FEATURE:
Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me
Michael Jackson - Bad
___________
THIS new series…
might seem a little self-indulgent, but I think every music lover has those albums that came to them during childhood that impacted them and changed how they felt about music. In terms of the earliest albums, Michael Jackson’s Bad was a huge one for me. I know there is a bittersweet and slightly controversial nature discussing Jackson today. I am not going to talk about accusations of sexual abuse that have been levied at him. I am discussing an artist and album that delighted and enthralled me as a child. Bad is Jackson’s seventh studio album. It was released on 31st August, 1987, nearly five years after Jackson's previous album, Thriller (1982). It was the third and final collaboration between Jackson and producer Quincy Jones. In terms of Pop albums, I think Jackson was the master. He could pen these songs that got straight to the heart. There is this debate as to which Michael Jackson album is the best. Many would say Thriller, whereas others gravitate towards Off the Wall (or another one of his studio efforts). I feel Bad is an underrated album that might have been compared to Thriller too heavily. Maybe critics were expecting something similar to that album in 1987. Bad, to me, is a more consistent album. I do not think that it is perfect. Tracks like Just Good Friends are not among Jackson’s best.
I think there has been reappraisal of the album, seeing as a lot of time has passed by. Many artists have cited Bad as a key album to them, so critics have returned to the album and judged it on that basis. There are sites that ranks the tracks on Bad. It is an album with some obvious highlights. I think Man in the Mirror, Dirty Diana, Bad, Smooth Criminal, Leave Me Alone and I Just Can’t Stop Loving You are Jacko classics. The album is balanced so you get incredibly strong songs on both sides – not just a case of top-loading so that you get all the quality at the front and then it is diminishing returns. I latched onto the album from the age of six or seven. That would have been a year or two after Bad was released. With the ability to write instantly catchy choruses that, plus Jackson’s vocal tics and incredible vocal range, ensured Bad resonated and got under the skin. I really love the album and listen to it a lot today. I want to finish by sourcing from a positive review of the album. As I said, it is underrated and did not get the wonderful reviews across the board. It is impossible to narrow down to the best three songs, for instance - though there are tracks that hit me harder than others. I especially love Another Part of Me and Leave Me Alone. Every time I listen to the album, different songs elicit new reactions and images.
Before closing with a review, it is worth knowing a bit more about the history of Bad and its creation. The Atlantic revisited Bad twenty-five years after its release. I am not going to use all of the article - though there are portions worth illuminating:
“Beginning in 1985, the media became increasingly vicious toward the artist. "They desire our blood, not our pain," Jackson wrote in a note in 1987. Tabloids soon began disparaging him with the nickname "Wacko Jacko" (a term Jackson despised). It was a term first applied to the pop star by the British tabloid, The Sun, in 1985, but its etymology goes back further. "Jacko Macacco" was the name of a famous monkey used in monkey-baiting matches at the Westminster Pit in London in the early 1820s. Subsequently, the term "Jacco" or "Jacco Macacco" was Cockney slang to refer to monkeys in general. The term persisted into the 20th century as "Jacko Monkeys" became popular children's toys in Great Britain in the 1950s. They remained common in British households into the 1980s (and can still be found on Ebay today).
The term "Jacko," then, didn't arise out of a vacuum, and certainly wasn't meant as a term of endearment. In the ensuing years, it would be used by the tabloid and mainstream media alike with a contempt that left no doubt about its intent. Even for those with no knowledge of its racist roots and connotations, it was obviously used to "otherize," humiliate and demean its target. Like Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal" scene in Invisible Man, it was a process by which to reduce Michael Jackson the human being and artist, to "Jacko" the minstrelized spectacle for avaricious amusement. (It is significant to note that, while the term was used widely by the white media, it was rarely, if ever used by black journalists.)
Jackson called his home studio at Hayvenhurst "the Laboratory." This is where the magic was created with a small group of musicians and engineers, including Matt Forger, John Barnes, Chris Currell, and Bill Bottrell (often referred to as the "B-Team"). It has now become the stuff of legend that Jackson wrote "100 million" on his bathroom mirror, the number of albums he expected Bad to sell. The figure was more than double the number of what Thriller had sold to that point. Such was the scope of Jackson's ambition.
