After Death, the Remix

By JON PARELES
NYT

ONE telling moment on “Michael,” the first full album of posthumous Michael Jackson songs, is a snippet that might never have appeared during his life: a backstage glimpse of a performer who always strove to appear perfectly polished.

It must be an excerpt from a demo. At the beginning of “(I Like) The Way You Love Me,” Jackson’s staticky voice announces, “Hey, this is the tempo, and this is the melody.” He sings a line, then switches to vocal beat-boxing. As the fully arranged track segues in, he reappears singing the melody, unchanged but now hi-fi: a studio version of the song that was in his head. Like “This Is It,” the 2009 documentary of rehearsals for his 50 comeback shows at the O2 arena in London — the ones he did not live to perform — it’s a chance to see the human being, the skillful and driven trouper, behind the superstar.

Is that how Jackson would have released the song had he lived? It is, of course, impossible to know. That question hangs over all of “Michael,” which is the first full album in a seven-year deal between the Jackson estate and Sony Music, reportedly worth $250 million, to put out previously unreleased material, probably video as well as music.

There have been reports that Jackson left behind hundreds of unreleased songs. Yet if “Michael” is any indication, his posthumous career will not be a matter of simply revealing what was in his archives, but also of transforming the material into a current commercial product: finishing songs he started while he was alive, guessing at his intentions and hoping to live up to his inspirations. He danced with zombies in the video for “Thriller”; now he returns, reanimated. “Michael,” frankly, is not a great start.

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