Why were Michael Jackson songs removed from streaming services?
For over a decade, musicians, musicologists, and fans have continued to debate over these three songs, reasoning if the songs are actually sung by Jackson or someone else.
Last week, three songs attributed to the king of pop, Michael Jackson, were pulled by all the major streaming platforms including Spotify and iTunes. The tracks – Monster, Breaking news, and Keep your head up were originally released in Michael (2010) – a posthumous album that was created with some old unreleased songs and the music that Jackson was recording right before his death.
The songs have been removed amid an ongoing, decade-long suspicion among critics and fans that some of the vocals on these songs are not by Jackson, despite them being attributed to him in the album apart from being marketed and promoted as his.
However, the decision regarding the removal of the songs from the streaming platforms was taken collectively by The Estate of Michael Jackson and Sony Music and not the streaming platforms. They called it “the simplest and best way to move beyond the conversation associated with these tracks once and for all”. “The album’s remaining tracks remain available. Nothing should be read into this action concerning the authenticity of the tracks – it is just time to move beyond the distraction surrounding them,” said a statement put out by Michael Jackson’s Estate and Sony Music, who own the rights to and a chunk of profits from the album.
What is the controversy?
The debate over the three tracks began right after Michael was released in 2010. Just before he passed away, Jackson was in the middle of working on an album – his first after almost a decade of his last immensely popular, Invincible (2001). If Jackson had managed to complete the album in his lifetime, there is no doubt that Michael would have been very different from what the world heard in the Sony album. But the album was completed by Sony Music, and Jackson’s friends and musicians. And the result was an album that was way too edited and expunged, lacking the grit and power of a typical Michael Jackson album. It was mainly created by pulling and pushing fragments of some of his verses and a few musical motifs and pairing them up with an overtly zealous and glistening orchestral world.
Rating: 5