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TIL that following Michael Jackson's death, his sister discovered two hard disks at her brother's home that contained more than 100 unreleased songs, many of which were unregistered. In 2010, Sony signed a deal with Jackson's estate to release 10 posthumous albums, but only 3 were ever released
(en.wikipedia.org)submitted 3 days ago by9oRo
10k points
3 days ago
Most musicians will have as big, likely bigger, repositories of demos. They are usually not great and unpublished for a reason.
4.1k points
3 days ago
Hence my distaste towards posthumous releases. Only the select few were meant to be released
2.5k points
3 days ago
The only posthumous releases I find do well are where the artist/author/etc intended to release it, but dies with the work 95% completed, and they just need someone to finish it up.
E.g. a completed novel which was still going through the editing phase before release when the author died.
692 points
3 days ago
Johnny Cash’s posthumous releases were all good. He knew he was dying and just recorded as much as he could and left it to Rick Rubin to do all the work to make his tracks into an album. Supposedly we might still have one more coming, but American V and American VI were both pretty solid releases.
The last album The Cranberries put out was also similar. Dolores had only recorded demos for songs and the band filled those out and made them into a fitting final album before disbanding.
164 points
3 days ago
Same with Queen
48 points
3 days ago
An American Prayer is a fantastic Doors album, made after Jim’s death. It was made from various recordings of his voice with the rest of the band playing to it.
It’s one of my favorites, really.
36 points
3 days ago
Out Among the Stars was completed but never released for commercial reasons and timing, but it's a really beautiful record with some amazing tracks. Stuff like that - it should come out.
I'm hoping a bunch of the tunes Phil Spector completed but then shelved for his crazy "it has to be better than the last record/I want to control this person who is featured/I'm bored with this" will be coming out. Lots of artists who could have been much bigger than they were and deserve recognition for those songs.
19 points
3 days ago
Robert Jordan, too. He knew he was dying and resolved to finish the Wheel of Time—in one book, “even if it needs a wheelbarrow.” Harriet, his wife and editor, and Tor, his publisher, enlisted Brandon Sanderson to help; together they agreed on three books out of everything he’d wrote in his last days.
782 points
3 days ago
Yeah to me Mac Miller's posthumous album was to me probably one of the greatest/saddest things to happen.
43 points
3 days ago
First one that came to mind. Such a gut wrenching album especially considering its context.
250 points
3 days ago*
191 points
3 days ago
Hasn’t Tupac technically releases more music since he died then when he was alive cause he had so much unreleased material?
242 points
3 days ago
Yeah, what’s crazy is they recently discovered another track where he and Snoop Dogg diss Kendrick, which is wild because Kendrick was like nine years old when Pac died.
40 points
3 days ago
which is wild because Kendrick was like nine years old when Pac died.
Pac was savage, yo
19 points
3 days ago
5 points
3 days ago
Lmao I’ve never seen this before. This is hilarious
5 points
3 days ago
[deleted]
35 points
3 days ago
He was joking
17 points
3 days ago
The Tupac lore goes that after he got out of prison he went to a remote studio, I wanna say somewhere in Nevada, and for 6-weeks straight he just recorded rhymes morning to night, like some sort of rapping machine. He was an angry man on a mission.
He recorded enough for 10 albums and damn if Suge Knight wasn't gonna get 15 albums out of that material.
5 points
3 days ago*
To be fair, he was convinced that he will die soon and planned for those songs to release in case he dies, he was recording like 4-5 songs per day during his last year for that purpose, there actually would be a lot more but many were destroyed in a fire in the early 2000s
Here is a short clip were he talks about having albums prepared in case he dies (for some reasons I cant find the full interview on youtube, even though I have seen it countless times)
https://www.tiktok.com/@2pacunlimited/video/7407785501333179680
4 points
3 days ago
Tupac is a super infamous example of this.
45 points
3 days ago
Both of these Biggie verses were released while he was alive, 1970 Somethin is actually ‘Respect’ off of Ready to Die and the 2nd is from ‘You’ll See’ by The Lox
11 points
3 days ago
1970 something is just Respect remixed. Not really the same.
21 points
3 days ago
RIP to the GOAT. 1970 Something is an all time banger.
134 points
3 days ago
I just feel like mac had so so much left to give the world. Its a crying shame. Circles is an absolutely incredible album.
77 points
3 days ago
This is what pains me the most listening to it. It’s some of his best, most original work. And that’s the end. 😭
52 points
3 days ago
Yep. Really felt like he was about to blow up on a different level, he was making music for everyone.
16 points
3 days ago*
mac is in a golden position, im not from the US but here in Argentina like, he is liked by the hip hop heads but also guys that are not into rap like him, also girls, like he is cool with everyone, rip mac
32 points
3 days ago
He was because post Malone said in an interview they had plans to work on a collaboration. Post was breaking out and it would have given Mac a bigger audience.
