Information about Michael Jackson’s unreleased tracks from BAD25
Spike Lee made the documentary BAD25 about the album BAD. This documentary will hit the market this fall. To make it, he had full access to the entire audio and visual archive of everything related to BAD. He said: "Michael made 66 songs for this album. Not demos—songs!" Of those songs, we’ve heard only a few. Even fewer of these tracks will be released on BAD25. But Spike Lee has promised that all of these works will finally see the light of day. So we’ll keep waiting...
But for selecting the unreleased tracks from this era, the research team had a difficult road ahead. They spent a lot of time listening to these pieces. Some tracks had been stopped in the early stages of production and had no lyrics except in the form of a song translation segment. On the other hand, some others were so complete that any other artist would have considered them final—except Michael Jackson, who was constantly trying to finish his works.
In the end, ten tracks were chosen for this album, five of which had never been heard before. Michael’s notes about these songs were included with them. These notes reveal the roadmap Michael had in mind for them, and as he wrote, he wasn’t satisfied with anything less than what he truly wanted. The second disc of the BAD25 collection contains a number of unreleased songs that Michael wrote and sang during the preparation of the BAD album. There are three remix tracks on this disc, and the remaining ten tracks are:
1. Don't Be Messin' Around
2. I'm So Blue
3. Song Groove - A/K/A Abortion Papers
4. Free
5. Price Of Fame
6. Al Capone
7. Streetwalker
8. Fly Away
9. Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu - I Just Can't Stop Loving You, Spanish Version
10. Je Ne Veux Pas La Fin De Nous - I Just Can't Stop Loving You, French Version
From this list, Fly Away, Streetwalker, and Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu were released on the special 2001 edition of the BAD album.
Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu, which is the Spanish version of I Just Can't Stop Loving You, had been released in 1987 as an added track on several BAD album versions in Spanish-speaking South American countries as well as some European countries. In the late 1980s, the song was played frequently on Spanish-language radio stations, so Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu is a well-known track for people in South America. It was also released as a single in countries such as the United States, Spain, Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia.
Je Ne Veux Pas La Fin De Nous, which is the French version of the same song, was recorded in 1988 but was never released, although for years it has been on the internet and on YouTube—and likely all Michael fans have heard it.
Don't Be Messin' Around was released in early summer (here).
But the other five tracks from this disc are among the never-before-released works of the King of Pop:
2. I'm So Blue
3. Song Groove - A/K/A Abortion Papers
4. Free
5. Price Of Fame
6. Al Capone
Roger Friedman recently published information about the BAD25 tracks in an article titled "The Mystery of Michael Jackson’s Unreleased Songs."
"Two of the first eight tracks—which are truly amazing—are completely unknown to the engineers who worked with Michael on the BAD album in 1986. These two tracks are the romantic ballad I'm So Blue and a fun/funk piece called Song Groove aka Abortion Papers.
Neither Bruce Swedien nor Bill Bottrell has any memory of these two songs. I played these two songs for them just this weekend, but they had no response. Bottrell told me that Michael must have recorded these songs with someone else outside the studio. But don’t worry—they’re Michael Jackson songs.
These tracks are pure gems.
This set of eight tracks was not released on the BAD album at the time, and for years they sat in Sony’s vaults.
Don't Be Messin' Around was released earlier this summer as the second track from the single I Just Can't Stop Loving You at Walmart. I don’t know why Sony made that decision—it seems like they missed a great opportunity. Now these eight tracks are being released on a separate disc in BAD25."
Friedman believes that, in fact, these eight tracks are what will excite fans:
"Some of them, like Don't Be Messin' Around or Fly Away, are known, but the rest are surprising—especially Streetwalker, which carries a vague feeling of The Way You Make Me Feel, with a gloss of Motown-era music, but at the same time it’s an explosive song. A version of this song that will be released on BAD25 was mixed by Bottrell, but the rest of the tracks are Swedien’s work.
