Three songs from Michael Jackson’s first posthumous album “Michael” were removed from streaming platforms including Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and TIDAL as of June 30th.
Ever since the 2010 LP release, there has been a debate as to whether the tracks “Keep Your Head Up,” “Monster,” and “Breaking News” actually feature Jackson’s “real” vocals. Now, a spokesman for the estate administration of the former “King of Pop” official website announced that this removal had “nothing to do with the authenticity of the voice”.
“I can only confirm that the three tracks recorded with the Cascio family are no longer available for download or streaming from Sony Music. But I should point out that their removal has nothing to do with their authenticity,” the statement said, which was also shared by fan website Behind the Mask.
“The estate and record company Sony Music believes that the ongoing debate over the vocal nature of the songs is distracting Michael Jackson’s large fan base, as well as casual listeners, from focusing their attention on what they should be doing – Michael’s legendary and extensive music catalogue!”.
The statement, which sounds like it was (co-)formulated by the legal department, comes at a time when a “fake debate” is raging throughout the Jackson camp.
Sister La Toya Jackson, his nephew Taryll Jackson and his singing children Prince and Paris are also accused of cheating.
At the time of release, Sony Music said it had “complete confidence in the results of our extensive research and in what has been said by those who were in the studio with Michael that the vocals on the new album are his own.”
Wrong voices are a tradition in pop
The debate as to how “real” pop music should be already existed in the 1980s, when the Frankfurt duo Milli Vanilli were stripped of all prizes and awards when it came out that over-producer Frank Farian also did the vocal work by hiring other singers. In the subgenre “Italo Disco”, which was successful on international dance floors well into the early 1990s, this “honest voices” trademark played no role at all. Often the (often female) front figures only performed. The singing came from the retort or from anonymous studio voices. Everything doesn’t matter. Authenticity was wumpe here: the main thing was that the song ran smoothly and was danceable.
The debate, which resurfaced in the 2010s, (also) dates back to June 2014, when a fan named Vera Serova filed a lawsuit against Sony Music, Jackson’s estate, and the song’s producers, Edward Cascio and James Porte. Namely because of violation of the so-called “consumer law”, because of unfair competition and fraud.
Again in August 2018, three judges of the Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the estate and Sony, removing both parties from the case. The songs, recorded with mystery Jackson collaborators Eddie Cascio and James Porte, remain in the lawsuit. This is currently being heard before the California Supreme Court.
In other reports of fakes in the Jackson camp, the creator of the computer game “Sonic the Hedgehog”, Yuji Naka, recently put it on record that Jackson provided music and “vocals” for the soundtrack of the game version “Sonic 3”. He then backtracked, acknowledging that his digital scores may have been lost in translation.
Sonic The Hedgehog is a game for PlayStation by Sony. Sony Music (formerly CBS) has been Michael Jackson’s longtime label.