Michael Jackson – “Bad” (1987)

Rating: 9

Best Song: “Smooth Criminal”

Okay, I really feel kind of irrational about Bad. I’ve lived with this music for so long that it’s a bit odd to put on my analytical hat and attempt to listen to Thriller and Bad as albums, and not just music to sing or dance along to. It’s odd to the point where unexpectedly I found myself developing new impressions. And it’s now obvious to me that Bad is the best Michael Jackson album, although I do wind up giving them the same rating. I believe I can defend that statement too, unwittingly using the framework I established in my Thriller review. Thriller certainly looks imposing with its sales records and enormous singles and music videos. From a perspective of innovation, Bad consolidates the gains of Thriller much more than it improves upon it. The basic framework was set and Bad follows it dutifully, with a mixture of funk, R&B, and rock all glossed up by Quincy Jones production. But over 25 years later, I’m not really sure why I should care which of the two was more original. This is pure pop music with very little pretention. It’s ultimately about the hooks, melodies and rhythms. And in that regard, I find Bad a much more consistent album while the high points are just as high, despite being lesser-known.

Most crucially, the songwriting credits for Bad show Michael having written 9 of the 11 songs, as opposed to 3 of the 4 on Thriller. Now perhaps I’m being idealistic and more creative control isn’t inherently a good thing. But although there are always exceptions, I really believe in general that music has more power when the main songwriter is also the performer. It makes sense to me that Jackson would be able to invest himself more in a song that he wrote himself rather than one handed to him at a recording studio. And considering that the 3 best songs on Thriller were his, the latent potential existed for more.

I’ve always wondered why, although I feel nostalgia for all Michael Jackson music to some degree, I feel it more for Thriller than I do Off the Wall, and more for Bad than I do for Thriller when the usual critical consensus is that Thriller is #1, Off the Wall #2 and everything else basically disposable. Now I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize it, but it’s because what I really love is the Jackson style, which I see as most ingrained starting here. He had basically perfected his style with the 3 big singles on Thriller but those were only 3 songs. Here, I enjoy everything that he wrote. Although the production on Bad dates it to 1987 and he has an undoubtedly commercial approach, there is serious creativity and songwriting skill here. I’ve listened to early demos of some of his songs like “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and was struck by how in the demos of the song he writes himself, the rhythm and vocal arrangements are completely laid out as they are in the actual songs. The drum machine arrangements here are emblematic Jackson and immediately distinguish him from lesser pop artists. His singing style is slightly more rough and gritty than it was before – it may be coincidence but I’ve always thought that his voice sounded different after his apparent change in skin color. Indeed, though his roots are obviously in 'black' music, there could probably be entire books written about the ways in which his music eschewed coded racial identifiers during this period in order to sell more albums. And most importantly, just as with the best songs on Thriller, his songs are dense with hooks.

As an album, I feel Bad works better than Thriller too, with a nice flow and being about as diverse as Michael would ever get. Weirdly, it has an example of basically everything I dislike about Jackson when he’s at his worst – the megalomaniacal anthem (“Man in the Mirror”), sappy adult contemporary (“I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”), dorky ballads (“Liberian Girl”), and celebrity duets (“Just Good Friends”), but I actually like all of these songs. “Liberian Girl” feels like filler at first, but works by delaying the payoff of Jackson’s pleading bridge that closes the song. “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” could use a less cloying arrangement, but the melody and chorus are basically impeccable. “Man in the Mirror” is deservedly one of his best-known songs, and it’s actually great, showing that this kind of song can work if it has some power and build behind it. It would set an unfortunate template for his future career (the gospel choir would only work this one time), but here, I have no complaints. And it’s one of the two songs not written by Jackson! The closest to filler is “Just Good Friends,” his duet with Stevie Wonder, and fitting in with my theory, I have to think it’s because it was written by outside songwriters (seriously, you have two of the most successful pop songwriters of all time and neither one of them writes the song?). But it at least has some energy and is way better than “The Girl Is Mine.”

