Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 29: Michael Jackson , “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” (1995)
A new occasional series — CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME! Also, some albums just REALLY suit the format, right
I was home from the holidays in the middle of the year — 30 years ago! — my first mid-semester break, my first year away from home, my first year of university study. Michael Jackson was releasing his first proper Greatest Hits album. But it was also a brand new album — two discs, the first covering all the Off The Wall/Thriller/Bad/Dangerous monster-hits, the second kicking off with a duet with sister Janet and a bunch of future hits.
It was huge. It was lofty. It was everywhere. And I had to have it. I had a discman in my car from time to time, but I mostly used tapes still. I was very new to CDs still and the lure of the big, fat cover — the double disc — was part of it also. Didn’t really have any of those, but had to have this. I asked my mum nicely if I could borrow the cash for it. She agreed. It was $65. At the counter, she decided she “better have one too” and so it was $130 for two copies of the same CD. Jesus fucking Christ, right?
Flash forward nearly 30 years and I buy it (again) for $1.
Michael Jackson had been accused, kinda “cleared”, would go on to be accused — and proved? — yet again. Would fall from grace in a bunch of ways, sham marriages, dangling kids, giving them terrible names, turning his skin a whiter shade of Tupperware, buying Beatles songs after getting the idea to buy publishing from a Beatle, floating a giant image of himself down a river, making mediocre music when it didn’t seem like he ever would, becoming forgettable, and then dying, getting cancelled after death…long before any of that was a reality he had long since checked out on reality.
And then, a decade or so after his death, he totally came back. In a way. His music is everywhere again if it did ever truly go away.
I had a time when I stopped listening to MJ — because I was tired of it, and maybe because it didn’t seem right. But then, I’d hear Rock WithYou or Wanna Be Startin’ Something, or whatever, even Billie Jean (sometimes especially Billie Jean) and it was never a case of all has been forgiven, but it was always a case of most has been forgotten.
I musta got rid of HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I, with its stupid title, many, many years ago — but I remember it being the go-to for a while. And I went to the concert in NZ from the world tour effectively in support of this hits collection:
And I’m sure glad I did. But sometime in the late 90s I just had enough of Michael Jackson, his music had been everywhere all through my childhood I guess.
Now I hear it for the production, and for the producer — I consider Thriller as much (or more) a Quincy Jones album as an MJ one. Same with Off The Wall. I don’t consider Bad. That was the “little kid” album, I heard those songs in waiting rooms and at school discos and then I never wanted to hear them ever angain really. But Dangerous is the underrated gem.
Funny to call it underrated when it was world beating of course! But you know…
Anyway, I’ve owned Thriller and Off The Wall (and Bad) on vinyl and never really listened to them. I had the special edition CDs with some bonus demos, and again, never really listened to them. But for $1, this double disc is doing the rounds again. Some amazing songs on disc two, though not all of them.
And that first disc of monumental hits, it just feels right to have them. Not so much to hear them all the time. But to have them. Something for the time capsule, from one of the weirdest, most problematic superstars of all time. Of all time.
