Review Summary: Michael Jackson released a greatest hits album to help reestablish his image as the most important musician of all time...
Michael Jackson was going through hard times when this album came out in November, 2003. Jackson was facing media scrutiny because of the infamous documental, titled
Living with Michael Jackson, directed by journalist Martin Bashir (famous for his other documental featuring late Lady Di), which showed Jackson grabbing a kid's hand (who was Garvin Arvizo, who was ill from cancer), and led to him being accused again of sexual abuse. While also fighting with his own demons, Jackson (or Sony Music) released a new greatest hits album (even though, two years before
Number Ones, the first disc of
HIStory was re-released worldwide) which featured his most-famous and successful material from 1979 to 2001 (basically, hits taken from all his albums produced for Epic Records), including the hit single from the remix album,
Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix (1997). In the U.S. version, a live version of 'Ben' (his first #1 single) taken from the Jacksons Tour is also included.
In other words, what you get here is the most cohesive album where almost all of his major hits are included. What is more interesting is that the album follows Jackson's music in chronological order, so you can see his progress (or for some other people, his recession in later works) from the irrestible beat and vocals of 'Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough' (
Off the Wall, 1979), the powerful lyrics of 'Billie Jean' and 'Beat It' (
Thriller, 1982), the edgy sound from
Bad (1987) until his last hit which was 'You Rock My World' (
Invincible, 2001). There are only two songs from his first major studio album, and in my opinion, one of his strongest in terms of lyrics, general sound and production. I'm, of course, referring to
Off the Wall. If the set had included at least 'She's Out of My Life', it would've been far more enjoyable. Then, we get 'Billie Jean', 'Beat It', 'Thriller' (the three songs that always appear in compilation albums), and even 'Human Nature'. After that, we get to listen to the five #1 hits off
Bad, then 'Black or White' (from
Dangerous, being the only song taken from that album), two songs from
HIStory, the title track from
Blood on the Dance Floor (as I said before), the hit single from his last studio album, plus one more song from that album ('Break of Dawn', produced by Dr. Freeze and Jackson himself), and a new song (which seems to be an requirement in today's hit collection albums) titled 'One More Chance', penned by R. Kelly (who also contributed with 'You Are Not Alone', included here, and 'Cry').
The new song is wonderful and shows what Jackson did best when singing slow songs, which was beautiful vocals. A music video was also shot for that song, but it was not released due to Jackson's problems, and the video remained unreleased until 2010, when it appeared in the DVD collection,
Michael Jackson's Vision. The concept of that video is quite simple: Jackson is singing to an audience, where Michael is supposed to be. I mean, the audience and Jackson are in the other's place. What caught my attention was that Michael's face is not shown during the video (except for a few times) and the clothes he's wearing are different from what we would normally expect for Jackson to wear. Only wearing a white T-shirt, a leather-jacket and jeans, it certainly shocks the viewer.
On the other hand, the collection has some problems regarding its tracklist. As I mentioned before, there are just two singles from
Off the Wall, and too many songs from
Bad, only one from his 1991 album, and the odd inclusion of 'Break of Dawn' makes me wonder why Sony would leave powerful singles which were successful off the album.
Despite those problems, the final tracklist is a powerful one and it truly works better than the previous compilation. In the end, the album is a must-have for ocassional listeners who are looking for his most (even though there are some odd choices) famous and recognizable material, and for his fans, who will purchase this album just because of the new single (most of them already have his albums) and the edited versions of the singles included. Though the set works, to reunite the best hits in a single disc, is quite hard.