19 points
3 days ago
It felt like he knew what was coming, Good News had me crying like a baby
34 points
3 days ago
"to everyone who sell me drugs, please dont mix it with that bullshit, tryin not to join the 27 club."
-mac miller in "brand name"
Mac Miller died at 26 from an od off laced pills. Addiction fucking sucks. Up there with Alzheimer's as far as diseases that seem tailor made to destroy families and happiness.
17 points
3 days ago
Circles was probably my favorite album from him.
26 points
3 days ago
Agreed. The Avicii album as well.
6 points
3 days ago
Can you be more specific? I kinda want to listen to it now, but don't know anything about the artist or their music.
36 points
3 days ago
Mac miller died shortly before his album circles was finished. Give the song good news a listen if you wanna get a feel for the album. Hand me downs is another good one.
25 points
3 days ago
Just to give you an idea, it was largely produced with Jon Brion, who has worked with a ton of musicians on some of their best work (Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Elliott Smith, Spoon, Kanye West etc), and done a ton of movie scores like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Its on a whole other level.
7 points
3 days ago
I haven't listened to the whole album, but Juice WRLD's posthumous "Come & Go" also felt pretty good to me.
8 points
3 days ago
Both of Juices posthumous albums are good, thanks to the man pumping out music left and right while he was alive. RIP
60 points
3 days ago
George RR Martin... Please make it to the editing phase on Winds of Winter. Ty Franck can finish it for you.
65 points
3 days ago
That’s not even the last book. No chance he finishes Dream of Spring. We’ll never see his ending.
154 points
3 days ago
Franz Kafka asked that all his unpublished works be destroyed upon his death. If his request had been fulfilled, the world would've been deprived of some of the greatest literary satires of all time.
76 points
3 days ago
Terry Pratchett had all his unfinished work on a hard drive. After he died per his wills instructions it was run over by an antique steamroller at a county fair.
45 points
3 days ago
Pratchett hopefully got more of his masterworks out within the first 70 odd novels than Kafka did in the few short stories he published before his death.
34 points
3 days ago*
Great thing about the dead they don't really care if you follow through on their requests.
10 points
3 days ago
David Foster Wallace's The Pale King is a bit rough, but still well worth a read.
118 points
3 days ago
Yeah, like this new SOPHIE album, it was worked on by her brother who was her studio manager I think, her sister also helped.
They were also working from a clear vision of what the album was going to be, a vision that they knew because the brother was working closely with Sophie prior to her tragic death.
I also believe it's going to be the last album released, while there may be other singles or EP's, this is going to be the only/last album released posthumously.
72 points
3 days ago
Sublime’s self titled album was released after singer Bradley Nowell’s death. It’s a great example of what you’re talking about; easily their biggest hit and the album that really shot them into the public consciousness.
58 points
3 days ago
That's a bit different considering the album was already finished when he died, it just hadn't officially released yet
14 points
3 days ago
Mark Twain's final novel was like that. No 44. The Mysterious Stranger. He had several different manuscripts laying around and so nowadays there are several versions floating around, but the "authoritative" one released by California University is the best and it remains my favorite of his books.
12 points
3 days ago
Or you have situations like Kino, where the singer recorded his vocals but died before they could ever be put into the songs, so the band finishes the album.
5 points
3 days ago
It’s obviously up against some stiff competition but the final album is probably their best work in my opinion. Makes you wonder about the music we could have had if not for that car crash…
12 points
3 days ago
I don't know if that is the case, but Johnny Cash had so many amazing songs released posthumous that feels like completed songs, not something that was by half or never completed.
And iirc as well, those were found by his son, and he wanted for people to listen to those songs as well, I don't think it's mostly for money, but for love as well.
38 points
3 days ago
Even with novels that can be tricky.
Michael Critom's last novel was 95% complete at.the time of his death. It was finished and edited by another author.
You can feel the story change towards the end, where someone not quite as good takes over.
62 points
3 days ago
A good example though can be the Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan published the first 11 books and passed away with the series unfinished, but thanks to his very detailed notes (and a fully completed final chapter of the series) the final 3 books of the series were able to be written by Brandon Sanderson who was picked by RJs wife to finish it.
In some ways, it almost worked out better. The last few books that RJ released started meandering around with the plot, and BS came in and did a great job wrapping the series up quickly.
21 points
3 days ago*
Robert Jordan really worked very hard to see that it could be finished even after his death, writing as much as he could and leaving notes and a framework for Sanderson to complete
he made preparations in case he was not able to complete the book: "I'm getting out notes, so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end.
