Can't we just take him out back and kil him now?

Well, I think Michael Jackson's pretty damn worthless...but I can't exactly defend Tommy Motolla, either, he's another chunk of scum. They can both go.

Agreed. Another instance of "a pox on both yer houses."

i love that his poster has TM in the bad AND the ugly slot, it's like Jacko is still seven yrs old and didn't think this protest thing through AT ALL.

Alex yr usual theory is that crap sells well BECAUSE WE ARE ALL SHEEP etc. So maybe Jacko has a point: viz he carefully made some pabulum as per usual but this time because of sudden racism tommy m REFUSED to forcefeed it to the masses, hence poor sales which you wd not expect from such a rubbish record (because rubbish sells well and everything that sells well is rubbish).

My theory is that it sold badly because it had that spoiler thing on it to stop people copying it for free. This is based on no research (or logic, much): i just hope it proves to be the case because hahaha....

Hahaha anyway, in general. I am afraid I love this story in all its ramifications. If MJ turns it into a concept alb my joy will be complete.

did the post colour in his lips btw?

My theory is that it sold badly because it had that spoiler thing on it to stop people copying it for free

My theory is he's forgotten how to write good songs; and combining modern r&b production with his essentially unchanged vocal style just doesn't work. People aren't interested in him anymore as an artist - only as a celebrity. Therefore no need to purchase.

yeah but david that implies everyone heard it and decided NO: only i don't know anyone that heard it, apart from the singles

Sony Music was closed for the weekend, and a message left for a Mottola spokesman was not immediately returned.

Somehow I don't quite believe that bit.

Also, why did he decide to have a go at his lips with the felt-tip after scrawling over this Mottola feller?

I don't think Invicible had "the spolier thing" on it, although the Boycott RIAA site says the single for "You Rock My World" did.

I wondered about the picture, too; the lips seem excessively red, even for MJ.

ooh ooh! i know!! he was sucking the felt-tip pen while he did the colouring in!!

spolier than thou

sorry i am ill i go to bed now

yeah but david that implies everyone heard it and decided NO: only i don't know anyone that heard it, apart from the singles

That's what singles are for - to promote the album. Are you suggesting most people listen to albums before buying them? People heard the singles and decided not to buy the album. Either that or they ignored even the singles because they'd already lost interest in Jackson as an artist (huge numbers of people fall in that category imo).

I heard that whole album in Hastings when it came out. Song after song after song. O God it was like the torture of the damned. "Thriller" was so good that a young Stooges fan like me had no credible choice but to hit the dance floor. No amount of promotion can made "Invincible" as popular as "Thriller," because "Invincible" is a worthless piece of shit.

However MJ's theory is much funnier, so I believe it. The whole world loves "Invincible"! They just can't find it in the stores!

The single definitely did, there was a huge fuss about it. First time it had ever been done in Britain or something, apparently causing it not to work at all...

The single definitely did, there was a huge fuss about it. First time it had ever been done in Britain or something, apparently causing it not to work at all...

Here's hoping that MJ (or someone) realizes that pseudo-encrypted CDs of that sort = lost sales, then.

net freebies now take the place of singles

net freebies now take the place of singles

Not everyone has access to those (ie no net connection or technophobic whatever). Anyway for those that get stuff that way, they have no excuse for saying they didn't hear it if it was available on the net.

sorry i got rung up in the middle of that thought and posted by mistake while i was chatting to my sistrah about how her boyf sings popsongs while he's cooking, except changes the words so they are about his porkchop

i. i hardly heard the MJ singles *at all* on the radio: maybe i was just un/lucky, but it really DID seem underpromoted that way
ii. i think MJ — of all ppl — needed to reach OUT into net-freebie world instead of retreating from it, because his core audience are (presumably) ageing, even if he is not
iii. it was like the normal word-of-mouth dimension was gagged: i agree it might have been boredom (with who they expect he's stayed, and the few fragments they hear confirming that) and also of course a delayed reaction to the child-molesting stories (like "don't mention the war")

i. i hardly heard the MJ singles *at all* on the radio: maybe i was just un/lucky, but it really DID seem underpromoted that way

