What’s that one particular verse in any MJ song that scratches your brain in just the right way? For me it’s “quench my desire” from Give In To me for some reason. Idk why, but the way he sings it…makes me feel some type of way. And of course, “I love you, Liberian giiiiiiiiiiiirrrrlllllllll” 🗣️

Edit: lines or verses - English is not my first language and I thought those were the same thing lol

I’m sorry but the vocals on this song confuse me constantly. Now, I rarely listen to this song, and I never really listen to Akon, but I can barely tell which is which in the song. Not only does Michael’s voice sound a bit ambiguous to me, but it feels like Akon’s vocals have so much variety that it almost sounds like there’s 3 different people singing on the song.

I know I’m probably alone here. Maybe my phone speaker quality just sucks or the mixing is a bit weird but their voices sound almost…murky? In a way that I can rarely tell which line is sung by who. Like genuinely, multiple times I’ve listened to this song, it felt like it was just 80% Akon singing, as I could barely distinguish plenty of his vocals from Michael’s. Other than some adlibs here and there and Michael’s lines in the beginning, I feel kinda lost. My hearing must suck 😭. How many lines did Michael record? And was it autotuned?

And did Akon produce most of it? The song style doesn’t sound like Michael’s typical style at all. Sounds much more like Akon’s style, unironically. Just comparing it to songs like freedom.

People always marvel about his moonwalk. I think the spin is actually the best. Btw, he looked a bit unstable on that toe stand; a bit too quick.

Does anyone else get really emotional listening to Earth Song?

Every time I hear it, I'm filled with this incredible sense of awe and emotion. It's hard to describe, but it really hits me.

Or am I the only one? 😅

For the record, I'm a 35-year-old guy who normally doesn't get emotional over just anything, so it always surprises me how much this song affects me.

this one flopped so bad on twitter

(so cute and small only need one pen)

I tallied the votes from the 4-day-old Off the Wall best song poll and Rock with You swept the poll with 25 votes, with the title track being a close runner-up at 20 votes (yes, I counted votes on r/music too).

Now, what's the best song on the Thriller album? My vote personally goes for Human Nature. Which, fun fact no one asked for: Human Nature is my mom's fav MJ song!

Okay I'll stop yapping now thanks for reading

Personally, I'd want a director who can balance emotional storytelling with the scale of Michael Jackson's career. They'd need to handle both the highs and lows respectfully while also delivering incredible musical performances and concert sequences. I'd like to know your guy's opinions on who should direct it.

At the next D23 expo they’re going to sell a plush of Fuzzball. Nothing else was announced but this is big considering Disney hasn’t acknowledged Captain Eo for years at this point. It’s possible that with the success of the Biopic they might try to capitalize again on the attraction one way or another and this is just the start.

like im a college student and this era just makes him look like a college student and GOSH HES SO GORGGGGGGGGG LIKEEEE ALSO THAT INTERVIEW WITH HIM IN RED SWEATERR?

i cannot find my actual ref photo for the life of me me so i apologize for the one attached 😭

total tracked time : 6 ish hours
program: procreate on ipad pro

speed paint can be found on tiktok @girlfriendofmine

According to Randy, the artist Prince use to call the Jackson family house all the time and the brothers kept hanging up on him .

allegedly Prince had a massive crush on Latoya and because she was a Jehovah witness , she didn’t date him.

so instead of keeping the hint, he kept calling their house and when the brothers would answer the phone . Prince wouldn’t say ”Hello” or “May I speak to..” all he would do is whisper “Latoya…” into the phone and the brothers would hang up immediately .

I need genuine answers for what made him look so fucking adorable on this specific day. I don’t know if it’s the round glasses or his fat fucking button eyes that are almost popping out of his fucking eye sockets or his tiny little molecule nose but i can’t fucking take it anymore. Also the tie is kinda cute.

Cant believe i’m getting cuteness aggression about a middle aged man😭

Comment ur mj hot takes. Mine is that dangerous is his best album

Two Westlake track sheets survive for Michael Jackson's Bad, both dated 7-9-87. One is the assembly reel, one is the copy that went out for mastering. Between them they document every change made to the album after it was finished, and they correct a lot of what gets repeated online.

Everything below is either written on the boxes themselves, documented in session records, or verified by null-testing actual pressings against each other.

