(#571: 24 May 1997, 2 weeks)
Track listing: Blood On The Dance Floor/Morphine/Superfly Sister/Ghosts/Is It Scary/Scream Louder (ft Janet Jackson; Flyte Time Remix)/Money (Fire Island Radio Edit)/2 Bad (ft John Forté & Wyclef Jean; Refugee Camp Mix)/Stranger In Moscow (Tee’s In-House Club Mix)/This Time Around (D.M. Radio Mix)/Earth’s Song (Hani’s Club Experience)/You Are Not Alone (Classic Club Mix)/HIStory (Tony Moran’s HIStory Lesson)
I have written about this album before. Specifically, in a posthumous and almost wholly male-authored anthology of essays about Michael Jackson published in 2009, I cursorily dismissed Blood On The Dance Floor as an “intermittently interesting but mostly wan remix album.” This was on the background of a glorified blog post which I wrote in about twenty minutes, approximately one hour after learning of Jackson’s death. I had other things to think about at the time (and still, over fifteen years later, have not been paid for writing the ”essay”). I’m abysmal at on-the-spot writing so it’s just as well I didn’t train as a journalist when I had the chance.
Then, after a decade and a half of not thinking about the album, I glanced warily at the mint CD copy which I had bought some years earlier for 50p from the Cancer Research shop in Carshalton for Then Play Long purposes (in those pre-streaming days) and inserted it into our player, with headphones on to ensure that I didn’t miss anything.
Well, that will teach me to come to snap judgements, and once again demonstrates why I can’t update this blog more often. I’ve now revised my opinion radically. Blood On The Dance Floor is one of the best albums Michael Jackson ever released. It might even be his best since Off The Wall. I can’t believe how good the record is, and how sorely, and sourly, it was underrated, sidelined or even damned by a lot of ageing men who truly ought to have known better.
The anthology is now mostly unreadable. Certainly its more “academic” analyses were incomprehensible even in 2009. But there resides in those pages so much bitterness and spite about what Jackson did or allowed to be done to himself after Thriller, together with collegiate sneering about his absence of a “soul.” Were they all deaf or stupid or, as I suspect, both? “Morphine,” “Is It Scary” and “Stranger In Moscow” were some of the most soulful and heartfelt songs he ever wrote and/or recorded.
The later Jackson songs are, of course, all about suffering, and specifically his own suffering, a gesture which seems perfectly acceptable to music writers when made by Ian Curtis or Kurt Cobain or Richey Edwards, or other white people. Black artists apparently aren’t allowed to suffer, other than in the standard racism/drug habit sense; they’re supposed to present a stalwart role model to mostly white music critics and must never exceed those boundaries or woe betide our whip of whim! John Lennon screaming about his mother is OK, Michael Jackson howling about the injustices that the world, from family on down, have deposited on him is out of order, not cricket.
What Jackson did learn from Lennon, apart from the odd indirect “Come Together” reference here and there, was how to structure his music as an extension of his life. What musician doesn’t, you may justifiably inquire, but I mean in the sense that, like Lennon, he saw his songs, or recordings, not so much as complete things in themselves but more as outliers of his self - the pop song as blog post, if you must, to which aim Lennon had been heading ever since “Glass Onion.”
While Jackson stopped short of conjuring up Two Virgins-type enterprises with Lisa-Marie Presley, enclosing cream envelopes filled with surplus sawdust from the floors of Neverland, he nonetheless wanted to make his music inseparable from his essence, or absence of same. If anything, the song “Blood On The Dance Floor” sees him positively welcome his assassin, maybe as a relief from having to think about his self any more – there is a terrible concealed ecstasy in Jackson’s triple-locked vocal assays as he anticipates the knife, metaphorical or otherwise, a closeted joy echoed in the slurring blips of electronica with which Teddy Riley punctuates the ending of every line and beat. I further note the song’s nod to the descending chord sequence of the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” (“There'll be days that will excite/They'll make you dream of me at night” – that sums a lot of Jackson up) and the album’s possibly unintentional leitmotif of Hammond organ, recalling Jimmy Smith on “Bad.”