Al Capone, Free, and Fly Away are great. The fact that these songs weren’t on the album wasn’t without reason. (Meaning that Michael intended to use these beautiful songs somewhere appropriate.)
Jackson was never satisfied with any of these tracks. Streetwalker will be familiar to computer-game addicts via the game. This song is fantastic. In the future, we’ll hear it on the radio too.
I hope fans don’t do to this album what they did to the MICHAEL album, and don’t ruin its songs. These songs, like the tracks from the Michael album, are real and were sung by Michael, and they remind us of Michael Jackson in his peak era."
Friedman described these songs as "gems" and wrote:
I'm So Blue (How sad I am)
With Michael Jackson’s voice, reminiscent of his best work, this beautiful ballad came together. If Sony had been smart, it would have released this track as the first single from the collection. There’s also a harmonica part in this song, which is either Steve Wonder’s work or just resembles his.
This song gets under my skin in a good way, and I can’t get it out of my head.
Making a demo of a song for Michael meant letting the person he chose (in this case, Quincy Jones and Bruce) understand what he wanted to hear in the finished track. And since he didn’t write notes, the demo was a tool to write the music and lyrics. And because he was a perfectionist, as Bruce Swedien and others have said, his demos were so complete that they sound like finished songs to ordinary people. Blue is an example of those demos.
Don't Be Messin' 'Round (Don’t mess around with me)
Everyone knows that Michael Jackson could choose a song for his album and then not use it. Later, that song would be taken out of the drawer for use on other albums. Messin' 'Round is one of those songs. It’s one of Swedien’s favorite tracks.
(Read the review of this song by Joe Vogel here.)
Price of Fame (The price of fame)
It’s a fusion of Billie Jean and a Police song titled Spirits in the Material World. Michael’s vocals in this track move away from his falsetto tone and whisper-like style, getting closer to his real, masculine voice.
Sometimes there’s a story behind a song. In Michael Jackson’s notes, the story behind this song has been found: blind obsessions.
He describes the story like this:
"It’s about girls who become obsessively fixated on me—those who follow me, those who force me to drive my car so fast that I’m putting myself in danger of death, those who are willing to sacrifice their entire lives just to be with me, to see me. Anything they can do to hurt me drives me crazy. It ruins my relationship with my girlfriend, and it ruins it with my family. That’s the price of fame."
Free (Free)
This is another of his gentle ballads. Michael usually began the production process of a song with the chorus (the repeating, hook-like part) and harmony, and then built the melody and the lyrics for the verses. This piece is clearly unfinished, but its chorus and harmony are completed and finalized.
Al Capone (Al Capone—also the name of an American gangster)
This is another take on the successful song Smooth Criminal.
When you listen to the early demos of some songs, you can immediately tell which songs they are. But Al Capone is not like that. This is a good example of how a song can change through different stages of recording, and how different it can be from its polished final version.
If we didn’t know that Smooth Criminal was born out of Al Capone, it would have been difficult to figure it out based on what we’ve heard from Al Capone.
Song Groove aka Abortion Papers (Song Groove, also known as Abortion Papers)
(Groove: a music term meaning the song’s driving rhythm.)
But the strangest song among these eight tracks is Song Groove aka Abortion Papers. Swedien and Bottrell don’t remember it. It has a pounding rhythm and a melody that hooks into your mind and sticks. But the song’s lyrics are a bold variation on the lyrics of Billie Jean. He sings: "Those abortion papers / I think I should write your name on them."
The Michael Jackson Foundation has told me that Michael’s handwritten notes are attached to this song.
Michael knew this song could become controversial, and that’s why he spent a lot of time thinking about its story and the sound that would be suitable for singing this song.
The story is about a preacher’s daughter. She grew up in church with the teachings of the Bible. She gets married in church, but decides to have her baby aborted, which conflicts with the Bible. To do this, she has to complete the abortion papers.