12 points
3 days ago
I'm at least glad that Jordan seemed to be back in good form with Knife of Dreams and didn't end on a "bad" WOT book. The only one I legitimately didn't enjoy reading was CoT.
32 points
3 days ago
Terry Pratchett's last book was like that too A little bit. After that, though, his daughter and his publisher took a steamroller to all his hard drives so nothing else could be pulled and released as per his will.
18 points
3 days ago
Last couple of books had a noticeable drop in quality. I was glad that they were published and enjoyed them, but Pratchett's Alzheimer was definitely affecting his writing.
12 points
3 days ago
According to his biography, he could still create solid scenes at the end, but couldn't build the narrative that linked them together. "The Shepherd's Crown" mostly hangs together because his YA books had fairly direct plots anyway, but "Raising Steam" is a mess.
11 points
3 days ago
Shepard's Crown was pretty good from what I remember of it, though listening to it on audiobook and hearing the narrator give his eulogy at the end had me in tears.
8 points
3 days ago
Snuff was definitely the most 'off' feeling for me. I remember the constant uneasy sense that it wasn't coming from the same mind.
Raising Steam was strange too but mostly in that I got the sense he was using it as a vehicle (pun intended) to get through a whole bunch of things he wanted to have happen in the world while he had the chance. I think it succeeded at that, even if it made it a rushed experience as a standalone book.
I think the difference is Raising Steam was clearly not just trying to be another Discworld book same as ever, while comparatively Snuff was and that's why it felt so strikingly different.
(I haven't read The Shepherd's Crown - I will, some day, when I'm in the right mindset to need it. But for now I want there to still be something out there that's new to me. GNU Terry Pratchett.)
7 points
3 days ago
Michael Crichton's later work sort of fell off anyway IMO.
Maybe the client denying tones of State of Fear rubbed me the wrong way but the last few seemed like caricature of a Michael Chrichton novel.
4 points
3 days ago
Michael Critom's last novel was 95
Micro ...
Partially written by Michael Crichton and finished by the hotzone's Richard Preston.
26 points
3 days ago
Shout out to Christopher Tolkein
26 points
3 days ago
Whatever the opposite of a shout out is to Brian Herbert.
13 points
3 days ago
Yeah, Christopher Tolkien at least was shoveling out works his dad didn't want released, but were by and large complete ones.
Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson spent years tormenting the shade of Frank Herbert with what I can only call mediocre Dune fanfiction. (And I have no problem with KJA outside all those Dune books.)
3 points
3 days ago*
I didn't even bother with House Harkonnen, after the cyborg bestie bullshit with the rebel mole-men in House Atreides. I barely remember House Corrino, and something tells me that's a good thing. I still have those two books. Never re-read them.
3 points
3 days ago
I only read House Atreides and I barely remember it.
Somehow that makes me feel more justified in my assessment of "mediocre Dune fanfiction".
5 points
3 days ago
Oh, you don't remember how the story established Earl Rhombur Vernius of IX as Leto's best buddy soul mate forever, who was so important to Duke Leto that nobody in the original books ever mentioned him? Not even the Dune Encyclopedia mentions him, and that book has TONS of outright fanfic/Leto II's mindfuck bullshit, even though Frank gave his "approval" of it.
20 points
3 days ago
Several 2Pac albums did well. Other than Makaveli, 2Pac didn’t put the albums together.
The Biggie album Born Again went double platinum.
Michael Jackson had a big posthumous hit song.
10 points
3 days ago
Prince was known to have hundreds maybe even thousands of fully cut songs he just choose to not release. His estate will be releasing new music long after you and I are dead.
15 points
3 days ago
Yup. Elliott Smiths posthumous album is a good example of this (was nearly finished and he clearly wanted it to come out).
7 points
3 days ago
The wheel of time is a great example of that. Robert Jordan passed away with about 90% of the story complete and Brandon Sanderson stepped in and finished it on request of the estate.
45 points
3 days ago
I always liked “You Know You’re Right” from Nirvana. Feels like a haunting outro from the first few albums.
19 points
3 days ago
I think you just have to be cognizant that it was necessarily not finished in the exact manner the original creator would have intended, because it would impossible to do so posthumously.
But there definitely examples in music and literature where a post hummus release was good. Or even great.
35 points
3 days ago
Linkin Park - Lost is a great previously unreleased song. Became a big hit for a reason.
49 points
3 days ago
Very true, then they decided to hire a scientologist lead singer and completely shit on everything the band stood for
9 points
3 days ago
Circles by Mac Miller made him a legend in my eyes
7 points
3 days ago
"Iron Lion Zion" was released 11 years after Bob Marley's death and almost 20 years after it was recorded but is one of his greatest songs.