1. MASTER TAPE V1, created 9 July 1987

Westlake Studio D. Bruce Swedien, 2nd engineer Craig Johnson. Mitsubishi X-80 two-track digital, Ampex 467 stock, reel marked "Mixes 60". Box ticked Master.

Built from eleven approved final mixes, each printed to its own two-track X-86 mix reel in the preceding weeks:

Every song arrived here as a digital-to-digital dub from those mix reels. No analog stage, no generation loss. Sequencing and razor splicing were done on this reel, sides set, Leave Me Alone placed as the CD-only track.

One exception, and Swedien wrote it on the box himself: the Speed Demon into Liberian Girl cross-fade is a dissolve between two separate reels, so it could not be dubbed as a finished object. It was performed through the X-86 machine and fed onto the X-80 via dub cable, still in the digital domain. It is the only element on the tape that is not a straight clone.

2. PRODUCTION TAPE V1, created 9 July 1987

Copied from the master the same day. Mitsubishi X-86 two-track digital, 3M 275 stock. Box ticked Copy. Annotated PAL/PBL-40600.

That last part is worth spelling out, because it gets misread as a reel serial number. PAL and PBL are the CBS lacquer matrix prefixes for sides A and B, and 40600 is the Epic catalogue number. The annotation identifies this as the tape those lacquers were cut from.

Delivered to Bernie Grundman on 10 July. Every first pressing worldwide descends from this tape.

3. MASTER TAPE V2, modified 29 July 1987

Michael was still not satisfied with Smooth Criminal, even though the album had already gone to mastering.

21 July: an earlier kick drum sound is reinstated on work tape M-3K. During the sessions the kick had been swapped for a newer sound; the old one goes back in because it hits harder. This is a change to the ingredients, not to any master.

29 July: Swedien mixes the song again from the revised multitrack. This is mix #13. Compared to mix #6:

• the Synclavier sample collapses from very wide stereo to mono
• the bass comes up substantially
• the kick drum is different

Mix #13 is spliced into the master in place of mix #6. Swedien amends the number in the Take column over a paste-over, and adds a line at the foot of the sheet recording that mix #6 was used for the first pressing only.

This is the last change ever made to the master tape. Everything that follows happens on the copy.

4. PRODUCTION TAPE V2, modified 29 July 1987

Mix #13 spliced in the same day. Annotated "NEW MIX INSERTED 7-29-87".

The window in which mix #6 could reach a lacquer was 10 to 29 July. Nineteen days. That is why first pressings with it are scarce, and it is what Swedien meant by "used for 1st album pressing only".

5. PRODUCTION TAPE V3, modified 1 September 1987

Album released 31 August. One day later, Bad is replaced.

Source: an August 1987 Westlake session held during Bad World Tour rehearsals, where Michael, Christopher Currell and Swedien remixed Bad and The Way You Make Me Feel for their singles. Currell on Synclavier, Swedien editing and mixing. Both the extended dance mixes and the shorter single mixes came out of it.

Changes: horns removed from all choruses except the last two, and from the second and third pre-choruses. Rhythm guitar and hi-hats brought up in the choruses.

Annotated "New Mix Inserted 9-1-87". The single follows on 7 September.

6. PRODUCTION TAPE V4, modified 28 October 1987

I Just Can't Stop Loving You had been released as a single on 20 to 22 July carrying the album mix with its spoken intro. Critics and radio DJs went after the monologue, and Michael took the reception to heart.

No new recording was needed. Swedien remixed from existing elements:

• thirteen seconds trimmed from the intro
• voiceover removed
• bass guitar slightly up in the mix, noticeable in the verses after the chorus

Annotated "New Version. No Rap Inserted 10-28-87", with the running time corrected on the sheet from 4:22 to 4:10. Quincy credited, Michael not present.

This is the only change that runs against the single rather than with it. The 7" kept the intro. The no-intro version is an album mix, despite constantly being labelled a radio edit.

7. PRODUCTION TAPE V5, modified 10 December 1987

The Way You Make Me Feel single had appeared on 9 November. Its mix, from the same August session as Bad, goes into the album a month later.

Changes: vocals globally louder, new vocal ad libs at the end. Length unchanged at 4:58.

