Michael

This article is about the posthumous album. You may have been looking for the biographical film.

MichaelCompilation album by Michael Jackson
Alternate covers
Re-issue
General information
Released	December 10, 2010
Recorded	June 1982-November 2008 March-October 2010
Studio	Marvin's Room (Teddy Riley remixes for "Hold My Hand," "Breaking News," "Monster," and "Burn Tonight") Encore Studios (further work on "Breaking News," "Monster," "Burn Tonight," and production on "Stay" and "Keep Your Head Up") The Boom-Boom Room (50 Cent's verse on "Monster")
Genre	Pop, rock, hip-hop, R&B
Length	27:24 (Current version) 41:34 (2010 version)
Label	Epic Records
Producer(s)	Michael Jackson Akon Neff-U Lenny Kravitz John McClain Teddy Riley Giorgio Tuinfort Eddie Cascio (2010 version)
Albums chronology
Previous	Michael Jackson's This Is It
Next	Bad 25
Singles
1. "Hold My Hand" Released: November 15, 2010 2. "Hollywood Tonight" Released: February 11, 2011 3. "Behind the Mask" Released: February 21, 2011 4. "(I Like) The Way You Love Me" Released: July 8, 2011
Promotional singles
1. "Breaking News" Released: November 8, 2010

Michael is the first posthumous album credited to Michael Jackson. It was released through Epic Records on December 10, 2010, and produced by several of Michael's long-time collaborators, including Teddy Riley, John McClain, and Neff-U.

Background

The works on Michael began in March 2010 and finished in October. The tracks featured on the album mostly consist of those Jackson worked on throughout the last few years of his life, including "Hold My Hand", "Hollywood Tonight", "(I Like) The Way You Love Me" and "Best of Joy" he most recently worked on in 2008. Additionally, three songs made by Eddie Cascio (the brother of Michael's close friend and assistant Frank) and producer James Porte appear on the record as well, alongside some older songs from much earlier sessions. All of the ten previously unheard songs (except for "(I Like) The Way You Love Me" which was first released on The Ultimate Collection) were completely reworked with help from Michael's past collaborators.

Artwork

The album cover is an oil painting done by Kadir Nelson. It includes bits and pieces of about every year of Jackson's life, from the Motown days to his final days of life on Earth. The original version of the cover featured Prince's logo in the bottom right. However, this was removed shortly after the cover's reveal, as the aforementioned singer's entourage disapproved of its use.

The full painting by Kadir Nelson

Track list

Standard edition
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Hold My Hand" (featuring Akon)	3:32
2.	"Hollywood Tonight"	4:30
3.	"Keep Your Head Up"	4:49
4.	"(I Like) The Way You Love Me"	4:33
5.	"Monster" (featuring 50 Cent)	5:04
6.	"Best of Joy"	3:02
7.	"Breaking News"	4:14
8.	"(I Can't Make It) Another Day" (featuring Lenny Kravitz)	3:54
9.	"Behind the Mask"	5:01
10.	"Much Too Soon"	2:48
Total length:		41:34

Reissue
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Hold My Hand" (featuring Akon)	3:32
2.	"Hollywood Tonight"	4:30
3.	"(I Like) The Way You Love Me"	4:33
4.	"Best of Joy"	3:02
5.	"(I Can't Make It) Another Day" (featuring Lenny Kravitz)	3:54
6.	"Behind the Mask"	5:01
7.	"Much Too Soon"	2:48
Total length:		27:24

Singles

"Hold My Hand"
November 15, 2010

"Hollywood Tonight"
February 11, 2011

"Behind the Mask"
February 21, 2011

"(I Like) The Way You Love Me"
July 8, 2011

Promotional singles

"Breaking News"
November 8, 2010

Cut tracks

"(Stop) Throwing Your Life Away" "A Place with No Name" "All I Need" (Eddie Cascio) "All Right" (Eddie Cascio) "Black Widow" (Eddie Cascio) "Blue Gangsta" "Burn Tonight" (Eddie Cascio) "Do You Know Where Your Children Are" "Fall in Love" (Eddie Cascio)

"Lovely Way" "Ready 2 Win" (Eddie Cascio) "She Was Lovin' Me" "Slave to the Rhythm" "Soldier Boy" (Eddie Cascio) "Stay" (Eddie Cascio) "Still the King" "Water" (Eddie Cascio)