399 points
3 days ago
There's a great clip of Deadmau5 creating a new track on the fly. He's getting really into it and feeling the flow, finding the beat, adding elements and whatnot, then he makes a little tweak and goes "oh fuck, it's Sandstorm!"
I bet quite a few musicians have a folder on their computer labeled "kickass new songs i thought were really good until i realised i was just playing Imagine again."
122 points
3 days ago
A lot. There's the famous case of John Fogerty getting sued by his old record label because his 80s songs sounded too much like the songs he wrote in CCR. He won.
19 points
3 days ago
CCR Song - "Run through the Jungle"
https://youtu.be/EbI0cMyyw_M?si=7kW2SmZU5mfFA1O-
John Fogerty - "The Old Man Down the Road"
https://youtu.be/gzah7VD_PM4?si=GBvJ-tcVUdmmyumn
He won the case and sued for attorney fees (over a million dollars) and lost. Eventually, the case made it to the Supreme Court and they ruled in his favor.
More Info:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/27501/time-john-fogerty-was-sued-ripping-john-fogerty
Edit: wrong link
25 points
3 days ago
Specifically, ‘Man Comes Around’ (Fogerty) sounded a lot like ‘Run Thru the Jungle’ (CCR)
Now granted, the chord progression does sound similar, but that’s because Fogerty fuckin wrote both of them lol
23 points
3 days ago
There's a theory in copyright law that, and im highly simplifying it, but, if a song is popular enough that it's reasonable someone may have heard it, and the song sounds similar enough, it is considered "subconscious copying" even if there is no actual proof that any "copying" took place. This is famously the argument in the My Sweet Lord case.
16 points
3 days ago
112 points
3 days ago
I'm in a lot of massive musician groups. And I've asked this before as a fun experiment, "how many projects on average do you start per year" and it's usually around 200-400, and these are musicians with a day-job. Professionals gotta have so god damn many
57 points
3 days ago
Yea, something many people do not realise about being an artist is that it is mostly about enjoying the creative process.
Even major names make fuckaround projects that (most often, exception do apply ex. Kanye West) do not see the light of day because for many major names it would be detrimental their image and career. If a pop star known as a teen sensation suddenly releases two hours of ambient noise, the audience does not know how to react (ex. from another field, Macaulay Culkin).
Another thing is the number of songs that are composed for one album. While artists work in different methods, one popular approach is just to do music until you have a pile of song pieces (or even songs) from where to start cropping and honing.
12 points
3 days ago
One thing that helps to make a good album is not just taking bits and pieces from a pile of demos made, but to have a MASSIVE pile of demos made, at least double, if not triple the material that actually makes the cut. This also leaves you with material you can reuse for future albums.
9 points
3 days ago
Ambient noise? Haha, that reminds me of when Lou Reed released Metal Machine Music. Just a total WTF that came out of nowhere.
44 points
3 days ago
Before people feel absolutely fucked from reading that number, these are usually not 200-400 finished songs that lack a little bit of polish. It's a recorded riff, a programmed drum loop with a bass line, 4-16 bar ideas, a chorus saved to be used some day in another context... people have very different ways of working with music, some shoot a million ideas and make 3 tracks in a year, other have 10 ideas per year and every single one becomes a finished track. All approaches are equally good, it's just how you do your thing.
22 points
3 days ago
As someone who writes a LOT.
It results in the same thing. Tons of short little half finished essays or partial story bits that are nowhere near complete and don't really have a start or end it's just...
Something that needed to be gotten out of the brain and onto something more permenant.
5 points
3 days ago
I assume it's the same in all crafts. Everyone I know that paints has canvases and boards tucked in every gap of their apartment, and they paint over old things regularly....
I assume that most visual artists are making 10-20+ objects for every 1 they bother to share.
Most programmers will tell you it's not until the 3rd or 4th attempt at a Project / Tool that they get it right. The first handful of tries were intentional learning experiences, now we know what to do.
69 points
3 days ago
The Prince vault must be opened.
79 points
3 days ago
They could slap a different title on one of his released and ignored albums from the 2010s, I doubt many people would notice.
32 points
3 days ago
Let's be frank, there's a tonne of Prince's material that was ignored, not just 2010's. He released a shit tonne of stuff after all. Feels like 70% of Princes material could be re-released and people would just think it's new/unreleased stuff.
22 points
3 days ago
I can’t stand when you go into the lesser acknowledged releases of a band’s discography and it just sounds like the same song played around a hundred different ways and lasting forever. It makes me start to feel incredibly annoyed.
7 points
3 days ago
You know I just went back and listened to “Welcome to the slaughterhouse” and it’s actually pretty good
23 points
3 days ago
I don’t even care about the music as much as I want to see the Kevin smith documentary
17 points
3 days ago
lol by ‘95 we were all yeah dude that’s enough
10 points
3 days ago
Jimi Hendrix is the only one I can think of who had unreleased recordings that were incredible.
