KEEPING JACKSON AFLOAT

Today, Michael Jackson's sixty-day period of grace on the $270 Million he owes to Fotress Investments are up, according to Fox News, if you can trust them. Roger Friedman claims that Sony is going to bail him out:

As I wrote in this space on Friday, Sony Music is working hard to secure a deal in which Citigroup will buy the loans from Fortress. Sony will secure the debt, keep Jackson from bankruptcy court and keep Sony from having to deal with yet more partners.

Fortress will get a nice piece of change for their year of holding the notes — possibly as much as $50 million.

Sony, we suspect, are not solely interested in thinning down the number of partners they have to deal with; we'd imagine this is all about back catalogue. Coincidently, Sony have just embarked on a series of Jacko re-releases.

Friedman also updates on the Katrina single - whether it appears or not, it seems to describe it as a Jackson song might be stretching a point:

The music for “Dream” was written by David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager for a contest. The contest winner, Ric Kipp, a Nashville songwriter, wrote the lyrics.

All four names (including Jackson’s) are on the copyright, but Kipp has not been acknowledged so far in any of the publicity.

You might wonder why Jackson wants his name on the writing credits if it's intended for all the cash to go to charity...

music michael jackson sony bmg