My 2009 assumptions were most likely based on residual disappointment with the album’s lead single, i.e. the abovementioned title track. I looked up some notes I had written on the song years before and discovered dreary observations on the 1997 General Election and what I did that Thursday and Friday, with the song itself scarcely mentioned. “Blood On The Dance Floor” may have been trying too hard to be like Janet (especially those muttered grunts), and certainly didn’t begin to measure up to the ransacked glories of The Velvet Rope, but it was disappointing only in the way that other Jackson album lead singles such as “The Girl Is Mine,” “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” and “Black Or White” were disappointing. I had to learn that lesson over and over again.
Get past that song, however, and Blood is, well, bloody incredible. Eight remixes of songs from HIStory and five new songs, not in that order. As though to punish us for underestimating the record, Jackson immediately unleashed its most “extreme” moment. I don’t know that “Morphine” has much to do with Nine Inch Nails, even less with Morphine the band. Sonically and rhythmically it hits as hard as – well, “Rhythm Nation,” but in a lot of Lennon-y ways it takes us right back to the gestures of “No Bed For Beatle John” with its distantly echoing hospital nightmares of medical chatter, some of which derives from the film of The Elephant Man - If you know, you know (and I’m leaving the David Lynch commemorations to others).
Meanwhile, the song crunches on the glass of Slash’s lead guitar, and you’d trust Jackson’s “put all your trust in me” as firmly as you would have done Kaa the Jungle Book snake. That is until it abruptly re-presents as an orchestral interlude, as though Jackson has been in the “real world” all the time, although vague walkie-talkie voices attempt to penetrate the cushion of strings. The man looks at himself in the mirror and is baffled, if not astounded (“oh GOD he’s taking DEMEROL!”) – flashback to me on the ward eleven weeks ago (or near enough) after my anaesthetic block had worn off and my left shoulder and arm became intolerably painful (memories of hearing some godawful Susan Calman travelogue thing on Channel 5); I called out for, er, morphine over and over, but to little effect until the night nurse at one in the morning said I should really try dihydrocodeine and paracetamol instead as these would be much more helpful. So I did, and the pain…diminished! I was taking the “wrong” painkiller, but when you’re so desperate you require pethidine then you’ve voyaged somewhere outside of “right” and “wrong.”
If anything, this moment puts me more in mind of Sonny Bono’s dubiously-intentioned and finally absurd “Pammie’s On A Bummer” from 1967, a would-be anti-drug epic that begins with some rudimentary modal-bordering-on-free improvising (involving, amongst others, Mac Rebennack, hence it resembles some of the less outré elements of Dr John’s Babylon) before resolving in a godawful sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-Dylan plonking with appalling rhymes and worse singing which would be sufficient to set anyone on drugs for life (there barely exists a recognisable melody). My hospital experiences in 2018 were enough to put me OFF drugs for life. But Jackson manages to avoid the pseudo-morality trap – at least on this song – and with a decisive “OOOOOH!” which could express either hurt or triumph, he returns to “Morphine” improper, subverting “The Way You Make Me Feel” as he does so (“Go on, baby!,” “DO IT!”). He cares so passionately about not needing to care about anything anymore.
We do not really divert from such emotional extremism. “Superfly Sister” revisits this mysterious woman – not Billie Jean, but clearly derived from her – “Suzie” who appears determined to undermine and kill Michael Jackson (she is also the subject of the title track). Perhaps it’s short for “suicide.” In any event there’s no faulting the excellent production, over which MJ hiccups and hisses the Jehovah Witnesses’ handbook in defiance of this tawdry and unworthy thing called sex, and which Bryan Loren nicely underscores with a nagging four-note low-pitched synthesiser hook, pinches of eighties 808 settings and sampled saxophone burps like impatient car horns.