The decision to play stuff is supposed to be down to Radio 1 or whoever, not in the hands of the record company, although I'm not sure to what extent pseudo-payola operates in British radio or the USA for that matter - backhanders, other inducements...any ideas? If this area *is* corrupt, that would have been an opportunity for Sony to deliberately under-promote. OTOH maybe radio just didn't want to play it (because they didn't like it very much and/or they thought their listeners wouldn't be that interested).

this is what's so funny though, because it's like everyone in the industry has for once acted honourably and uncynically and in the higher interests of good music (ie NO apparent payola/corruption, no automatic heavy rotation replay just because he's an established megastar, radio DJs refusing playing a record because they actually — correctly — think it's poor and their listeners won't be interested) — AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENS!! THEY GET SUED BY THE ARTIST!!

JACKO MUST GO!!!

We must stage a rescue operation. We must find which species of alien that kidnapped the real Mikey (the one who did "Billie Jean" and "Rock With Me") and rescue him. While simultaneously destroying the (obviously non-human) pod person replacement.
It'll be like the movie "Aliens" and Jarvis Cocker can play the part of butch latina with the big gun.

who were these 6 million that bought the album? is he lining the giraffe cage at neverland with copies to boost the numbers?

JACKO MUST GO!!!

JACKO MUST GO ON!!!

Morally, he's been at best very dubious: he may or may not have actually engaged in SEX with minors, but he clearly was involved in kissy-face and bed-sharing with children not his own, and quite frankly that's disgusting enough. As a social presence, key-RIST. Musically, sometimes engaging, sometimes anti-climactic, and not really any fun anymore...hmmm...this was supposed to be an argument FOR him, wasn't it?

But kill him? No.

However, I don't think he'll ever find any kind of withdrawal from the public eye acceptable. Plus, nobody's in any kind of position to say NO to him in a meaningful manner, either.

Oh Christ, how could we ever live without Michael Jackson? He's just about the last thing left to keep me interested. Everybody else is too predictable.

'Plus, nobody's in any kind of position to say NO to him in a meaningful manner, either'

??? What about the general record- buying public, to start with?

"meaningful" = MJ understands the meaning

public fail to buy his new LP => MJ goes after tommy mottola = he interpreted "no THANKS geez" as "apologies but we were not told there was a new LP"

Why has nobody mentioned Exeter City on this thread yet?

Jackson/Mottola vs. M. Davis/C. Davis

Mj is a disgrace. it's great to see him publically shaming himself.

Mark s: "Hahaha anyway, in general. I am afraid I love this story in all its ramifications. If MJ turns it into a concept alb my joy will be complete."

It'll be TWICE as delicious if the album is the REAL clinker we all know he's still got in him!

except changes the words so they are about his porkchop
Most interesting thing on this thread! Maybe Jacko would gain popularity again on the same cosmic scale as before if he indulged in some porkchop pop!

The Post today - JACKO GOT OFF-TRACKO, REV. AL SAYS. The Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday said Wacko Jacko's bizarre attack on Tommy Mottola was unfair and unfounded, and called the Sony honcho a staunch supporter of black artists. "I have known Tommy for 15 or 20 years, and never once have I known him to say or do anything that would be considered racist," Sharpton said.

An uneasy Sharpton admitted he was "taken aback and surprised" by the verbal assault, which started during a press conference with the rotund reverend and lasted throughout the Gloved One's crosstown tour on Saturday.

"In fact, he's always been supportive of the black music industry," Sharpton said. "He was the first record executive to step up and offer to help us with respect to corporate accountability, when it comes to black music issues."

At times during his anti-Mottola diatribe, Jackson held up posters of Mottola with horns, and called him "devilish." He also accused Mottola of describing another black artist with a racial slur.

Sharpton said he was "inundated" with calls yesterday from top African-American artists and producers furious over Jackson's nasty personal attack on the Sony heavyweight.

"To call Tommy Mottola a racist is just ridiculous - he's one of the biggest supporters of black music I know," said producer Steve Stout, one of several angry black execs who rang Sharpton.

Sharpton stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jackson at the reverend's Harlem headquarters Saturday, getting a big smooch from the one-time King of Pop as he started his crosstown tour to denounce Mottola and Sony.

Along his Harlem-East Village-Midtown route, Jackson also lashed out at the industry at large, saying execs "really do conspire against black artists."