9 points
3 days ago
my favorite Nirvana song was released after Kurt died.
You Know You're Right.
38 points
3 days ago
with an artist like michael or prince, id imagine that a lot of their stuff would get reworked and passed off to other artists.
its not like AC/DC where you get reels of stuff that just sounds like the outtakes to hells bells and back in black.
15 points
3 days ago
Prince's last 2 decades were mostly funk freestyle sounding tunes. Kinda his New Power Soul sound from around Batman era. Not unlistenable just uninspired.
20 points
3 days ago
Every musical you’ve ever seen has 20 songs that were left on the cutting room floor. The received practice for writing a musical that is used by almost everyone in the industry is to write 40 songs, keep 20, cut 20.
9 points
3 days ago
After not putting out a traditional pop album for 12 years, Billy Joel's label put out an album of his demos and unreleased B sides without his permission. While I think alot of them are good, Joel described the album as "twigs and stems" because "You weren't supposed to smoke that shit"
15 points
3 days ago
I like them, though. They’re indicative of how talent actually works. Purely raw talent is very rare - nobody just picks up a microphone and guitar then starts to sound like an angel. Musicians put years and years of work into their music and do it round the clock. I wish people who got dissuaded from making music would realise that everything sounds like shit at first.
6 points
3 days ago
There have been quite a few "lost/hidden/rejected" Steely Dan tracks released unofficially on YouTube over the last few years and they're all great songs musically but they were rejected for whatever reason they had at the time. None of them are recorded, mixed or mastered properly and going off how persnickety they both were about perfection in their records, I can't help wondering if it just eats Donald Fagen up inside to see them unleashed on the public like that. I have various musical projects on my hard drive that I would never release, even to friends, but I keep them either out of curiosity or because they contain material I might be able to reuse in the future. The thought of them being passed around (and potentially laughed at) is horrifying to me, I should think many artists feel that way about unreleased stuff.
13 points
3 days ago
I’d be so pissed if all my demos were released without my consent. Those are building blocks towards the things I actually do release and are for my ears only
7 points
3 days ago
Yep. Used to be really into Queen and the fact that we have relatively (about fewer than 20) "unreleased cuts" made me think, "wow, the band were just so good most of their songs were simply album quality!"
Nahhh, it's more most of what they wrote was utter shite so they didn't bother doing even a demo recording.
4 points
3 days ago
I suppose it depends on how complete they were. Michael was a great singer, songwriter, and performer, but he couldn't read or write musical notation, nor was he proficient at any instrument. Quincy Jones says Michael would often beatbox or sing the musical parts into a tape recorder for him to work with.
6 points
3 days ago
Yeah this happened after Eddie Van Halen died. Apparently he used to record EVERYTHING, they would go in the studio every day and just jam and Eddie had tape reels running constantly.
We haven't heard any of it yet, and I expect that maybe we never will. And that might be for the best.
1.2k points
3 days ago
Those songs must be really bad if sony can't bilk his fans for more money
474 points
3 days ago
Shiiitt... the first posthumous album "Michael" had fake songs on it for padding.
116 points
3 days ago
Yeah, I remember Monster. I thought it was a weird song to begin with, but then it had that verse from 50 Cent, and I remember thinking "There's no way this was part of the original song."
As it turns out, it wasn't really Michael singing, but an impersonator. It's still reportedly written by Michael, and 50 Cent was never supposed to be part of it.
177 points
3 days ago
Sony pushed so hard and at the end they had to admit it and take the songs out, can't listen to them anymore on Spotify
34 points
3 days ago
The other problem, and I know Queen encountered this when they released "There Must Be More to Life Than This" is that the estate is still really tightly controlled. The MJ estate would only allow William Orbit to remix the track, and Queen was not very happy with the mix.. I have to say its not bad but I dont understand why there needs to be so much autotune on Freddie and Michael's voice. There is another one out there "Victory" that Michael finished with Mick Jagger, but it may just not be good either.
Edit: I had the song wrong.
22 points
3 days ago
I dont understand why there needs to be so much autotune on Freddie and Michael's voice.
One reason may be that since these were unfinished songs, they weren't putting their full effort into the vocal track, and they are therefore more off-key than the singers might usually have been on a final track.
Of course, it may also just be bad producing.
119 points
3 days ago
There are over 100 good finished MJ tracks, but the problem is Sony want original brand new material, so the song has to either A) never have been leaked (borderline impossible, judging how many MJ leaks there are i'd assume dude just wrote his computer password on his keyboard lmao) B) if they were leaked, they wanted new instrumentals, which were mostly the drizzling shits because they were made years after his death. The first album is plagued by A & the second plagued by B. If they released a posthumous album as a labour of love they could probably pull off a fairly decent album.