“Ghosts” (apparently written for the film Ghost; does anybody remember it actually being in there?) materialises with floats of synthesised choirs into which a harsh Vocoder endeavours to barge. Lena thought the harmonic background to the endless “And who gave you the right…?” accusations reminiscent of another “Ghosts,” the one composed by David Sylvian and recorded by Japan (and there’s no reason why MJ wouldn’t have heard Tin Drum at some point in his life), but I’m not so sure; the weighty melancholy of the harmonies do make me think of something else, but exactly what it reminds me of has thus far eluded me (suggestions are welcome – “Bird’s Lament” by Moondog, perhaps?). Anyway, Jackson howls about harassment and jealousy before realising that the ghost tormenting him is…himself. It plays like what turns out to be one of two sequels this album has to “Thriller”; at the end he sucks in his own breath, and the lid of (presumably) his coffin is shut very firmly indeed.
Even this doesn’t really prepare you for the draining epic that is “Am I Scary” (no question mark; it’s assumed), prepared for the singer by Jam and Lewis. It begins with a James Bond-type introduction before Jackson’s whoop more and more comes to resemble a hacking cough. The song’s early bow-tied solemnity carries hints of early ABC. A quite unexpected Picardy third comes to rest restlessly, then a swirling piano that is immediately reminiscent of Thom Bell’s orchestration for “Back Stabbers.” This in turn is succeeded by Jackson’s demand to “Let them all materialise!” which is answered by repeated hammering that leads us into a howling wind of a chorus – scarcely has Jackson sounded angrier – before settling back down to quiet piano, strings and oboe which are almost instantly subverted by electrical interference. Jackson’s fury is unabated and if anything escalates: “Am I the beast you visualised?” he nearly cackles in triumph. He is his own evil, you are the evil, he scares himself probably more than whatever is supposed to be scaring him scares him…
…and again and again the man meets with the mirror and finally collides with it, falling right through the KEY CHANGE and the TUBULAR BELLS, screaming “I don’t want to talk about it!” (immediately buried in an avalanche of confused and conflicting mutters), “You know, you’re scaring me too!” The song totters back down to a funereal piano finale – “Could It Be Black Magic?” and what is anyone to make of that adjective?
These are Blood On The Dance Floor’s five new songs, the most emotionally extreme songs Jackson ever dreamed up, performed with a naked intensity that might make In Utero seem like a tea party with Mr Rogers in comparison. And don’t talk to me about “soul” – Jackson’s vocals on “Morphine” and “Am I Scary” are as soulful as anything he ever recorded. Just not the reassuring soul that tends to be required by the smugly moneyed.
Now it’s time to dance. “THE BEST DANCE ALBUM IN HISTORY!” the cover cleverly bet-hedges, and we are presented with an octet of variations of HIStory songs as though they are being reflected back onto the world which its singer secretly hoped to have created some idle afternoon. Or something.
And what a dance album this is. If Michael Jackson had come back with this album in 1991 we’d have long been showering it in praise. Suddenly (and, I presume, eagerly), the man is thrust into a present-tense world of music and is abruptly, and quite unexpectedly, bang up-to-date. Jam and Lewis themselves helm the rebooting of “Scream”; they don’t need to change that much other than make the song more percussively buoyant but the quiet introduction (“West End Girls”) leading into a deafening slam, a pummelling rhythm and the whine of drone helicopters lead very nicely out of “Am I Scary”’s pendulous pit. Janet is still there, trying to convince her brother that he can’t beat Rhythm Nation (can anybody?).
Pete Heller and Terry Farley give “Money” a calming underhaul, with Dust Brothers/Beck-style simmering electric piano and a purposeful low-grade groove (purposely shadowing “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” to my ear) that includes another reference to “back stabbers” and a growl of “Get dirty” worthy of Lisa-Marie’s father. The Fugees crew do their typical thing on “2 Bad” with nuclear siren alerts and a finely filthy punch (“back to where I wanna be…doin’ wrong,” “You are disgusting me”). Jackson’s rhythmic nous is here is fully that of the second half of Off The Wall’s first side; he divebombs the funk and lands headlong into the world of...Big Beat! Who would've funk it?
