Review Summary: No, this isn't it.
Before he passed away on June 25th 2009, Michael Jackson was supposed to be performing a series of concerts at the O2 Arena, entitled This Is It. Mere days after his death it was announced that footage from his rehearsals would be stiched together into a movie called "This Is It", named after the concerts (which in turn was inspired by a press conference that Michael had.) The movie was great... but the companion CD didn't live up to it's full potential. In fact, it's just a pile of crap.
You probably know tracks 1-14 on this album, but I'll mention them all again: they're all great. There's a range of different musical styles on here: you could have been overloaded by all the great stuff, including amazing guitar solos by Eddie Van Halen and Slash on Beat It and Black Or White, the thumping drum beat of Billie Jean, the fast paced action of Smooth Criminal, the new-jack swing of Jam, the stripped down rawness of They Don't Care About Us, the sweetness of Man In The Mirrror and Human Nature and the pleading cry for help that is Earth Song. With that in mind, this album could be 5 stars. But is this album really necessary? We have had about 20 MJ collections in his lifetime and this just seems like a cash grab on his death.
This is possibly the worst of his collections for another reason: absence of songs. There are no less than 8 songs that were Number 1 in the UK or US not on this album (Bad, Dirty Diana, You Are Not Alone etc.) There's a complete absense of songs from Off The Wall, and classics like Remember The Time and Scream obviously weren't good enough to the compilers. Yeah, I know that this was the order they were arranged in the movie, but that doesn't mean the lack of classics can apply to this album too!
There is one new song: This Is It. "This Is It" was not intentionally written for the film, so it is technically not a new song, but it's the first time it appeared on a CD, so I'll count it as a new song, so that's something the fans will like. Even as an MJ fan though, I don't think this song is very special. The lyrics are sweet enough, but I feel the tune is lacking something. Maybe it's because I feel it's rather basic in comparison to the rest of his singles discography and feels like a bit of a re-hash of . The orchestra version is a bit better, as the various instruments give the song a few extra layers, but they don't appear a great deal in the song.
Fans will also be interested in disc 2. There are 3 nice demos on here, including an acoustic guitar version of She's Out Of My Life, a slightly more bass focused version of Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' and an acapella version of Beat It, with Mikey "singing" the instrument part of the verses and the harmony of the chorus. The demos are cool, but I would like a few more. Planet Earth meanwhile is the poem found in Dangerous, so it's technically nothing new either, but he does read it with a lot of heart.
The big question is this: who is this collection for? The answer: completists, who would buy anything that MJ produces. Fans may be intrested with the unreleased stuff, but they may decide to go for an alternative: Selections from This Is It. I definitely do not recomend this at all: go for the Essential Michael Jackson and you'll be happier.