Michael wrote in his notes: "I have to somehow make this song in a way that I don’t insult girls who have had abortions, and I don’t make them feel guilty again. So I have to work carefully. I have to think it through."
This is an example of a song with a controversial theme.
Source: eMJey.com / Roger Friedman, Showbiz411
But for selecting the unreleased tracks from this era, the research team had a difficult road ahead. They spent a lot of time listening to these pieces. Some tracks had been stopped in the early stages of production and had no lyrics except in the form of a song translation segment. On the other hand, some others were so complete that any other artist would have considered them final—except Michael Jackson, who was constantly trying to finish his works.
In the end, ten tracks were chosen for this album, five of which had never been heard before. Michael’s notes about these songs were included with them. These notes reveal the roadmap Michael had in mind for them, and as he wrote, he wasn’t satisfied with anything less than what he truly wanted. The second disc of the BAD25 collection contains a number of unreleased songs that Michael wrote and sang during the preparation of the BAD album. There are three remix tracks on this disc, and the remaining ten tracks are:
1. Don't Be Messin' Around
2. I'm So Blue
3. Song Groove - A/K/A Abortion Papers
4. Free
5. Price Of Fame
6. Al Capone
7. Streetwalker
8. Fly Away
9. Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu - I Just Can't Stop Loving You, Spanish Version
10. Je Ne Veux Pas La Fin De Nous - I Just Can't Stop Loving You, French Version
From this list, Fly Away, Streetwalker, and Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu were released on the special 2001 edition of the BAD album.
Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu, which is the Spanish version of I Just Can't Stop Loving You, had been released in 1987 as an added track on several BAD album versions in Spanish-speaking South American countries as well as some European countries. In the late 1980s, the song was played frequently on Spanish-language radio stations, so Todo Mi Amor Eres Tu is a well-known track for people in South America. It was also released as a single in countries such as the United States, Spain, Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia.
Je Ne Veux Pas La Fin De Nous, which is the French version of the same song, was recorded in 1988 but was never released, although for years it has been on the internet and on YouTube—and likely all Michael fans have heard it.
Don't Be Messin' Around was released in early summer (here).
But the other five tracks from this disc are among the never-before-released works of the King of Pop:
2. I'm So Blue
3. Song Groove - A/K/A Abortion Papers
4. Free
5. Price Of Fame
6. Al Capone
Roger Friedman recently published information about the BAD25 tracks in an article titled "The Mystery of Michael Jackson’s Unreleased Songs."
"Two of the first eight tracks—which are truly amazing—are completely unknown to the engineers who worked with Michael on the BAD album in 1986. These two tracks are the romantic ballad I'm So Blue and a fun/funk piece called Song Groove aka Abortion Papers.
Neither Bruce Swedien nor Bill Bottrell has any memory of these two songs. I played these two songs for them just this weekend, but they had no response. Bottrell told me that Michael must have recorded these songs with someone else outside the studio. But don’t worry—they’re Michael Jackson songs.
These tracks are pure gems.
This set of eight tracks was not released on the BAD album at the time, and for years they sat in Sony’s vaults.
Don't Be Messin' Around was released earlier this summer as the second track from the single I Just Can't Stop Loving You at Walmart. I don’t know why Sony made that decision—it seems like they missed a great opportunity. Now these eight tracks are being released on a separate disc in BAD25."
Friedman believes that, in fact, these eight tracks are what will excite fans:
"Some of them, like Don't Be Messin' Around or Fly Away, are known, but the rest are surprising—especially Streetwalker, which carries a vague feeling of The Way You Make Me Feel, with a gloss of Motown-era music, but at the same time it’s an explosive song. A version of this song that will be released on BAD25 was mixed by Bottrell, but the rest of the tracks are Swedien’s work.
Al Capone, Free, and Fly Away are great. The fact that these songs weren’t on the album wasn’t without reason. (Meaning that Michael intended to use these beautiful songs somewhere appropriate.)