"I didn't know that Michael planned to personally attack Tommy - but nobody tells Michael Jackson what to do," Sharpton said, adding that he "stands firmly behind" Jackson's view on the industry overall.

The Jackson spectacle was timed to coincide with Sharpton's big racism-in-music "summit" tomorrow. Sharpton says he intends to keep "Michael's personal issues with Tommy" separate from the "broader industry issues" at the meeting.

But Jackson's personal swipes may have torpedoed any constructive developments, as black artists line up to defend the Sony boss.

"Michael Jackson playing the race card is a cop-out - a last-resort move by a guy who is frustrated that his big project didn't work," said Courey Rooney, the African-American producer of Jennifer Lopez, Destiny's Child and Marc Anthony.

As a kid, Rooney said, he "idolized Jackson" and worked on part of Jackson's failed "Invincible" album - the record at the heart of Jackson's beef with Sony. The record company poured $60 million into producing and promoting it, but Jackson contends the company didn't back him enough.

Rooney believes Michael Jackson's checkered past - especially his pedophilia charges - played a huge role in the record's lousy sales.

This is going to sound rather flippant and obvious cheap-shot, but take a look at the man --- can Michael Jackson even CALL himself a "black artist" anymore? He's paler than fuckin' Moby!

I second that. In fact, the next time you go to the rekkid store, hold up a copy of Bad next to a copy of Weird Al's Even Worse and see who has the richer tan. And this was YEARS ago.

Plus, nobody's in any kind of position to say NO to him in a meaningful manner, either.

"No, Mikey. NO. GET DOWN. NO! Sit! SIT! STAY! No treats until you sit. Sit.....awwwwww. Good boy. Stay. Now shake hands....Goooood Boooyyy! Now, go get the stick. gogettitboy."

See. All he needs is some obedience classes, and he'll stop peeing on the rug and molesting little boys.

Lord Custos if you have any evidence that he molested little boys please present it (and Daddino yeah YOU - "kissyface"?) - the world is waiting. Otherwise please stay on topic i.e. "whadda freak!" What audiences thought of his album is IRRELEVANT here - it's whether Sony carried out their contractual obligation to market the record in the way both parties had agreed to. The amount of money spent isn't the issue either. There are a lot of logistics to marketing something that huge and if Sony agreed to something and didn't do it then they broke their word and the law. You'd be pissed off, too. And before you say you wouldn't ride around Manhattan in circles on the top of your own doubledecker bus, waving a placard saying your boss is evil... think about it.

Maybe you missed the bit where he paid off the boy who was sueing him.

That "innocent unless proven guilty" thing applies to big bad Sony as well crazy Jacko.

Ben, you've heard of "settling a case"? It doesn't mean that Michael Jackson is guilty of child abuse. Jacko and Co. realized the case against him was going to drag on for years - ESPECIALLY if Jacko was exonerated - so he gave the kid's dad the money, which is pretty clearly what the kid's dad wanted all along. more here

Yeah, yeah, so the evidence is all circumstantial. But there's a lot of it.

the GQ article behind that link compiles at least as much circumstantial evidence that the kid's dad was a very manipulative person who saw an opportunity and ran with it as hard as he could. i think the "common knowledge" that MJ has a sexual interest in children is based on something even less than circumstantial.

It is a good article. I certainly don't doubt that the kid's family were out for whatever they could get.

First, we tattoo him!

Then we hang him!

Then we murder him!

And then we kill him!

Invincible's two singles were GRATE!

And my friend with particular taste LOVES that album! Maybe the public didn't want it, but maybe like the rockists all say maybe they SHOULD have and Sony's job should have been to convince them of that, eh?

The public did want it. 2 mil is perfectly respectable sales. It's just that Jacko expects 25 mil, and that ain't happening to him again.

(the harshly curtailed color table it looks like the NY Post used to compress that gif = only 1 or 2 red shades eventually used (to save space) hence red of 50cents circle and red of devil horns = same red as Jacko's lips)

Ah. That'll be why the picture under 'The Good' looks like Terence Trent D'Arby then.

ummmmmm...that picture of micheal jackson is scaring me...how much plastic surgery has that dude had?????????

I'd say it's a giant leap of faith to even assume he's even quantifialby a "dude" anymore. He looks as though he's liberated himself from the rigors of gender and species and become a brand new lifeform altogether.

