Forty years later, the best-selling album in the world still has secrets to reveal. suspenseMichael Jackson’s legendary album, co-produced by Quincy Jones, released on November 30, 1982, comes out this Friday enriched with new songs.
Ten previously unreleased songs by Michael Jackson appear on the reissue of suspense, which arises 40 years later. Songs fans will discover or rediscover this Friday.
“For every album, Michael Jackson used to record a lot of songs,” said Laurent Hopman, editor-in-chief of Michael Jackson’s news magazine Black & White from 1992 to 2009.
“In general, he worked on 50 to 80 tracks per album. Not all of them were achieved. Sometimes they were just what we call ‘demos’, very simple recordings, sometimes just with a piano and vocals. Sometimes the lyrics weren’t there. completely written.Depending on how interesting these demos were, Michael Jackson developed them further, with musicians to get to the final track.
If it is difficult to estimate the number of these demonstrations for suspenseadds the specialist, there are several dozen pieces.
The Michael Jackson Estate, the estate of the singer who died in 2009, which manages the rights to his work and decided on this reissue, does not have access to the titles produced by Quincy Jones. The songs that appear on this reissue are thus “demos that Jackson recorded with other producers or that he recorded alone with musicians at home.”
That is why there are not many themes available for this reissue. Titles “of variable quality”, “not very successful”, estimates Laurent Hopman who comments for BFMTV.com on the content and origin of these pieces, among which only three are truly unpublished.
• What are these 10 unpublished titles?
“Who Do You Know”
“It’s a demo that Michael Jackson started working on in the early 1980s. It’s a song he wrote by himself. Designed for ‘Thriller,’ it didn’t get preserved. It’s a bit produced, but it’s still a raw demo in its own juice”, comments Laurent Hopman.
“What a beautiful way to go”
“It’s an even simpler demo than the last one. It’s almost just the piano and the vocals. It’s barely been mixed or touched up. It’s very, very raw. It’s probably one of the oldest Michael Jackson songs for adults, it was written before “. Outside the wall'” [ndlr: son précédent album, paru en 1979].
“Toys”
“It’s also a song in the demo stage. It was supposed to be a movie song, ‘The Toy,’ a remake of the Toy with Pedro Ricardo. She was supposed to do the song for the movie. It didn’t happen for various reasons, and the song stayed on the demo stage. But then Michael Jackson, who liked the baseline, reworked it almost to his death. It’s a song that came out after his death, on a posthumous album, under another title, ‘Best of joy’.”
“She’s Trouble”
“It’s a song that the producers behind Tina Turner’s hits had offered to Michael Jackson for the Thriller album. It is a demo version, which is not the demo version produced by Quincy Jones, but an intermediate version. It wasn’t selected because it was a bit too disco,” stresses Laurent Hopman.
Turned down by Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, the song was offered to another. So Scott Baio, young American actor who plays Chachi in Happy Days […] recovers She’s problem and records it for his album The Boys Are Out Tonight (1983)”, indicate Richard Lecocq and François Allard in their book Michael Jackson, The Whole.
“Behind the mask”
“The instrumental for this song was made by a Japanese band called Yellow Magical Orchestra. Michael Jackson heard it on the radio. He liked it, got the rights and wrote the lyrics for it. This song was released in a remixed version, on the album posthumous, Miguel. in 2010. This is a very scrappy demo too, because the song was never completed.”
“I Can’t Get Out of the Rain”
“It’s just a song, loose Laurent Hopman. It comes from a piece, which is on the soundtrack of the movie The Wiz, in which Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson participated. The second part of this song, which is very long, was cut. to make this single, it’s not really unreleased, plus it’s from 1976, it has nothing to do with suspense.”
“Starlight”
“Starlight is actually a demo of the song ‘Thriller’. Rod Temperton wrote that song, it was called ‘Starlight’ at the beginning, and it was a bit of an upbeat, rather disco song. Rod Temperton rewrote the lyrics to make it a bit more themed. of zombies. It’s the same song, but with different lyrics.”
“Carousel”
“Written by Michael Semblello, to whom we owe in particular ‘Maniac,’ the hit movie ‘Flashdance,’ this song was supposed to be in ‘Thriller.’ But it was eventually replaced by ‘Human Nature.’ It has already been disseminated in various commercial media, so it is nothing new”, says Laurent Hopman.
Carousel it was deemed too “pop” and too “linear” to appear on the album, as written by Richard Lecocq and François Allard Michael Jackson, The Whole.
“Sunset Driver”
“This title has also been released in the past. Also, it’s unreleased from the ‘Off the Wall’ era, which has nothing to do with this album either.”
“I have hot flashes”
“Another track written by Rod Temperton for Thriller, which was finished by Quincy Jones, but found because it’s been used on other records before. Effectively an unreleased ‘Thriller’, but it’s already out.”
• Will there be another unpublished Michael Jackson one day?
Yes, says Laurent Hopman, there are still many unpublished works by Michael Jackson. Something like hot streetY night line, have already been leaked, but in poor quality. “There are a dozen titles, registered during this period, that we know of and that are sufficiently accomplished to be interesting.
But these titles, produced by Quincy Jones, will not be released while the famed producer is at loggerheads over the singer’s estate. “The estate did a musical extravaganza in Las Vegas, ‘Michael Jackson One,’ using recordings of music produced by Quincy Jones, but they remixed it, in part to avoid having to pay royalties.” The dispute even went to trial, with the producer claiming millions of dollars from Michael Jackson’s estate.
Another producer, Steve Porcaro, a member of the Toto group, also owns a few. “But the estate was not willing to pay enough to have them,” stresses Laurent Hopman.
Michael Jackson’s discography has yet to reveal all of its treasures.
Source: BFM TV