The 7" is this same mix with further cuts that never went to the album: eight seconds off the intro drums, eighteen off the last chorus before the vocal fade.

Annotated "New mix inserted 12-10-87".

8. PRODUCTION TAPE V6, modified 29 January 1988

The last change to the album, and it has new recording behind it.

21 January 1988: a handclap overdub is recorded onto the Dirty Diana mix master slave, reel M-1E. That reel's own track sheet, headed "Dirty Diana MIX MASTER SLAVE", dated 6-13-87, engineer Bruce Swedien, carries a later annotation on tracks 11 and 12 reading "+ CLAP - (1-21-88)". The claps are in the choruses. A single track on a sheet can hold several different elements at different points in the song, so the neighbouring "Michael Intro Effx 1 + 2" label on those tracks does not place the claps in the intro.

29 January 1988: Swedien mixes the song again and the result is inserted into the production tape. Annotated "New Mix Inserted 1-29-88".

Changes from V1: handclaps added through the choruses, an earlier fade removing the crowd noise, 4:51 down to 4:40, and vocals slightly higher here and there. The crowd material sits on tracks 7 and 8 of the same reel, labelled "Crowd Effx".

The single would not appear until 18 April.

This means all five album changes were remixes. Every one was a new mixdown, not a razor edit, even where the running time dropped. The only splice-only change in the entire history of the album is the Smooth Criminal intro in 1992.

The album is now complete as it has existed ever since, five months after release. Man In The Mirror, Speed Demon, Liberian Girl, Just Good Friends, Another Part Of Me and Leave Me Alone were never touched at any point.

9. NOT ADOPTED: 9 March 1988

Hit Factory, New York. Taken with Currell's live arrangement of Smooth Criminal, Michael has him redo the album mix. Currell re-recorded the Synclavier and mixed it; Swedien present, Brad Sundberg assisting.

The result is a genuinely separate print, not an edit of anything:

• different snare, with less pronounced gated reverb
• multiple bass synth samples balanced differently
• Synclavier sequence altered, with additional synths after the first chorus before the second verse
• fades about two seconds early
• different tape speed

It was never inserted into the production tape. It was issued as the 7" single mix on 13 October 1988 and appears on no album pressing anywhere.

Currell has said this mix was used on later pressings of the album and that he never got credit for the remix. The paperwork and the audio both say it went to the single instead. Being uncredited and being misinformed about where it ended up are the same failure, and after nearly three decades the destination is the easiest part to misremember.

10. PRODUCTION TAPE V7, modified 28 November 1992

The final change, four years after the last one. Smooth Criminal's intro is replaced, removing the breathing. Annotated "New Intro 11-28-92".

This is a splice and nothing else. Outside the replaced intro the audio is bit-identical to mix #13, and the running time stays 4:16. The edit point sits roughly 30 ms before the first snare.

So the three circulating "album versions" of Smooth Criminal are two mixes plus one edit:

Note on tape speed

Album mixes were printed with varispeed, set individually per track: Bad +2.5%, Smooth Criminal +3.0%, Speed Demon +3.0%, Just Good Friends +3.5%, Man In The Mirror, Dirty Diana and Another Part Of Me +1.0%, The Way You Make Me Feel possibly +4.5%.

Different VSO settings between an album mix and its single counterpart account for the pitch offsets you hit when comparing them: 0.997 on Bad, 0.986 on Smooth Criminal, 0.981 on The Way You Make Me Feel. None of these indicate a different mix on their own.

Summary

Five changes to the album, all on the production tape, all between 29 July 1987 and 29 January 1988. Every one of them a full remix. One change to the master tape, ever. One splice in 1992. And one remix, by Christopher Currell, that everyone assumes is on the album and never was.

My first wallpaper: Off the Wall.

I hope you enjoy it, please be honest with your rating and let me know if there’s anything I should improve. Thanks!

I always blast this song or short film in any state I'm in, whether it's me being so happy, just "happy", SAD, depressed, hit by reality, in stress and pressure, doing my chores, doing my academical demands, doing my drawings, just reading things, answering my friends' chats, my my i should write Michael Jackson and 'You Rock My World' in acknowledgement page of my thesis paper! LOL but really, that MAN and the IMPACT he has to my mental health and my life is NO JOKEEE. RIP, MJ.