Jackson was never satisfied with any of these tracks. Streetwalker will be familiar to computer-game addicts via the game. This song is fantastic. In the future, we’ll hear it on the radio too.
I hope fans don’t do to this album what they did to the MICHAEL album, and don’t ruin its songs. These songs, like the tracks from the Michael album, are real and were sung by Michael, and they remind us of Michael Jackson in his peak era."
Friedman described these songs as "gems" and wrote:
I'm So Blue (How sad I am)
With Michael Jackson’s voice, reminiscent of his best work, this beautiful ballad came together. If Sony had been smart, it would have released this track as the first single from the collection. There’s also a harmonica part in this song, which is either Steve Wonder’s work or just resembles his.
This song gets under my skin in a good way, and I can’t get it out of my head.
Making a demo of a song for Michael meant letting the person he chose (in this case, Quincy Jones and Bruce) understand what he wanted to hear in the finished track. And since he didn’t write notes, the demo was a tool to write the music and lyrics. And because he was a perfectionist, as Bruce Swedien and others have said, his demos were so complete that they sound like finished songs to ordinary people. Blue is an example of those demos.
Don't Be Messin' 'Round (Don’t mess around with me)
Everyone knows that Michael Jackson could choose a song for his album and then not use it. Later, that song would be taken out of the drawer for use on other albums. Messin' 'Round is one of those songs. It’s one of Swedien’s favorite tracks.
(Read the review of this song by Joe Vogel here.)
Price of Fame (The price of fame)
It’s a fusion of Billie Jean and a Police song titled Spirits in the Material World. Michael’s vocals in this track move away from his falsetto tone and whisper-like style, getting closer to his real, masculine voice.
Sometimes there’s a story behind a song. In Michael Jackson’s notes, the story behind this song has been found: blind obsessions.
He describes the story like this:
"It’s about girls who become obsessively fixated on me—those who follow me, those who force me to drive my car so fast that I’m putting myself in danger of death, those who are willing to sacrifice their entire lives just to be with me, to see me. Anything they can do to hurt me drives me crazy. It ruins my relationship with my girlfriend, and it ruins it with my family. That’s the price of fame."
Free (Free)
This is another of his gentle ballads. Michael usually began the production process of a song with the chorus (the repeating, hook-like part) and harmony, and then built the melody and the lyrics for the verses. This piece is clearly unfinished, but its chorus and harmony are completed and finalized.
Al Capone (Al Capone—also the name of an American gangster)
This is another take on the successful song Smooth Criminal.
When you listen to the early demos of some songs, you can immediately tell which songs they are. But Al Capone is not like that. This is a good example of how a song can change through different stages of recording, and how different it can be from its polished final version.
If we didn’t know that Smooth Criminal was born out of Al Capone, it would have been difficult to figure it out based on what we’ve heard from Al Capone.
Song Groove aka Abortion Papers (Song Groove, also known as Abortion Papers)
(Groove: a music term meaning the song’s driving rhythm.)
But the strangest song among these eight tracks is Song Groove aka Abortion Papers. Swedien and Bottrell don’t remember it. It has a pounding rhythm and a melody that hooks into your mind and sticks. But the song’s lyrics are a bold variation on the lyrics of Billie Jean. He sings: "Those abortion papers / I think I should write your name on them."
The Michael Jackson Foundation has told me that Michael’s handwritten notes are attached to this song.
Michael knew this song could become controversial, and that’s why he spent a lot of time thinking about its story and the sound that would be suitable for singing this song.
The story is about a preacher’s daughter. She grew up in church with the teachings of the Bible. She gets married in church, but decides to have her baby aborted, which conflicts with the Bible. To do this, she has to complete the abortion papers.
Michael wrote in his notes: "I have to somehow make this song in a way that I don’t insult girls who have had abortions, and I don’t make them feel guilty again. So I have to work carefully. I have to think it through."
This is an example of a song with a controversial theme.
Source: eMJey.com / Roger Friedman, Showbiz411