Breaking News

Alright so I'm listening to "Breaking News" for the second time, much better rested. My initial thoughts were that the track is an incomplete demo or a fraud. The basis being that the song was "recently brought to completion" according to the press release from michaeljackson.com, therefore my main suspicions would be explained by the "recent completion."

I buy the the majority of the vocals as being authentic and entirely Michael Jackson. As for the screams and other elements/trademarks these are typically sampled regardless. If this album wasn't published post-posthumously, no one would pay attention to these audio blips, because these elements have always been recycled in his songs. Obviously he can repeat himself live, but adding the screams and such have always been a post production element, so to speak. Therefore these features are irrelevant to the authenticity of the track, one would assume...

What rings true is the lyrical content: "Why is it strange that I would fall in love. Who is this boogie-man you're thinking of." The lyrical content holds true to his usual themes. What doesn't ring true is the stacking of his vocals, the key of the song, and the lacking of the most crucial elements of every Michael Jackson song: the extensive vamping, i.e. the ad-libbing that he is notoriously known for.

Michael could add minute after minute to the end of any track with passionate, many times unintelligible lyrics but always percussive and/or melodically sound. It was always this portion, the closing of the track with repeating chorus and his lead vocals becoming a subconscious strew of literal nonsense but of musical integrity, always cohesive to the song itself. These aspects were the underlying current of his effortless genius. These elements are missing from "Breaking News," though they are desperately sought after, forcibly so, in duplication.

This may very well be the first Michael Jackson track anyone has ever heard with his voice being auto-tuned and reworked. Towards the end of the track you catch the desperation of the producers and sound engineers trying to piece together previous work of Michael's into the structure and style that is known as the vamping we know him for. "you're breaking the news..." is from "breaking my baby..." vocals taken from the Dangerous album's title track.

Allow me to break it down second by second because I'm catching it all at once and have to keep stopping and rewinding.

@2.06 you hear an re-sampled blip from "Dirty Diana," "no, no" it's merely 2 seconds, maybe 3. But again, it's forced because they're trying to replicate his vamping.

@2.11 you hear a brief vocal run, that will appear later for a bit longer @2.24 and it too is fabricated, yes it's Michael, but it is auto-tuned to fit this song.

The scream "ooh" that you hear multiple times starting @0.55 appears to be originally from the opening of "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough." Which, though I've stated earlier that these elements were often recycled in his tracks, they were never done in this fashion, where a scream distinctive to a particular track be reused. The recycled elements were always key-less, percussive-like, filler you could say.

The repeating guitar-like synth in the song sounds very "Invincible" era, and very much like sampling from the opening of "you rock my world" and the extended version of the track used for the dance sequence from the music video of the same name.

While we're speaking of this Era, mention has been made that the track sounds like a Justin Timberland song. There's obvious, or to some not so obvious, explanation for this. The majority of Timberlake's debut, solo album was made up of songs written specifically for Michael's Invincible album but were turned town by Michael himself as not good enough. Therefore the demos went to Justin, who happily took Michael Jackson hand-me-downs and had a very successful release. Those, like Harvey Levin, who I first read making this comparison, should know better. Justin will tell you himself that he follows in Michael's footsteps and that any comparison to Michael is flattering and the point of Justin's efforts. So, Harvey, this song sounds very Michael Jackson to you, because Justin Timberlake has always made a point to sound "Michael Jackson" and never the other way around.

The track reeks of Teddy Riley: The scream may very well be from "In The Closet" of the Dangerous album and not from "Don't stop till you get enough," as was suggested earlier in this article. Though I mean Riley no disrespect because his work with Michael is of incredible quality. I only note the obvious source for much of this song.

@3.21 and 3.35 the "hee, hee, hee" downward cadence sounds Dangerous album all over

@3.26 you'll hear many times "you keep on breaking..." and each instance is lifted from the title track of the Dangerous album. "Dangerous" features a fabulous portion of vamping and ad-libbing by Michael, accounting for a large percentage of the track, seemingly so with this "new" track as well.

This entire matter is exhausting. The bottom line, this is one incredible fabrication. Yes, this is 100% Michael Jackson as far as whom is singing in this song, but in regards to Michael's work ethic, standards, and the like, this is %100 not up to par for a Michael Jackson release. This is a demo, an excellent song, yet it remains just a demo, and unfortunate for Sony, well no, the only unfortunate ones are his fans (family included) because Sony doesn't care that their client is dead. It's easier to fasten strings to a corpse than a live (action) puppet.