Bad also has examples of everything I like about Jackson, too, and in great variety. The title track is sort of dopey but still awesome, and given how his other celebrity duets turned out, perhaps it’s just as well that the rumors that he wanted Prince didn’t pan out. “The Way You Make Me Feel” is a swaying, romantic mid-tempo song much like track two on his previous two albums, and is my favorite example of these, beating out even “Rock With You” as one of my singalong favorites. “Dirty Diana” is clearly Michael’s attempt at mimicking “Beat It,” this time featuring Steve Stevens, guitarist for Billy Idol. Lyrically, it’s much more in the terrain of “Billie Jean,” being a misogynistic, paranoid song about a seductress who won’t leave him alone. As a Jackson aficionado, I still find these songs fascinating as they recur throughout his career (see “Dangerous” on the next album). They’re probably sexist, but more than that, just weird because of my feeling that they don’t reflect any sort of actual lived experience by Michael. But whatever, the vocal is legitimately tense and a sign of his evolution. Bad also closes much more strongly than Thriller, with one of his most iconic songs in “Smooth Criminal,” a perfect example of a singularly MJ song with an unforgettable rhythmic base and lots of anguished falsetto singing. The CD version also features a bonus track not on the original cassette version, “Leave Me Alone,” which is one of the most infectious songs here and features surprisingly complex multi-tracked vocal harmonies in the chorus.

Overall, I see Bad as where Michael (mostly) seized full creative control and consolidated the strengths of Thriller. Although he wasn’t able to really expand his musical horizons beyond Thriller, the fact that he contributed a much larger percentage of the songwriting makes Bad a more consistent and richer album. In my dream world, I still think that he could have made an even better album if not still somewhat shackled by the demands of trying to create huge album sales, but I nonetheless see Bad as just about the perfect mixture of his creativity and his commercial potency. Moving forward into the 90s, he would, if anything, put even more of his actual emotions into his albums (which wasn't necessarily always a good thing), but he would also pigeonhole himself by latching on to commercial trends that didn’t fit the actual music. The production on Bad may forever date it to 1987, but the songs themselves are timeless.

Michael Jackson – “Thriller” (1982)

Rating: 9

Best song: “Billie Jean”

            So, Thriller. The biggest-selling album of all time and one that holds a personal place in my heart too. I have so many memories associated with this album: actually being terrified when I first saw the “Thriller” video and not wanting to watch the werewolf sequence for several years, calling my dad and trying to figure out what was the name of the song that was always stuck in my head (“Baby Be Mine”). So perhaps no one could really fault me if I just let nostalgia dominate and gave Thriller a perfect score. Yet alas, I will not be doing so.

            The way I see it, Thriller is probably just about the pinnacle of mainstream commercial pop in the album format. It’s somewhat elusive as to what distinguishes a commercial-oriented album, but the main factor that stands out to me is that although Michael’s personality is a distinct one, he only actually wrote four of the nine songs on the album. The other five are songs, where judging by the liner notes, Jackson contributed only the vocal part. On his own songs, he’s usually credited for rhythm and vocal arrangements in addition to the songwriting, but on the others, this credit is absent. I suppose this isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it is worth examining the reaction to Thriller in context, especially that of the Motown tradition that Michael hails from.

In the 60s, the best Motown singles were undeniably great. But the artists themselves were given minimal creative control, and most of them are known for their singles, not their albums. It’s only when artists like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye assumed complete creative control for themselves that they were able to emerge as creators of great albums, not just singles. So in this context, where not much is expected from a pop album outside of the singles, Thriller does look amazing. Seven of the nine songs on the album were Top 10 hits! So basically, you have nearly all singles. And almost all of those songs are very good to great.

Yet although I too love Thriller and rank it very highly, I feel it is ultimately held back by the fact that Michael only had partial, rather than full creative control. In that sense, it has one foot in the Motown days of yore and one foot in the full Gaye/Wonder breakthrough. Perhaps he just didn’t have it in him to write nine high-quality songs of his own. Yet although the songs contributed by other songwriters are generally quite good and catchy, what I see as the ‘big three’ of this album were all written by Jackson and really take things to a different level. The opening “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” is somewhat similar to “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” riding a quirky, infectious groove for 6+ minutes. Yet I think it’s even better and increasingly intriguing as it goes. For one thing, it’s loaded with hooks, with at least five distinct sections that are all deliriously catchy. It’s also weird too, with lyrics hinting at Jackson’s paranoia and eccentricities like “You’re a vegetable/You’re just a buffet/They eat off of you” or “If you can’t feed your baby, then don’t have a baby.” It doesn’t get as much hype as “Beat It” or “Billie Jean” but I feel it’s just as good.

“Beat It” is of course most famous for featuring Eddie Van Halen on guitar and indeed, his riff and solo are integrated excellently into the song. It doesn’t hurt that the chorus ranks among Jackson’s catchiest refrains. “Billie Jean” is my pick, like many, for best song on the album and probably the best thing Michael ever did. Lyrically, it’s intriguing due to being his first of many songs about a jealous, insane, sexually starved woman out to get him. This moves beyond just simple paranoia especially because I doubt that Michael was having actual relationships with women during this time period. It’s almost like he’s making up what he thinks romance is like and when the result is this darkly paranoid, I can’t help feeling that it says a lot about how screwed up he was.