But Todd Terry’s reshaping of “Stranger In Moscow” is just stupendously brilliant. No wonder the Pet Shop Boys liked the original, since this is exactly how Neil and Chris would have tackled it – the lament double-tempoed into a rave. The sublime Bacharachian harmonic transitions are more sharply accentuated by Terry’s beats, which boast the same mischievous poignancy that drew me to him back in the days of Royal House, Black Riot and To The Batmobile (in 1988 it was akin to listening to somebody who had just figured out how to dance and, to his surprise as much as anyone else’s, found that he was rather good at it – did somebody mention “Long Tall Glasses” in the background?). Terry’s achievement is to render what was already one of pop’s loneliest songs into an ironically graver meditation; the “icon” finding himself surrounded by tourists, living, laughing, loving, having fun (but now he’s all alone in MOSCOW LAND HIS ONLY HOME!) and realising that he is unutterably, and beyond any hope of redemption or indeed hope itself, sealed off from that world, probably forever.
Entombed in your own life-defying/denying body and everybody is having fun around you.
(Conversely, however, to those who continuously moan about why Jackson never did nice songs like "I Can't Help It" any more; well, not only did he still sing them, but he also wrote them. You simply chose not to bother listening.)
David Morales puts “This Time Around” through a loop and finds lots of workable things to do with it (his ten-minute “Mad Club Mix,” available on the 2-LP set of Blood On The Dance Floor, renders the workable wacky); Michael Jackson As Dave Pearce Dance Anthem has a winning sheen as a reinvention; it suits him.
As does the 3am (eternal) Michael Jackson of Hani’s reimagined “Earth Song,” which works fairly effectively as a late night/early morning ambient lounge chillout floor-dropper; there’s MJ at the bar in Ibiza, half the dancefloor’s gone home and he’s mumbling semi-coherently to himself about the end of the world as the remainder of the world swims right by him. The mood is something like “The Sun Setting” and there is no big choral climax; it’s just the thought of it being the end of something, chiefly Jackson himself – aren’t all the songs on HIStory really monologues, directed only at the singer?
But Frankie Knuckles’ take on “You Are Not Alone.” Now that is an act of past-camp genius. To take, assess and rework maybe the most problematic song in Jackson’s oeuvre (chiefly because of the now-imprisoned creep who wrote it) and convert it into a work of lustrous art is something only the true greats are able to manage (then again, what does MJ say towards the climax of “Morphine” – “Don’t worry, I won’t convert you”?).
As Madonna did with the Miami Mix of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” Knuckles (with Satoshie Tomeii) flings all the self-pity out of the pram and replaces it with a fuck-you-I’m-ME celebration of being alive. Yes, Badiou is not alone, and his burgers are the best (so much for “The Fascism Of The Potato”). Yet Knuckles turns the tune into a showstopping, high-kicking light entertainment classic with those lovely descending, diminished piano chords (and, again, that un-“Bad” organ, rematerializing as a beacon leading towards the light) you wish the song had always possessed. “You Are Not Alone” gets transferred to the type of ditty Bruce Forsyth or Marti Caine or even Val Doonican might have crooned of a Saturday televisual evening.
And its final triumph (of Jackson’s will) comes as the singer ecstatically yells, over and over, “GOTTA STOP LIVIN’ ALONE!” – well, of course, he was always singing that song to himself. Wrested back to the right (Gene! Grace!) Kelly. He realises the tomb can be irrupted.
The record peaks and closes with Tony Moran’s over(re)view of “HIStory,” as bots of Michael stutter “New force of a…” and “YOU ARE THE KINGDOM!” Moran leads Jackson into the wondrous land of…Faithless! and SASH!! (“I CAN’T! GET TO SLEEP!”) and the man in the mirror is now the mirrorballed man, in the heart of THE CLUB, still fighting with himself (“Can’t stop me/STOP me!,” “Keep movin’/DON’T keep movin’”). There’s a big campfire singalong about how we’ve all got to work together to keep everything going complete with a SAVE THE WORLD KEY CHANGE climax, some ceaseless and distant electronic burbles which made Lena think of Stereolab's "Fluorescences," and a real flag-waving euphoric finale to an album where the Worried Man works up the courage to fight off his ghosts, stare the mirror out and realises he was only made for dancing. It’s a remix of his life.
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