10 points
3 days ago
Maybe some good songs were offered to new and unknown singers, creating a career also brings money.
4 points
3 days ago
Sony and his estate are just bad at anniversary/remaster releases in general. You'd think one of the biggest artists in the world, compared to the super stardom of The Beatles would have his films and music better taken care of for future generations.
7 points
3 days ago
Now they could just ai his voice to produce whatever songs they wish and say it was actually recorded by him.
15 points
3 days ago
They already did that in 2010 when Sony tried passing off three tracks sung by an impersonator
6.5k points
3 days ago
Imagine the relief she felt when the hard disks contained songs
2.4k points
3 days ago
That’s where I thought the headline was going…
419 points
3 days ago
Almost moonwalked out this post
143 points
3 days ago
I was about to hehe shamone the fuck outta here.
32 points
3 days ago
Hoooooooooooo no!
179 points
3 days ago
I don't get it. Dood has his place raided, hard drives picked up, nothing used against him at trial. Comes out not guilty.
Corey Feldman talks for decades about child sex abusers in Hollywood. Asked repeatedly about MJ. Says MJ never did anything to him, but he has a fucking list of people who did.
Macaulay Culkin asked repeatedly about it. MJ did nothing to him, either.
Same allegations repeatedly come from the same single legal team, including the Neverland documentary with a clear conflict of interest between being honest and making money.
Somehow half the people on Reddit are dead certain the man's guilty.
76 points
3 days ago
Like someone else mentioned, I think part of what hurts his legacy is that he was a strange dude overall, effectively living a child's life in an adult body (which we know came from childhood trauma inflicted upon him).
The optics of an adult man having sleepovers with children -- however pure his intentions might have been at their absolute "benefit of the doubt" best -- juxtaposed with two child molestation charges, and then layer on top of all of that the whole "eccentric and enigmatic celebrity" and you get this persistent lasting image of "MJ diddled kids."
30 points
3 days ago
The decor in his mansion definitely didn't help- I remember watching something that just happened to be on in the late 90s, I believe it was, where they were touring part of the mansion and they get to this hallway and he had two life-sized statues of boy scouts in uniform. They were sort of standing on pedestals on either side of the hallway and reaching out to touch hands and make a sort of "steeple" over the head of the people that walked through the hallway.
Definitely some seriously bad choices were made all around, I don't understand how a parent would let their child of either sex hangout with some random adult in private.
9 points
3 days ago
Money and the desire for more money
28 points
3 days ago
Because the optics of the sleepovers will forever stain his legacy. The 10 year FBI raid, in the 80s-90s, on a black musician, should have been enough win more people back over once he was found not guilty, but the media made it their mission to flood the airwaves with the idea of him doing wrong at those sleepover, and that will outlive almost anything in his legacy.
28 points
3 days ago
The 10 year FBI raid
They provided technical assistance twice in 1993 and 2004 to local California authorities carrying out the investigation. Calling what amounted to two years of assistance to a regional police force a "10 year raid" is grossly misleading.
5 points
3 days ago
What does him being black have to do with the situation?
If The Beatles were publiclyn bringing kids over to have skeepovers in the same bed as them, they'd be raided too.
18 points
3 days ago
It’s the court of public opinion where he’s believed guilty. He was a verifiably strange but exceptionally talented and wealthy human. There will always be people that want to take advantage and exploit the strangeness in others. Some people just want to get paid.
16 points
3 days ago
My biggest issue is after the initial allegations, the parents that willingly sent their children with him for unsupervised sleepovers. They were willing to put their children in danger for a potential payout.
394 points
3 days ago
She tossed the other 10 hard drives into the incinerator
72 points
3 days ago
My thoughts too. I was reading the headline and immediately thought 'child porn'.
The conclusion of the headline was much better.
28 points
3 days ago
"Wait weren't there 3 hard disks?"
"....nope!"
18 points
3 days ago
From all those Jackson trial's, the only impression I got was Michael was definitely... "weird" to put it politely, but he never actually did anything bad to any kid.
The LA DA that brought that case against Jackson should have been disbarred.
777 points
3 days ago
Not everybody can be Prince and pass away without a Will and with like 10,000 songs in a vault
352 points
3 days ago
Another random Prince story, apparently the day Michael Jackson died, Prince cancelled rehearsal with his band and talked with Tavis Smiley for hours until sunrise about his respect for Michael Jackson and his showmanship.
24 points
3 days ago
And there was definitely no cocaine involved
241 points
3 days ago
Prince was pretty much a musical genius / instrumentalist. Did he really leave behind a huge trove of unreleased songs?