But armchair psychology aside, the real reason “Billie Jean” stands out is because again, it’s brilliantly catchy, with the opening bass line and “the kid is not my son” hook being particularly iconic, but also because it’s just so dense with vocal and instrumental hooks, perhaps even denser than “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” There is not a wasted second in the arrangement and if more commercial pop was like this, perhaps I wouldn’t be so derisive of the corporate machine. But I don’t think it’s possible for most commercial pop to be like this, because this song is pure Michael and its success is reflective of his own vision and perfectionism.

Unfortunately that perfectionism did not seem to extend to the songs that he didn’t write, and that’s why although my designated ‘big 3’ are enough to earn Thriller a high rating, the rest of the album holds it back from gaining true masterpiece status in my mind. Which is not to say there’s nothing else of value here, of course. I’ve barely talked about the title track, which I feel non-Jackson aficionados would be surprised to learn was not actually written by Michael, but rather trusted sidekick Rod Temperton, who wrote three songs on the last album and contributes three here as well (“Thriller” plus “Baby Be Mine” and “The Lady in My Life”). I like “Thriller” a lot of course, although the effect isn’t quite as strong without the video. “Baby Be Mine” seems to get a lot of flak in most reviews I’ve read, and is only one of the two non-singles here, but whether it’s my childhood nostalgia, or its smooth, easygoing melody, I enjoy it greatly. “The Lady in My Life” definitely veers closer to filler and is proof that Jackson had far surpassed what Temperton was contributing at this point, which was not necessarily the case on Off the Wall. Yet while I enjoy all of these songs, along with “Human Nature” and “P.Y.T.,” they never quite make the leap from very good to great.

But the real problem here is Michael’s duet with Paul McCartney, “The Girl Is Mine.” Although the song was in fact written by Michael, it feels the most gimmicky and fake of any song on the album, with no purpose besides to be a vehicle for a big celebrity duet. Yet the result is honestly embarrassing, especially for Paul. The main body of the song is trite enough, but the spoken-word section, much as I enjoy to recite it word for word, is really stupid. I sense zero actual interest in the song from either Michael or Paul. Since Michael has the songwriting credit, perhaps it really was his harebrained idea, but this is the main reason that Thriller can’t muster a higher grade. In an alternate universe where Michael Jackson was not a child star and wrote and produced Thriller himself, I’d like to think it would still have “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin,” “Beat It, and “Billie Jean,” (maybe minus the slick production and Van Halen guitar solo) but it would never have “The Girl Is Mine.”

Kate Bush – “Hounds of Love” (1985)

Rating: 8.5

Best Song – “Hounds of Love”

After the lukewarm critical and nonexistent commercial reaction to The Dreaming, Kate was silent for three years before returning triumphantly with Hounds of Love, her most successful album from both a critical and commercial standpoint. Or so the traditional narrative goes. Obviously, The Dreaming is one of my personal favorite albums, so I view Hounds a bit differently in that context. For on this album, Kate starts singing like a normal person and writes actual pop songs! Fortunately, although I feel in hindsight the commercial direction here augured the end of her creative peak, Hounds of Love is still a great album in its own right And although I started my journey into Kate’s discography with The Dreaming, I recognize that that method is not for everyone, so I would also recommend Hounds as the starting point for most Kate listeners, as it showcases her beautiful singing voice and pop smarts while still hearkening back to the eccentric fantasy worlds of her earlier albums.

           Indeed, if Hounds is viewed as a signal for a change in style for Kate, it is structured very conveniently. The first side contains all the singles and would be perfectly enjoyable to hear on pop radio, whereas the second side contains Bush’s first conceptual suite, entitled The Ninth Wave. Surprisingly, I actually enjoy the first side more than the second side, as the singles are fantastic any way I look at it. The album gets off to a great start with one of her more famous tracks, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” where Kate sings of making a deal with God to trade places with a lover. Coming from The Dreaming, it’s another stark shift in style, but not because it’s radical in and of itself, but because she sings in a lower, warmer range, not piercing or screaming at all! Of course, I loved her ultra-high singing, but I've come even to prefer her singing in a normal register because her voice so rich and sonorous that I find myself swooning for just about anything she sings. Honestly, she may not have the range of contemporary divas like Whitney Houston (maybe a weird comparison, but bear with me), but she can belt it just as well, and she brings way more emotionally to the table, reaching that point where I will basically enjoy anything with her vocals on it. And of course, with great tracks like the songs here, the effect is just that much more superlative.
          Indeed, the title track is a romantic ode that mood-wise calls back to The Kick Inside and even if she doesn’t use her pixie voice once, I am utterly swept away by the singing (“take my shoes off, and THROW them in the lake”). Really, everything on the first side is great, especially “Cloudbusting” with its martial strings and more great singing (“I just know something good is going to happen”) and the jubilant “The Big Sky.” It all puts a big smile on my face, like good pop is supposed to do, but the songwriting and singing is still unique enough that I hardly feel pandered to.