Controversies

Cascio & Porte tracks

Teddy Riley with Eddie Cascio

In September 2010, Jackson's family members were played the songs made for the Michael album, and specifically his mother, Katherine Jackson pointed out the songs written by Eddie Cascio and James Porte don't sound like the King of Pop. While working on the tracks, Teddy Riley also felt perplexed about the vocals, and constantly alluded to them not being sang by Jackson. Later during a listening session, nearly everyone in the team behind the record and other invited former collaborators (John McClain, Dr. Freeze and more) raised concerns regarding the authenticity of Michael's vocals. It was stated the vocals featured badly controlled vibrato, certain ad-libs and vocals being copy and pasted from Jackson's previously released and unreleased songs, and the isolated vocals missing trademark foot stomps, claps and finger snaps. Taryll Jackson and Cory Rooney claimed the actual performer to be an Italian-American R&B singer, Jason Malachi, who gained attention a few years prior due to a small scale scandal regarding his songs being confused for new MJ songs online.

In October, a meeting between John Branca, Taryll Jackson, Michael Prince, Eddie Cascio, James Porte and Stuart Brawley (Cascio's and Porte's producer, previously worked on mixing, digital editing and recording Michael's vocals for Invincible) took place to reveal all possible evidence that the vocals on their songs are authentic. Prince asked Cascio to bring hard drives and backups of other vocal takes and recording sessions. He was told what they had was the only hard drive, as the rest had been demolished on Jackson's demand. Prince and Taryll pointed this out to say that it's nonsense, as during their works with Michael this was simply never the case, and that Brawley should know this especially. Sony asked the producer about his involvement, which he replied that he was only sent the tracks, and his job was to "make them sound like Michael". Taryll pressed the two about the issues again, which they now stated the vocals are just a "bad performance", despite of their earlier claims that Michael was so happy with the vocals that he wanted them to delete every outtake. They then claimed them to be demo vocals, which would be processed through Melodyne, even though the vocals were sent to Sony as "finished". Additionally, Michael's personnel recalled he never needed autotune or pitch correction. Cascio and Porte were also asked to take a lie detector test, but turned down it. When the two were asked why did tracks like "Keep Your Head Up" featured sampled ad-libs from Jackson's old songs, Eddie claimed that Michael always carried a USB of previously recorded acapella ad-libs that he could place on whatever song he was making instead of recording new ones. In the middle of the meeting, Branca asked Prince what he thinks, which he told him there's "too many audio dead ends for them to be telling the truth".

"Breaking News"

Soon enough, insiders and media began reporting about the feud. Despite of the musicians' and the Jackson family's wishes for Sony and the Michael Jackson Estate to not release Cascio's and Porte's tracks out of respect, they didn't listen, as Branca's deal with them forced their tracks to be released. On November 8, 2010, "Breaking News" was released as a promotional single, and stirred controversy, as Michael's fans agreed upon the unauthenticity of the featured vocals. A few hours prior, Porte deleted his profiles across multiple online websites (e.g. Last.fm or MySpace). Four days later, the Michael album was announced with the track list including "Keep Your Head Up", "Monster" and "Breaking News". At the same time, Jackie Jackson posted on X, that him and John McClain (the co-executor of the Estate) "for weeks" had insisted on having the tracks removed. The Estate began reaching out to Jackson's past collaborators for a definitive answer (including Quincy Jones and Brad Buxer), but all of them stated they were not the real deal. On November 11, attorney Howard Weitzman who represented the Michael Jackson Estate issued a statement defending the vocals' authenticity.

For his work on "Hollywood Tonight", "Breaking News", "Monster", "Keep Your Head Up" (which he abandoned in its early stages due to uncertainty regarding the vocals) and the unreleased "Burn Tonight", Teddy Riley was ultimately paid $250,000. He then proceeded to switch sides, and nearing the album's release when being asked about who's singing on the tracks, he claimed it to be Michael after all, leaving the Jackson family feeling betrayed by Teddy's claim. In later years, he revealed at least one song he produced wasn't sang by the King of Pop, but didn't admit to the other tunes.

Following the album's release, on January 16, 2011 on Malachi's Facebook page, a post was up of him confessing he performed on the songs. However, it was later deleted with him once saying this wasn't his page, other time saying on his MySpace that his Facebook and website was hacked and again that it was photoshopped. Malachi's manager, Thad Nauden stated that "someone created a phony Facebook page in Jason's name. Jason wants everyone to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, he did not sing a single note on the album". Nauden later retracted the claim that the Facebook account wasn't Malachi, but maintained that Malachi wasn't involved in the Michael album.