NO HE WAS SUCKING HIS PEN!! gifs indeed...

Gee, gotta love the world media - managing to completely invent the public's perception of a performer. Well done, dickheads!

But seriously. Comments about his surgery? Irrelevant. Proclaiming he's not "male"? Immature. Questioning his race? Downright stupid. A little research goes a long way, you know. And, of course, some tolerance.

MJ may be past his "prime", but don't forget -- his "prime" came at a certain time. Thriller's success was half timing, half genius. Invincible is in no way a bad album -- I actually enjoy it more than his older stuff -- and just because it will never sell 45 million copies, doesn't make it a flop. Actually take a listen to it, without comparing it, and you'll see what I mean.

While I don't know what's going on with the whole "Mottola is the devil" thing - to be honest, I don't really care - I just hope that MJ's tactics step up a little from name-calling. Proof would be great, Mike.

"I look in the mirror, I know I'm still black."

I'm with Mottola on this one, but he's gotta be almost as nuts as Jacko - he actually fucked that flakey nutjob Mariah Carey!

and just because it will never sell 45 million copies, doesn't make it a flop.

It would be a flop if it barely goes into profit or makes a loss. We're talking about capitalism here.

Look at the man. Observe his actions. Listen to his allegations. Listen to his relatively anaemic music (alright, in all fairness, that last bit expresses my own opinion, but I certainly don't feel I'm alone in that impression). For all intents and purpose, he's both "freak" and "flop". In this one instance, I'd wager the media's dead- on target.

And prescribing "tolerance" to his critics while the man himself feverishly blames poor sales on the industry's "racism" smacks of sour, sour grapes. Why can't he emerge from his plush coccoon of denial and realize that quite possibly, his efforts on INVINCIBLE simply didn't gel with the changing tastes of the music-buying public? Why can't he gracefully accept that perhaps his days in the limelight are behind him and that it's high time to make way for others to inherit his (VERY MUCH SELF-PROCLAIMED) title (I'm not even going to dignify it by spelling it out). Why is it everyone ELSE's fault that the record didn't set the world on fire?

>Invincible's two singles were GRATE!

You're mentally blocking out the one about the children, aren't you Sterling?

That said, "She Rocks My World" wasn't nearly as bad as everyone said it was, and if I recall there was some remix of "Unbreakable" constantly being played out on urban stations a while back which was *pure* *class*. I think considering everything else that's gone on with his life MJ's musical standards (bar the songs about the children, obv.) have remained relatively intact.

Also it should be noted that the album before 'Invincible' was hidden within a greatest hits package. The last actual standalone album was, what, ten years ago?

You're mentally blocking out the one about the children

Won't someone think of the CHILDREN?

That said, "She Rocks My World" wasn't nearly as bad as everyone said it was

OH YES IT WAS. Sorry, but everything about that song made me actually hate Mr. Jackson for the first time ever.

How? It was proven by science to be universally inoffensive.

Tracer: Lord Custos if you have any evidence that he molested little boys please present it
Wellll, I don't have it on me, per se.
But I would like to give you some food for thought. Forget about the payoff...forget about all the others who came forward. Even forget how much he seems fixated on children (in the platonic sense, I mean.)
Forget all that, and just focus on one simple thing: The ads for Joop. The perfume/cologne he was hawking back in the early 90s. One of those ads convinced me that he was, if not guilty of molestation, had at least the mental potential to molest children. Y'see, Originally, I was one of the few that believed he was innocent. Until I saw the advert, and it sent a chill down my spine.

Picture: Woman walking a baby on a leash. The baby is flying like Superman.
and the caption read....

A Child
Is the Ultimate
Pet.

Suddenly, Captain EO doesn't sound so heroic.

How? It was proven by science to be universally inoffensive.

Not with a monumentally stupid title like that. I even like "E-Mail My Heart" more, and that's saying something.

he is a FELT-TIP PEN MOLESTAH!! i have seen it with my OWN EYES!!

"Hey mister...thats a really pretty biro. Why don't you squeal like a pig for me?"

biro /= felt-tip, Custos, now you're just slinging mud

Felt tips are for when he's feeling romantic. Biro is for hard quickies.

But anyhow....am I the only one who remembers that Joop ad?

Apparently, I was.