         The Ninth Wave suite, by comparison, is much more experimental yet is still fairly accessible. compared to her earlier work The songs stand on their own fairly well, so it takes attentive listening to trace the general plot. I still think there is more to uncover, but my overall interpretation is that “And Dream of Sheep” is about Kate falling asleep, “The Morning Fog” is about her waking up, and everything in between describes the dream world. “Under Ice” is ostensibly about being trapped under ice, but I see it as her trying to wake up, but being unable to, for the nightmare of “Waking the Witch” is upon her. “Waking” is the song that most calls back to her experimental past, as it starts with about a minute of ambient guitar while various disembodied voices urge Kate to wake up, but when she finally does, the listener gets some classic Kate Bush theater, this time with her as a witch standing trial. And as always, it works much better than it would seem on paper with her dissonant pagan chants and background voices screaming “Guilty! Guilty!” all melding together to create a unique listening experience. I am not as sure how the remaining songs fit in, but they seem to carry on the same general theme of being trapped in a dream, unable to communicate with the outside world.

        My only real complaint about Hounds of Love is that as interesting and fully realized as it is, it lacks the mad dynamism of The Dreaming or even The Kick Inside. By comparison, it feels a bit safe, and I could have used a few more wild tracks in the vein of “Waking the Witch.” But overall, I certainly would be hard-pressed to argue with the general consensus that this is a landmark album. Just if you start here and love it, make sure to eventually move on to Kick and The Dreaming. 

Kate Bush - "The Kick Inside" (1979)

Rating: 9

Best Song – “Wuthering Heights”

How to describe the music of Kate Bush? Better yet, how to describe why, at her best, she has taken such a hold of my heart? Well, she’s not for everyone (at least not her early albums), which I’ve found out the hard way. 60 seconds of the opening track of “Moving” will likely be a strong indicator of whether you can acclimate yourself to the charms of Ms. Bush. Once you hear her piercing pixie squeal, admittedly a bit reminiscent of Yoko Ono (as my wife handily pointed out), the gauntlet is thrown down. And as much as I’d like to encourage you, my hypothetical averse listener, to be more open-minded, I’ve also learned from hard experience from rabid Dylan worship, that many people will never hear some singers the same way I do, no matter how exuberantly I extol their virtues.

So with that warning out of the way, let me get to the part where I exuberantly extol Kate Bush’s virtues. Admittedly, I have a penchant for eccentric, novel singing voices, but I loved this album on very first listen and really, The Kick Inside is way more accessible than say, The Dreaming (which I also loved on very first listen, but that’s a different story). Kate does sound a little bit like Yoko but is way more charming. She doesn’t have to sing like she does on this album (as proved by her later work), but she chose to. It fits rather well with both the musical and lyrical themes of the album, and the fact that most of these songs were written by Bush as a teenager. 

It’s really an impressively consistent record, with nearly every song seemingly following the same basic structure (a piano-led ballad with a complex, yet catchy vocal melody over a jazzy chord progression), yet all with their own special charms. The highlight is the aforementioned “Wuthering Heights,” which is probably the most exaggerated version of the typical Kick Inside track, and is all the better for it. It’s like this supernova of teenage histrionics and angst filtered by way of Emily Bronte and Joni Mitchell. And much to my surprise, it was actually a hit too (at least in Britain). The music video of Bush dancing around in a garish red dress in a meadow captures the feeling pretty well. This is ecstatic, idealistic music that will totally woo you over, if you’re willing to meet Kate halfway.

