From TIME magazine (thanks to MJJC)
Rock With Michael Jackson (Again)
Katherine St. Asaph @Katstasaph 6:21 AM ET
The King of Pop gets a new sound:
Old musicians don’t die or fade away–they just become franchises. Xscape, out May 13, is the latest in the biggest franchise of all: posthumous Michael Jackson albums. Epic Records mogul L.A. Reid worked with Timbaland to curate eight new tracks from Jackson’s vault of unreleased sessions, “contemporizing ” the songs, which were recorded from 1983 to 1999.
To their credit, contemporized doesn’t mean gimmicky; even paint-by-numbers producer team Stargate went subtle, although it helps that Jackson’s voice is too singularly frenzied to be overshadowed by a mix. Consider “Love Never Felt So Good,” an opulent, warm disco-soul number, which evokes Off the Wall as much as dead-on 2014, because these days disco is so trendy it practically comes precontemporized.
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