Michael Jackson - “Dangerous” (1991)

Rating: 8

Best Song: “Who Is It”

Listening to Dangerous again, this might be the Michael Jackson album I feel most irrational about (I keep saying this with each subsequent album, but I can guarantee that I won’t be saying it about HIStory...). My impression is that although Dangerous yielded the requisite number of hit singles and album sales, its historical reputation hasn’t exactly held up. But I feel this is due to factors that are largely external to the album itself. It happened to be the album that was displaced at #1 by Nevermind, purportedly signaling the change in the market from pop trash to grunge Its sound dates itself perhaps even more irrevocably than his first few albums. And of course, it was not too long after the release of Dangerous that the first child molestation charges were levied against Jackson, beginning the change in public perception of him from a benevolent eccentric to an at best, deeply disturbed recluse, and at worst, child predator.

But what I am really interested in is the music on Dangerous and in 1991, Michael’s songwriting and melodic skills were still at their peak. The quantity of strong hooks and melodies here is definitely on the level of Bad and Thriller. He still maintained his level of creative control and 11 of the 14 songs here were at least co-written by him. And from an emotional resonance perspective, there are at least glimpses of genuine torment here, belying the album’s reputation as a dated pop monolith. Well, perhaps it is a dated pop monolith, but I can’t really think of any pop artists since Jackson who have dared to make albums quite like this one.

That said, there are several problems with Dangerous that prevent me from giving it the rating I want to give it. First, Michael finally cast off Quincy Jones as producer and brought on Teddy Riley, progenitor of the ‘New Jack Swing’ sound, basically meaning sharper beats and heavier drums to give the album at least a little bit of a hip-hop feel. I admit to having a bit of nostalgia towards this sound due to growing up with this album, but it certainly feels more like a fad than anything long-lasting, and I’m not convinced it was entirely within Jackson’s comfort zone (indeed although fortunately they are all brief, there are a few guest raps on Dangerous, which all feel entirely pointless). Second, the album is 77 minutes long, presumably to fill out the entire CD length, as by this time CD had replaced cassettes and vinyl as the dominant medium. Yet I see little artistic reason here to make the album that long as it wasn’t marketed as a ‘double’ album nor does he use the extra space to explore new terrain. Instead, songs that would have been 3-4 minutes on previous albums are needlessly extended to 5-6 minutes in length. Finally, and most damning, I outright dislike 3 of the songs here, which I could really only say about “The Girl is Mine” from his albums up to this point, and two of them take up about 15 minutes of the album. So although overall, I still rank it highly, it’s not hard for me to imagine a version of Dangerous that would challenge Bad and quite possibly beat it for the title of my favorite Michael Jackson album. Unfortunately, this isn’t quite it.

Still, setting aside a few unfortunate inclusions on the album (which I will get to later), I basically like everything here. “Black or White” and “Remember the Time” are as good as any singles he had released until this point, but seem to be the only songs most people know from the album. So I must also spotlight songs like the title track, another entry in the “Billie Jean/Dirty Diana” sequence, yet still holding its own with an unforgettable refrain (“Take away my money/throw away my time”), even if the spoken word parts are a bit much. “In the Closet” is another song that shouldn’t work, trying to build up sexual tension with breathy vocals and spoken-word sections, but the chorus (which admittedly, he repeats over and over again for about 3 minutes at the end of the song) is still one of Jackson’s best. Also for the third straight album, he throws in a rock song with a guest guitarist (this time, Slash), yet I like “Give in to Me” nearly as much as any of its predecessors. Although these songs are bit more repetitive than on previous albums perhaps, Michael’s vocals are increasingly anguished, so there’s this weird undercurrent where at one level, you’re hearing impeccable pop music yet at another, there’s this tormented man-child trying to break his way out of his cocoon. The best example is the brooding “Who Is It,” an outright Jackson classic, with a totally melodramatic string arrangement that works nonetheless thanks to Michael’s pleading vocals, the slowly building tension, and in this case, two different sections that could qualify as immaculate pop choruses.

There are several songs I haven’t mentioned that basically all hit the mark, but I feel it is time to expound on the bad stuff here. Much as I love “Man in the Mirror,” it unfortunately awoke Jackson’s latent humanitarian balladeer persona, resulting in the dreadful “Heal the World,” which I have hated for about twenty years now, and see no reason to stop any time soon. Enough time has given me the ability to admit that the melody for “Heal the World” is not all that bad. But when you add in clips of children talking about making a difference, a treacly string and piano arrangement that sounds like it belongs in a Ronald McDonald House commercial, the result makes me want to vomit. Ballads have never been Michael’s forte, but at least he never had this level of pretension before. I suppose he was probably sincere in trying to ‘make the world a better place,’ but I can’t really see how writing a cloying, saccharine song about it accomplishes that. “Will You Be There,” included on the Free Willy soundtrack, is a mess too(sorry Betsy!). Again, the basic melodic hook is fine and entertaining to sing along to, but the 90 second sampled Beethoven intro, gospel choirs, and spoken-word outro all tell us that this is supposed to be some sort of deeply moving emotional experience, and it surely isn’t that. Finally, “Gone Too Soon” is another boring ballad, not even written by Michael, though at least it has the mercy of being short.

So with all the vitriol I’ve summoned for certain songs here, I could probably justify giving Dangerous an even lower rating. But I really do enjoy the majority of the album just as much as I enjoy his more acclaimed albums. To me, the flaws prevent it from being great, not from being good. That said, knowing what we know now, Dangerous was the start of Michael’s musical decline. His remaining studio albums would exacerbate the trends shown here: needless bandwagon jumping onto the latest commercial trends in order to seem relevant, filling out the entire CD for no reason, and more and more awful ballads. Yet at least on Dangerous he could still deliver high-quality pop like nobody else in the business.