Michael Jackson’s New Album Has Been Leaked

Michael Jackson’s Posthumous Album Is Now Available For (Illegal) Download

Michael Jackson’s Posthumous Album Is Now Available For (Illegal) Download

A leak of Michael Jackson’s posthumous album has hit the Web like a cyclone. A simple search on most file-sharing and torrent sites will let you get our hands on the 10 tracks that make it up.

This might as well be the highest-profile leak of the year, well ahead of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” and the beginning of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1”.

Sony and Epic Records have declined to make comments of any kind. I guess they are too busy grinding their axes… This has been one leak too many. The consequences this can have on file sharing could be radical.

Who Was The First American Artist To Have A Posthumous Number One Single?

Issued As A Single In 1968, The Song “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding (1941 - 1967) Was The First Posthumous Release By An American Artist To Ever Top The US Charts.

Issued As A Single In 1968, The Song “(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding (1941 - 1967) Was The First Posthumous Release By An American Artist To Ever Top The US Charts.

Otis Redding (1941 – 1967) was the first American artist to have a posthumous number one single. The song “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” (released one month after the plane crash that ended his life) achieved that distinction.

Janis Joplin (1943 – 1970) and Jim Croce (1943 – 1973) would then become the second and the third artist respectively to hit the top of the American charts posthumously. Janis did it with Kris Kristofferson-penned “Me and Bobby McGee” (from the successful “Pearl”, issued in 1971), and Jim with a song he had written about his yet-to-be-born son, “Time In A Bottle”.

(Sketches For) My Sweetheart The Drunk (Jeff Buckley) – Album Review

Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk (1998}9 Was To Be Jeff Buckley's Posthumous Release.

(Sketches For) My Sweetheart The Drunk Was To Be Released Posthumously By Jeff Buckley's Mother In 1998, One Year After The Drowning Accident That Ended His Life.

Jeff Buckley’s drowning in 1997 in Memphis was a harrowing tragedy. We lost a great human being and we were deprived of a gifted performer whose career was just starting in earnest. At the time of his passing, Jeff was about to begin working with his band on a set of songs he had actually recorded once in Manhattan (with Television’s Tom Verlaine) and scrapped. He referred to those songs as “My Sweetheart The Drunk”, and he defined the album as “a guidebook for losers in love”.

Upon his passing, Jeff’s mother supervised a two-disc release made up of the songs Jeff had scrapped on the first disc, and the songs he had left behind as 4-track demos on the second CD. This double album became known as “(Sketches For) My Sweetheart The Drunk”, and it was a moving reminder of Buckley’s talent and determination to create a legacy as enduring as that of his brilliant (yet troubled) father Tim.

The songs he had recorded with Verlaine and scrapped only make it patent how much he strove for perfection – there was nothing wrong with them. Jeff was aiming to create a work which showcased him and his band as the close-knit performing unit they had become. And that was more than fulfilled by each of the ten songs that were featured.

“The Sky Is A Landfill” (a song in which he comes to terms with his father’s addictions) opens the album in an assertive way, and Jeff closes it almost single-handedly 50 minutes later with “You And I”, the nearest he has ever come to an acapella number. Generally, the songs stand as a more muscular version of the goth/folk sound that had been so captivating the first time around.

“Nightmares By The Sea” is a definitive highlight, and it was covered respectfully (but not brilliantly) by Katatonia later on. With its tale of lovers returning from the hereinafter to doom the existences of those still alive, the song is a clear tribute to Edgar A. Poe, an artist Jeff was very keen on. (He actually contributed a reading of “Ulalume” to an album produced and issued by Hal Willner in 1997, “Closed On Account of Rabies”.) Continue reading