If I could tear down these walls that keep you and I apart

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

04/11/01 : Invincible - Michael Jackson


Our fourth visit with Michael and I've never heard this - in fact, I don't think I even remembered it existed. I'm expecting it to be an interesting enough historical listen, but I'm not sure I'm going to exactly love it.

Actually, this is surprisingly decent - it's got a reasonable amount of variety but it feels like someone's been trying to rein in some of his more outlandish ideas. And at least partially succeeding - yes, there's still an awful load of nonsense on here, but it's at least listenable nonsense. I was also particularly surprised by actively enjoying "Threatened", the closing track - although I was possibly just very pleased to get to the end of the 77 minutes, which really could have done with some pruning. I was also surprised how "The Lost Children" (which is psychological minefield I won't be investigating) strays dangerously close to Chris De Burgh territory, which I really wasn't expecting. But overall, this was enjoyably listenable and not at all the bloated mess I was expecting. 

We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of a surprisingly short ten week run which pleasingly featured a drop in each week. The rest of the top five were the Steps best-of, Mis-teeq (a new entry), Kylie and The Backstreet Boys (another new entry) with the next highest new entry being Russell Watson (#6).

Wikipedia has the expected huge amount (362 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is his tenth and final album. The creation was a tortuous process, taking over three years and using ten producers and over 100 musicians - guest artists I recognise are Slash, Carlos Santana, Notorious BIG, R Kelly and Brandy. And after six months, Sony decided to stop promoting it which resulted in Michael refusing to tour - so it wasn't exactly a bundle of joy all round. Critically, the reviews were average to negative at the time, but retrospective reviews were more positive - I suspect expectations may have been set too high at the time. Commercially, it did well initially, getting to #1 in plenty of countries, including the US, but it lacked the staying power that I suspect everyone was hoping for. It still sold five million copies globally though, so was hardly a failure and Michael always said he was proud of it.

discogs.com surprises me because you're going to have to spend a couple of quid to get a decent copy (which is a fortune for this year) but if you want the Japanese limited edition reissue, complete with CARDBOARD sleeve (whatever will they think of next?) then it's going to set you back £152.82! I will not be spending that, but I thought this was an interesting listen which I would never have experienced under normal circumstances, so I'm glad I went there - it was considerably better than I was expecting.

11/11/01 - Very average (at best)

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