Overall, The Kick Inside ranks among the most impressive debut albums I’ve ever heard and I can’t really imagine Bush making a better record in the same style. The worst complaint I could think of is that all the songs somewhat sound the same, but when you have zero weak cuts out of thirteen, that’s a minor complaint. She would go on to top this album, but it would take her a few tries and a major expansion of her style in order to be able to do it.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Electric Ladyland” (1968)

Rating: 9

Best Song – “(1983) A Merman I Should Turn to Be”

I’ve no doubt listened to Electric Ladyland more than any other Hendrix record, yet I still find myself unsure of how to rate it. Back when I was in high school, I had an album review site for about a year, partly as a project for my Creative Writing class. At the time, I reviewed Ladyland and gave it a rating of i, representing an imaginary number. This was basically my 11^th grade way of saying that I had no idea how to rate it properly. Ten years later, that hasn’t entirely changed. The reason is that it’s a quintessential sprawling double album, and a particularly sprawling one at that. There’s a 15 minute live blues jam which I find tedious, a 20 minute near-progressive suite about escaping into the sea in a dystopian future which I find brilliant, and then another 45 minutes or so of more typical Hendrix songs that nonetheless range all over the map in terms of quality.

Ultimately, I went for a 9 rating because I am inclined to reward albums that reach high peaks, and at its peak, it’s as good or better than the Experience's debut. Of course, Ladyland rates lower because it’s inconsistent as hell, but I’m willing to take the bad with the good in this case. It starts out well enough, with the title track being almost a soul song, but you’ve never heard a soul song with such a stirring, otherworldly guitar solo. “Crosstown Traffic” is an addictive short rocker that compares well to the better songs on Axis like “Spanish Castle Magic.” And then we get a 15 minute blues jam (“Voodoo Chile”), and whatever momentum there was comes to a halt. “Voodoo Chile” seems to be a fairly divisive track, but I definitely count myself among its detractors. There is some great soloing by Hendrix to be sure, but that still only takes up about 25% of its length. The verses move at a crawling pace and I inevitably find myself totally bored waiting for the next eruptive solo. Worst, it feels very out of place to me, not really fitting into the fantasy world that the rest of the album conjures.

And although there is yet another Noel Redding tune I find inexplicably charming (“Little Miss Strange”), there’s a fairly pedestrian sequence of pop-rockers that follow it up. I do like the weird guitar intro to “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” (good thing, because the rest of the song is only so-so), and “Come On, Pt. 1” is generic, but has some energy, but I can’t help but feeling that “Long Hot Summer Night” and especially “Gypsy Eyes” are ultimate examples of how you can only do so much with a song that is mediocre to begin with. I’m probably being a bit harsh, but while I have to admit the production on “Gypsy Eyes” is really cool, with Jimi’s guitar moving from speaker to speaker, the song itself is a total bore.

And so nearly halfway through the album, Electric Ladyland would definitely rate as his weakest release to date. Fortunately, Jimi saved all his tricks for sides three and four. The aforementioned “Rainy Day, Dream Away” suite is where all his mysticism and sonic exploration really comes together for me. I always got a weird undercurrent from his other albums where he seemed to be positioning himself as this benevolent alien come to grace the world with his guitar playing (I suppose it’s not really an undercurrent since the opening “EXP” on Axis outright states as much). And this is where I finally feel the vibe I think he was always aiming for. “Rainy Day, Dream Away” sets the mood with Jimi falling into a dream, which then leads into the epic “1983… A Merman I Should Turn to Be,” which plot is described in the opening paragraph. Then we get nine minutes or so of ambient noise (“Moon… Turn the Tides Gently, Gently Away”) before the climactic “Still Raining, Still Dreaming,” which reprises the opener, but with furious guitar solos that slowly build in intensity.

I often think that the concept of how well an album flows together is somewhat overrated and that the individual song quality is ultimately the primary driver in how much I like an album. But this suite is definitely an example of where the songs work much better together in unison than they would apart. Most notably, I can get behind the more ambient “Moon” because it slowly builds to the climax of “Still Raining, Still Dreaming” while utilizing some of the themes introduced earlier in the suite. It also helps that “1983” is just an awesome song, a rare plaintive rocker for Jimi, and a strangely touching one at that.

After what would seem to be the ultimate demonstration of his talents, Hendrix again slightly deflates the mood, with another fairly generic rocker (“House Burning Down”) but then again totally redeems himself with the closing duo of “All Along the Watchtower” and “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).” I’m an unabashed Dylan fanatic, but if you put a gun to my head, I’d probably choose the Hendrix version. As well-trod as it is by radio, it just has a totally natural flow to it, with seemingly effortless guitar solos that never diminish in their greatness. And “Voodoo Chile” has one of most Hendrix’s iconic riffs, and is also probably the single greatest demonstration of his guitar technique, with its monstrous walls of sound that famously, were played only by one guitar.

So yeah, the highs are really high, and if the lows are kind of low, so be it. There’s enough great material here to keep any classic rock aficionado satiated for a long time.