Later that year, two British Jackson fans, James Marks and James McCormick entered Sony Music's servers and downloaded all 12 of Cascio's and Porte's tracks, in order to find proof that the vocals were in fact performed by someone else. Unfortunately, they were falsly charged "on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud Sony Music", and were arrested in the following months. In January 2013, the two stood trial, but as there wasn't enough evidence against them, the charges were ultimately dropped. Mc claims the sole reason for the arrest, was for Sony to silence fans speaking out against the Cascio & Porte songs.

Main article: 2011 Sony Music server breach

In Spring 2013 a bunch of previously unheard songs written by Cascio and Porte ("Stay", "All Right"/ "Everything's Just Fine", "Black Widow", "Burn Tonight", "All I Need", "Water", "Fall in Love", "Ready 2 Win", and "Soldier Boy") leaked online. All them were once again very obviously not performed by the King of Pop, including the demos of the three tracks on Michael. On June 12, 2014, a fan named Vera Serova sued Sony and the Estate about the songs. In 2017, the original CD with the songs, titled Bible was auctioned through gottahaverockandroll.com. Meanwhile, Serova tried to reach Jason Malachi by phone and by letter, but he never responded. In early 2018, her lawyer received a phone call from Jason's lawyer about a meeting to discuss the singer possibly confessing in court to have performed the Cascio/Porte tracks. However, only a day before the meeting, Vera's lawyer was informed it was cancelled, and Malachi's confession will not take place. A couple sources then reported on Sony Music supposedly admitting to the fake vocals, but their law firm denied this ever having happened.

• Michael back cover (2010)
• Michael back cover (2022)

1/2

On June 29, 2022, the three songs were finally pulled from streaming, with the Estate explaining they want to move on from the controversy and that this would be the best option. The Michael album was also re-released on CD, this time not featuring the "fake songs". Serova's lawsuit was also eventually settled on August 10th.

“	[...] The Estate and Sony Music believe the continuing conversation about the tracks is distracting the fan community and casual Michael Jackson listeners from focusing their attention where it should be – on Michael’s legendary and deep music catalog.	”
–MJ Online Team spokesperson, michaeljackson.com

In his 2024 Faking Michael podcast regarding the entire case, researcher Damien Shields and his team reached out to Malachi about the tracks. In their conversations, Jason never denied singing on Cascio's tracks, but mentioned him and his family suffered, and that he will tell his story "when the time is right".

Dave Grohl credits

On the track "(I Can't Make It) Another Day", Nirvana's ex-drummer, Dave Grohl, was credited for drums on the song. However, this isn't true. While Kravitz contacted Dave to ask him to record drums for the song, which he did, he's never been in contact with Kravitz or the estate afterwards, and the version on the Michael album doesn't actually feature him playing, but rather, Lenny.

Trivia

Michael poster

• On the day of the album's release, a 29,070-square-foot (2,701 m2) poster of the Michael album cover art was put up at the Rectory Farm in Middlesex, England, breaking a Guinness World Record for the largest poster in the world.
• A couple of collaborators later regretted working on the record, such as Lenny Kravitz who called the album "whack" and "a bunch of nonsense".
• Matt Forger believed "Breaking News" features Michael on the vocals, but wasn't able to 100% claim it, as he wasn't a part of the recording sessions.
  • Taryll Jackson was initially going to be credited for his contributions on the Michael album, however Sony ultimately decided not to as he spoke out against the record. Due to this, any hopes for Taryll's music career going forward with Sony were lost.
• "Breaking News" is rumored to be a copy of "My Prerogative" by Bobby Brown, a song Jackson was obsessed with in his final years. This theory is supported by sharing similar melodies, lyrics, and exact same themes.
• The only two songs by Eddie Cascio and James Porte that Michael Jackson at least acknowledged the existence of are "All Right" and "Ready 2 Win", as the two tracks were included on a CD found in his home after his passing. However, these were also registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2008 under "JPEC Collection 1.". The copyright filing was completely missing Michael's name from it, and the registered recordings featured James Porte singing on them. As it's known, as of June 2009 Cascio and Porte still worked on the songs alongside a producer Angelo Montrone, where the vocals were still Porte's. In an interview with Montrone, the producer claimed he was only "told" that Michael would sing on them, but not that he already recorded them. This contradicts the two's later claims, that the vocals were completed by Michael in 2007, when in fact he never got the chance to record them.