However, it wasn't just commercial success he was after. Jackson wanted to innovate. He told collaborators he wanted to create sounds the ear had never heard. Exciting new synthesizers were coming on the scene at the time, including the Fairlight CMI and the Synclavier PSMT. "It really opened up another realm of creativity," recalls recording engineer Matt Forger. "The Fairlight had this light pen that could draw a waveform on the screen and allow you to modify the shape of it. The Synclavier was just an extension of that. Very often we would end up combining two synthesizer elements together to create a unique character. You could do that within the Synclavier, but you also had the ability in a very fine increment to adjust the attack of each sound character. And by doing that you could really tailor the sound. We were doing a lot of sampling and creating new sound characters and then creating a combination of sample sounds mixed with FM synthesis."
What makes the Bad album so timeless, however, is the way Jackson was able to compliment this technological innovation with more organic, soulful qualities. In "The Way You Make Me Feel," for example, the relentless steel-shuffling motion of the beat is juxtaposed with all kinds of natural, improvisational qualities that give the song its charm: the vocal ad libs, the finger snapping, the blues harmonies, the percussive grunts and gasps, the exclamations. Recording engineer Bruce Swedien speaks of how he left all of Jackson's vocal habits in as part of the "overall sonic picture." He didn't want to make the song "antiseptically clean" because it would lose its visceral effect.
In so many ways, Bad was Jackson's coming-of-age as an artist. Quincy Jones challenged him at the outset to write all the material and Jackson responded, writing nine of the 11 tracks that made the album and dozens more that were left off. "Study the greats," he wrote in one note to himself, "and become greater." He spoke of the "anatomy" of music, of dissecting its parts. He was also reading a great deal, including the work of Joseph Campbell. He wanted to understand what symbolism, myths, and motifs resonated over time and why.
Twenty-five years later, the results speak for themselves. Videos like "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal" are among the finest the medium has to offer. Songs like "Man in the Mirror," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Dirty Diana," and "Another Part of Me" remain staples in Jackson's vast catalog. Hearing the remastered album, included in the three-CD Bad25 set out September 18, is a reminder of its singular personality and pleasure. Listen to the propulsive bass lines, the layers of rhythm, the vocal experimentation, the cinematic narratives, the signature exclamations and invented vocabulary, the sheer vitality and joy. This is pop at its most dynamic, and it stands, along with the best work of Prince, as one of the best albums of the 1980s.
Bad is a portrait of the artist in peak form—bold, creative and confident. Now as then, "the whole world has to answer”.
To end up, there is a glowing review that I want to spotlight. AllMusic assessed Bad in 2012. They are a lot fairer towards the album than a lot of critics – maybe because twenty-five years had passed and allowed for a fresh perspective:
“The downside to a success like Thriller is that it's nearly impossible to follow, but Michael Jackson approached Bad much the same way he approached Thriller -- take the basic formula of the predecessor, expand it slightly, and move it outward. This meant that he moved deeper into hard rock, deeper into schmaltzy adult contemporary, deeper into hard dance -- essentially taking each portion of Thriller to an extreme, while increasing the quotient of immaculate studiocraft. He wound up with a sleeker, slicker Thriller, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not a rousing success, either. For one thing, the material just isn't as good. Look at the singles: only three can stand alongside album tracks from its predecessor ("Bad," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "I Just Can't Stop Loving You"), another is simply OK ("Smooth Criminal"), with the other two showcasing Jackson at his worst (the saccharine "Man in the Mirror," the misogynistic "Dirty Diana"). Then, there are the album tracks themselves, something that virtually didn't exist on Thriller but bog down Bad not just because they're bad, but because they reveal that Jackson's state of the art is not hip. And they constitute a near-fatal dead spot on the record -- songs three through six, from "Speed Demon" to "Another Part of Me," a sequence that's utterly faceless, lacking memorable hooks and melodies, even when Stevie Wonder steps in for "Just Good Friends," relying on nothing but studiocraft. Part of the joy of Off the Wall and Thriller was that craft was enhanced with tremendous songs, performances, and fresh, vivacious beats. For this dreadful stretch, everything is mechanical, and while the album rebounds with songs that prove mechanical can be tolerable if delivered with hooks and panache, it still makes Bad feel like an artifact of its time instead a piece of music that transcends it”.
I will cover albums in this feature as the weeks go by. Bad opened my eyes to Michael Jackson’s music and it has remained with me ever since that first experience. So many gems can be found on The King of Pop’s seventh studio album. It has inspired so many artists and fans since 1987. I feel Bad will continue to do so…
FOR generations to come.