by Michael Jackson
(Epic)
“I’m the light of the world, I feel grand,” “I feel as if I’ve seen
your face a thousand times”—this song couldn’t have telegraphed
its aim for a full-on comeback more clearly, and while Jackson’s
greatest gift as a vocalist was his sheer guile, his sincerity and
believability and emotional transparency, putting it to the service of
a song as slight as this one seems like a waste. Musically, it’s as if
the first single chosen from Off the Wall had been “It’s the
Falling in Love”; at least putting “The Girl Is Mine” out in front of
Thriller had the advantage of commercial expediency (get that
adult-contemporary play, the first domino to fall in hopes of world
domination). But this just seems like begging. He’d have been better
off covering the Kenny Loggins/Michael McDonald song of the same
name—and besides, since much of Thriller was played by
members of Toto anyway, it would have been a fit conceptually. This is
not terrible—just sad.
by Joss Stone feat. Nas
(Virgin)
Really nice retro-soul track here—no horns, just flickering
guitar riding a supple groove. Just about anything would sound good on
it. Unfortunately, “just about anything” does not mean a 22-year-old
Englishwoman who, smoky voice or no smoky voice, doesn’t know what the
hell she’s talking about, taking shots at the government of a foreign
country, most awkwardly with the high dudgeon of, “If in God you
trust/Can’t you hear him still?/I ain’t no preacher/But thou shalt
not kill.” You got that, civilized humanity? Still, the line that
tells us everything she has to say is this one: “I hope you’re happy
and you sleep so great at night.” Oh, do get over yourself. As for the
guest rapper, he’s all over the damn place, from lamenting genetically
modified food to suggesting that Stone has some claim on the truth.
Guess he must have recorded his part first.
by Taken by Trees
(Rough Trade)
Victoria Bergsman, who sang along with Peter Bjorn and John on
“Young Folks,” covers and gender-switches Animal Collective over some
thumb pianos. Primary advantage: It no longer sounds like a bunch of
broheems high-fiving for six minutes. Primary disadvantage: Now it
sounds merely cutesy rather than headlong, actively instead of vaguely
annoying.