Because his personal life eventually turned into a very public media circus, it’s easy to forget that Michael Jackson — a lifelong professional musician — was still making good music into this decade, as Mike Heyliger illustrates in the following piece he wrote for Musichelpweb.com on Jackson’s 50th birthday. —Ed.
If you bought into the hype spewed by the mainstream press and Michael Jackson’s detractors, 2001’s Invincible was a flop of colossal proportions. Of course it was no Thriller or Off the Wall, but it stands as a fairly contemporary, often good, and occasionally awesome album from the King of Pop. Was it a sales bust? Considering only 20 or so albums a year sold more than two million copies at the beginning of this decade and Invincible broke that barrier, I would say no.
After the debacle that was 1995’s HIStory, Michael retreated back to the lab to create an album that would focus less on his personal problems and more on good music, period. In the six years between HIStory and Invincible, the entire teen-pop industry had been rebuilt on top of a sound he created. From Sisqo to Usher to Beyoncé to Britney to Backstreet and ‘N Sync, damn near every pop or soul artist coming up owed a big debt to Mike, a trend that’s grown even more prevalent in the seven years since Invincible’s release.