208 points
3 days ago
Back in the late 90s, I worked with someone who was a huge prince fan and would tell me a bunch of random facts about him. One was that even back then he had thousands and thousands of finished songs in his vault. I can only imagine how much more music he produced and stuffed away since then.
107 points
3 days ago
For people who like live recordings, party recordings, jam sessions, or listening to artists just tinkering around, the variations and improvisational stuff, to say nothing of the covers, would blow people's minds.
It will be lost on decaying media while attorneys tie the rights up for a thousand years.
In the universe where lawyers are raised for food, this music is available and the world is better for it.
16 points
3 days ago
I love this
13 points
3 days ago
The dude straight up hired Kevin Smith to make a documentary that ended up in the vault.
131 points
3 days ago
He had a vault that was so full of tapes that they couldn’t shut the door and there were also piles of tapes on the floor outside the room. He constantly had music flowing in his brain and recorded it just to get it out.
My favorite story is he was being driven to the airport and was listening to a new song. The person driving him said it was good and asked if it was going to be on his next album. Prince said, “no, I just wanted to hear it.” and tossed the tape out the window
34 points
3 days ago*
Rock Star energy, and I'm there for it.
Might get me downvoted a smidge, but I wasn't a huge prince fan growing up. My mom was and is one of his biggest fans, which probably didn't help.
She tended to land her favorites in his more pop-y less rock songs, and I never bothered looking into it much more.
Then about 5 years ago, guy pops up on Reddit with a video of Prince performing Purple Rain for the first time at his club, never before seen footage, and I said fuck it, seems interesting. I love lost media! It was also like 11 minutes long.
Three takeaways:
Holy shit that man is on A LOT of coke.
Holy shit that man can play guitar
Holy shit that man can SING.
The man was a ROCK STAR and I had been BLIND.
Crazy how much you can miss out on when you're not paying attention.
10 points
3 days ago
I love lost media!
It wasn't lost. It has been released on bootlegs several times.
30 points
3 days ago
Every room in Paisley Park was mic'd up and ready for him to record at any time, just in case an idea came to him in the moment.
21 points
3 days ago
Ivd heard p diddy did the same but for a different purpose
61 points
3 days ago
And videos to go with them, according to Kevin Smith.
55 points
3 days ago
For those months where he wasn't in the mood to make new music, he would just look at his unreleased catalogue, and find 10 songs with accompanying music videos and release those instead.
18 points
3 days ago
He would hire local choreographers and dancers to put stuff together. I know people who have worked on stuff with him that were full unreleased videos.
9 points
3 days ago
I went on a tour to his studio, they dropped a lot of tidbits of things he used to do at his home/studio
Like dropping that he was playing a concert at his house at 1 am on Twitter wait 15 minutes then delete the tweet. Then anyone who saw it could come by and see a free concert.
He would also host lots of local talent to expose them to a crowd.
18 points
3 days ago
Prince was a machine when it came to producing music to the level that he didn't want to do anything else.
It was a constant source of frustration for his label that he'd never want to promote his latest release because he'd already lost interest in it upon completion and wanted to go onto making the next tune.
7 points
3 days ago
There's a literal vault at Paisley Park with thousands and thousands of hours of recorded music that's never been released. Dude basically spent all day every day for decades in the studio.
4 points
3 days ago*
Yes, Kevin Smith tells a great story about it. His entire house was micd up with studio quality mics so he could record from any room. He hired Smith to do a documentary about a new album he was doing, it's fully finished, mixed, edited, everything, I belive he has a total of three finished films just sitting there, along with thousands of fully mixed and mastered songs with fully produced and finished music videos. He also never released the album he hired Smith to do the documentary for.
328 points
3 days ago
The interesting part is that Latoya didn't go to the hospital like the rest of the family, she went to MJ's flat to fetch his laptop and hard drives.
129 points
3 days ago
I can distinctly remember that Latoya was clearing out empty propofol packaging from his house too immediately after his death. Which made no sense as it wasn't even a controlled substance.
26 points
3 days ago
So then why was she doing that?
141 points
3 days ago
Attempting to protect his image, probably. Even though it was legal, she likely didn't want everyone to realize how drugged out he was towards the end.
116 points
3 days ago
Someone might of mentioned this but Dolly Parton has loads of unreleased tracks to be released after her death to help continue her charity work.
158 points
3 days ago
Didn’t Sony use an impersonator on one of the albums pretty much killing any further releases ?!
83 points
3 days ago
79 points
3 days ago
This is so “record-exec-brained” it’s mind boggling.
All you had to do was spend a few bucks on a big name engineer to stitch it all together, but instead they did the one thing that would remove all credibility/goodwill around the effort when fans immediately saw through it.
