work. "Invincible" is also the first CD he released pre "Off The Wall" that doesn't have any classics on it.
I realize that Michael Jackson made some poor choices and harmed some people. That truly is part of his legacy that I wish didn't happen. But without a doubt the man also made some of the most classic music of this era or any other era. I'm sad there will only ever be one Michael Jackson and the one we had died so soon.
RIP Michael.
themusicaddict
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