Soft fingersnap snares are the metronome to an array of steamy chords, drippy keys and mellow bass. It’s horny mood music made for “quiet” times in the bedroom as a girl masturbates under candlelight.
With each thrust, she’s imagining her man who’s away at work for the night. “I’m in a sexy mood and only you can fill my needs,” she thinks to herself; “I’ll lay here and take care of it till you come home to me.”
my rating : 4 of 5
2006
It isn’t scary, but neither is Thriller. It’s hard to make a song scary in a horror kind of way without a scary video to accommodate it. Michael Jackson has, however, managed to once again create a song that is truly spectacular. It’s actually a musical and conceptual recomposition of Ghosts, evident by the fact that their verses are quite similar and hinted at by the fact that they play-out one after the other on the Blood On The Dance Floor album. It’s an awesome set, but this song is better. There’s just no matching Michael Jackson on the chorus.
“Is it scary for you,” it goes; a question phrased in a way I can’t make grammatical sense of. A “too” before “scary” would fix it. A “to” instead of “for” would be even better. As is, it sounds like a lyrical mistake on what is otherwise a masterpiece. You could say the music, a rhapsody by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, is overproduced, but I think it’s a perfect fit to Michael Jackson’s epic vocal performance. He sings, screams, hoos and makes his signature hiccup noises, projecting his voice to the point of hoarseness, in an amazing showcase of musical magic.
He’s a pop legend with a world of spectators, many of whom view him as not much more than a freak. If he’s been holding his feelings in all these years, he’s finally letting them out. “I’m gonna be exactly what you wanna see,” he says before morphing into an uglier version of the Thriller monster, “And if you want to see eccentric oddities, I’ll be grosteque before your eyes.” If you want a freak show, in other words, you got one. It’s the coda, when a lonely piano plays a haunting melody over enchanting strings, that will put a chill up your spine.
my rating : 5 of 5
1997
![audio review : Blood On The Dance Floor [ History In The Mix ] ( album ) … Michael Jackson](https://marcellee.com/posts/7893.jpg "audio review : Blood On The Dance Floor [ History In The Mix ] ( album ) … Michael Jackson")
2006
“Just enjoy the simple things, enjoy the day life brings,” Janet Jackson says, “Enjoy the gift of life.” That’s great advice, it seems, but she shouldn’t tell people to enjoy things because it’s not really up to them. It’s an automatic response. They either enjoy it or they don’t. Not that logical psychology matters here. This is a simple summer song with its head stuck in the clouds. That’s “simple” in concept. The music is actually fairly complex.
The drums and bass should be set more prominently in the mix; I’d probably add a rougher effect on the bass and pan the snares with a stereo delay; but listen for the little experimental loop that plays along with them. It sounds like a sample of some kind, but probably not. This is a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis production, after all, accommodated by sweet lead vocals and a thick syrupy layer of backgrounds on the chorus. Enjoyable? Yes.
my rating : 4 of 5
2006
1995
2015
2004
Prince is the only song artist who can get away with replacing title words with the numbers they sound like because he’s Prince. For everyone else it comes across as silly and pretentious. Janet Jackson is no exception. Still there’s something clever going on here. “We are a couple,” she says. That’s “2”, so I guess it makes sense.
The Love part, at least the latter Love part, is a generic euphemism for lust; the sexual kind that has a girl touching, licking, kissing and stroking a guy’s dick in order to get it ready to enter her pussy. It’s the fact that he’s also her romantic partner, not just her romantic partner for the night, that makes it all right in her mind.
What makes it all right in my mind is the music; a sultry and metallic, somewhat futuristic groove carefully produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Those two deserve all the credit in the world for composing such a sexy soundtrack. It’s the way Janet Jackson harmonizes those “Ooooo”s though that’s most pleasing to the ears.
my rating : 4 of 5
2006
1999
Pay attention to the bridge, where Michael Jackson throws a fit about “everybody” gossiping. He rants to himself, his words loud enough for us to hear but not distinguishable enough to understand, over a pulsating beat with news reports rattling-off in the background. By the end, he’s not even making sense. He’s just caught-up in the music.
It’s an unguarded display of artistry, the type that probably would’ve never seen the light of day before the History album; a song set that follows several months of public hoopla regarding the well-publicized child molestation charges he vehemently denies to this day. It also follows years of scrutiny about him being a “strange” man in general.
Some people still believe he sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber or that he made an offer to buy The Elephant Man’s bones. Both rumors are addressed here. It’s Michael Jackson’s official response to the Tabloid Junkie; anyone so hooked on reading and watching tabloid journalism that it’s gotten to the point where they believe the stories to be true.
my rating : 4 of 5
1995
This is The Time. Make no mistake about it. It’s the original seven members reunited on album for the first in a long. What’s disappointing is the new name, which they apparently had to adopt because Prince, who created the band in 1981; this is their first album he has no artistic involvement in; owns the original name and doesn’t want to let them use it anymore. Now they’re The Original Seven, a change that wouldn’t be nearly as atrocious if it weren’t for the way they decided to stylize the word “Seven”. “7ven”, which to me looks like Seven Ven, makes no sense.
If, however, you can ignore that fatal flaw, the band is still cool. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have become perhaps my favorite music duo, thanks mainly to all the impressive songs they’ve made with Janet Jackson over the years, and Morris Day is as funny and charismatic as he ever was. He’s 54 years old now, but his girls don’t seem to age, so when the playboy partakes in a Role Play session to a funky dance beat, the voice of the girl he’s doing it with adds to the song a pretty and sexy allure. It’s no wonder he, like me, has a problem being Faithful to just one.
One of the few songs not to or about girls is Trendin, though it is off-putting hearing these old-schoolers, who, at one point, suggest splitting the album into two sides like a cassette tape, latch on to such a right now Twitter term. The title, as they put it, even begins with a hashtag. I guess that kind of stylization, like the spelling of the new name, comes from their quirky Prince roots, but they need to give it up and focus on making better songs. This set is fun, even the mediocre songs are funked-up with dazzling highlights, but it isn’t as hot as the title suggests.
my rating : 3 of 5
2011
2001