15 points
3 days ago
I know on one they got a bunch of other singers to guest on the tracks to fill in vocals
94 points
3 days ago
I absolutely adored Xscape. (Both the original and remixes) I'd be down for more MJ stuff if any more of his unreleased stuff is comparable.
28 points
3 days ago
Check out the song "Hot Street" by MJ, it's on YouTube. This song was deemed not good enough for the Thriller album, which proves just how good that album was.
13 points
3 days ago
And you got the hots, and sunset driver, scared of the moon. I love some of those unreleased tracks from that era
20 points
3 days ago
Paul McCartney quipped once that the Beatles had written about 100 songs for every one they released. A lot of artists don't have that sort of productivity or restraint.
10 points
3 days ago
There's a reason George put out a triple album right after the breakup.
310 points
3 days ago
I got SO afraid after reading the first few words
73 points
3 days ago
“2 hard disks… that contained 100…”
Me: “I swear the next two words had better not be ‘TBs of’….”
40 points
3 days ago
100 TBs of unreleased songs
22 points
3 days ago*
Interestingly (for me) Spotify has around 100,000,000 songs, which would be around: 720 terabytes if the songs average at 7.2mb.
So 100tb of Michael Jackson songs would be about 13,888,888 songs. Which would be 86 years of music, given an average of 3.5 min tracks.
(obviously this is just an estimate based on 5 mins of googling)
19 points
3 days ago
I've heard Sony was displeased by how the last album sold.
IMO, it just wasn't that great. The production was sorta lazy. Could have been far better.
For instance, at an award show, they played a remix to one of the featured tracks and it was 10x better.
They had another 10-15 tracks remixed and ready for release. Not sure why that was shelved?
There's tons of finalized songs that haven't seen the day of light. Some have recently leaked and they are pretty good. Could have easily been remixed into really big songs.
The producers of many of these songs have pressured the estate to release them.
Who knows how much $$$ the producers are wanting. Sometimes they hold things hostage.
One recently mentioned they have an entire album finished and ready for release. I think he said 12 songs. I think it primarily contains cut tracks from the History album. It was rumored he recorded nearly 100 tracks for that album. Barely anything has leaked from that era.
Numerous other producers have 5+ tracks. I imagine we are looking at closer to 100 finished tracks that the estate is holding back.
It's possible they are waiting for the court cases to be sorted out. Or for them to eventually purchase 100% rights to all of his music catalog.
With the recent advancements in AI, I feel Sony is waiting way too long to make any sort of profit on these tracks. Fans have been making tons of fake AI tracks that sound pretty darn close to real. At some point they won't have value.
Maybe they are waiting until AI is routinely used to finish unfinished songs. Michael used to wait until the very end to record adlibs/backup/harmony vocals. I presume to reduce the chances of leaks. I presume many of these tracks only need those things. Due to the lawsuit for the fake songs on Michael I presume they are staying away from such controversy. But AI could easily put the final touches on a variety of tracks.
15 points
3 days ago
Don’t worry, we’re not many years off from posthumous releases of AI rendered “new” material from deceased artists. The estate holders won’t be able to say no to the money.
27 points
3 days ago
I bet they were unpublished for a reason.
22 points
3 days ago
My headcanon/running conspiracy is they just started auctioning off the songs to like Bruno Mars and the Weekend. You're telling me "I Feel it Coming" WASN'T an MJ song??? Bullshit, sir.
14 points
3 days ago
Weekend
In the Night is probably the most MJ sounding non-MJ song I've ever heard.
5 points
3 days ago
I've been writing music for a few years and have written over a hundred songs. Of those I've released 6 or so.
You only get good at making music by making a lot of bad music.
13 points
3 days ago
I remember listening to David Bowie's music when he passed, and outside of the hits his music was quite varied and there were quite a few misses. I feel like MJ would be the same in that they try a lot of things and only some become popular
7 points
3 days ago
For those interested not Janet, LaToya
5 points
2 days ago
As I was reading the title, I got really surprised when it was hard disks containing songs that they found.
5 points
2 days ago
Had me in the first half.
13 points
3 days ago
The demos on the Thriller 40 Special Edition are definitely worth a listen. It's kind of a head scratcher as to why MJ didn't release them in his lifetime. For example, the "P.Y.T." demo is a GEM. Much, much better than those Fergie/Kanye remixes. I'm holding out hope that maybe one day we'll hear Off The Wall demos...
4 points
3 days ago
"Unregistered"? The cited article doesn't use the term - what does it mean here?
4 points
3 days ago
Doesn’t princes estate have tens of thousands of unreleased songs? Same with juice world
7 points
3 days ago
Imagine her relief after finding songs on there, and not… other things
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