General MJ musings thread

Well, I don't think he really had a friend called Annie whose wellbeing he was concerned about, or was remembering the time in Spain when he fell in love, but he still sang it.

Not trying to be smart, but it's just a pop song, y'know?

I get what you mean obviously, there are songs in MJs catalogue where you feel like you are peering directly into MJs soul and you know they came from him. I get that and understand the difference. But I hear that on Speechless, The Lost Children, Privacy, Unbreakable, YAML etc. And the others are just fun songs. It's not as if The Way You Make Me Feel had any profound meaning or said anything a million other pop songwriters haven't said before, ya know?

I know everyone thinks I'm this hysterical Leave-Britney-alone Invincible stan, but I'm really not. I just sometimes get defensive as people overly-critique or find flaws with the album, when the same criticisms could be levelled at many of the songs he sang on in the 80s and 90s.

The line claiming he's "just singing on it" is a bit unfair, I think. 95% of modern popstars have teams of songwriters who write their songs, hell, Beyonce has whole bootcamp-style retreats to make her music, and nobody says nothing.

MJ was never an ego-maniac in the studio and never claimed to be completely self-sufficient in the way an artist like Prince was. He never shied away from using outsider songwriters and some of his best songs were written by other people.

Yes, he came into his own on something like Bad, and yes, he only solely wrote 2 songs on Invincible, but it's a bit unfair to say he had nothing to do with the other 14 tracks on the album, as we don't know that.

For a start, it was MJs idea to sample Rod Serling on Threatened, that was his creative decision, nobody else's. I don't believe anybody else wrote those lyrics about Princess Diana on Privacy or the words on Unbreakable. He is credited for drum programming on Break of Dawn and Cry, multiple instruments on Unbreakable and arrangement credits on Heartbreaker, keyboard programming on 2000 Watts, Cry and The Lost Children.

Yes, there's some writers demos on Youtube which show MJ changed very little on certain songs, Heaven Can Wait, Whatever Happens etc. But then I'm sure that was the case for songs like Keep The Faith, Gone Too Soon, Man In The Mirror also. The Break of Dawn demo leaked by Dr Freeze sounds nothing at all like the song that ended up on Invincible, so it's a mixed bag.

And I know you're not a fan, but I think most people consider Speechless to be the centrepiece of the album, which is as pure an MJ song as anyone could ever hope for. As for The Lost Children, I know it's divisive and not to everyone's taste, but MJ clearly loved it and believed in it. There's a few clips online of him singing this when he's out and about, with Bashir, at an airport, at Neverland with the kids. It's obviously a song he was proud of.

I too would've liked to have seen a few more sole MJ writing credits on Invincible. For starters, I wish he'd finished up Hollywood Tonight as that had so much potential. But I think a lot of the criticism levelled at the album comes from the fact that it was his final one, if he'd released 2 or 3 other albums afterwards it wouldn't have been so overly-analysed, dissected and critiqued by the fanbase and there wouldn't be this impossibly high standard placed on it to live up to the best of his past work.