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Gordon in the morning: The sycophantic slags all say 'I knew him first, and I knew him well'
Gordon Smart clutches the sides of his chair in shock as America turns its back on the rotten faux-Jacko album:
AN album of unreleased tracks by the King Of Pop would be expected to shift a huge number but MICHAEL JACKSON's new disc is struggling.Is it that unexpected, though? Jackson hadn't bothered to release a proper record since 2001, and while that still shifted, it was clear that interest in records that actually had Jackson on was dwindling; why would you expect people to be spending cash on a record that had dubious parentage?
Michael has failed to make the Top Five in the US - the first time that's ever happened to one of the late star's albums.
Sony will be very disappointed. They signed a £128million deal with the Jackson family in March, giving them rights to his unfinished material.Oddly, this sort of stupid decision is never mentioned when the BPI wails about how hard it is to turn a few quid in the music industry.
It's good news, though - perhaps now the songs that were never going to see the light of day can be left where they are.
2 comments:
By my information, "Michael" has been leading on the Itunes Pop Album chart since it's release. It's been #2 on the Top 10 Album downloads on Itunes Store also.
"Michael"'s doing quite well actually all around the world. I would not consider that struggling. He is still a much beloved artist and humanitarian. In a recent poll, over half of the people polled in the US consider themselves fans.
Ah, the all-important "pop album" chart on one retailer, eh?
Here in the UK, Michael is limping behind Biffy Clyro's yonks-old thing, and Annie Lennox and her ill-judged Christmas Cornucopia. It's at number seven.
On Amazon.com, the Michael album is about number 6. Sure, it's the sort of sale a band like Los Campesinos would be thrilled by, but for a supposed major artist, and with all the money Sony have poured in, it's useless.
But let's look at that poll, shall we? It was conducted during the mawkish days straight after his death, which would have skewed results; CNN only polled 1,026 people and provided them with only a choice of 'would you say you were a fan of Michael Jackson or not', which is a weak question. What if you loved Thriller but thought since then he'd become an embarrassment? The question doesn't say 'at all', or 'now', or give any guidance as to what it means by 'fan' - if you wouldn't switch the radio off when he came on, the weak question would tend to lead respondents into declaring themselves a fan in instances where they didn't care much either way.
So, a poorly designed poll, carried out a time when people would have been less likely to 'speak ill of the dead', and with a binary distinction more likely to generate a response identifying themselves as 'fan'.
But still, "over half the people" considered themselves fans, right?
Erm... nope. The split was 51-49 in favour of 'fandom'. But the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent. So you can't even say that the fans won out, despite the skewed nature of the poll.
(The source, for all this, by the way, is http://www.pollingreport.com/music.htm )
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