The first posthumous album from Michael Jackson, Michael, will arrive in stores on December 14. According to a press release announcing the disc's impending release, the first single, "Breaking News," is a never-before-heard track recorded by the late pop icon in 2007 and recently finished by the album's producers. The song will be streaming in full on Jackson's official website beginning on Monday (November 8), and the stream will be live for one week.
"The creative process never stopped for the King of Pop, who was always planning for his next album; unbeknownst to many fans around the world, Michael Jackson was writing and recording songs continuously everywhere from a friend's home in New Jersey to studios in Las Vegas and Los Angeles with a small group of handpicked collaborators," the release read.
The album's cover, an oil painting by Kadir Nelson, is a montage of classic MJ images — among them are Jackson's hands-in-tuxedo-pants-pockets pose from the cover of Off the Wall, Jackson wearing his "Billie Jean" outfit and a somber, Renaissance-like image of Jackson in royal gold and burgundy vestments with a golden crown hovering over his head.
Jackson's first album of new music since 2001's Invincible comes more than a year after his shocking death at age 50.
In collaboration with the Estate of Michael Jackson, Epic/Legacy Recordings is releasing Michael Jackson's Vision on November 22, making available for the first time ever the entire library of short films produced by Michael Jackson during his career as a solo artist.
Packaged as a deluxe boxed set, Michael Jackson's Vision contains more than four-and-one-half hours of content across three DVDs, capturing the entire spectrum of Michael’s pioneering short films that transformed the entertainment industry with timeless, pop culture classics that today’s youth embrace with as much passion as their parents did a generation earlier.
Michael Jackson's Vision brings together more than 40 videos, ten of them previously unavailable on DVD and each presented in newly restored color and remastered audio. And this release marks the debut of the short film for the R. Kelly-penned "One More Chance."
The simultaneous emergence of MTV as a television force and Michael Jackson’s breakout as a global superstar provided the most epochal musical/cultural shift since the Beatles. Seizing the potential of MTV's 24-hour reach, Michael Jackson produced and starred in a series of what would become iconic short musical films that redefined and established the perimeters, and parameters, of an entire new medium.
Jackson's short-form zombie dance party masterpiece, "Thriller," famously directed by John Landis, remains a cultural phenomenon. It recently became the first (and only) music video to be inducted by the Library of Congress into the National Film Registry, an elite collection of only a few hundred films.
Michael Jackson's Vision includes the full-length versions of the John Landis-directed "Thriller" and “Black or White” as well as the classic “Bad” directed by Academy Award ®-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Also included in the boxed set are Michael’s collaborations with such other noted film directors as John Singleton, Spike Lee and David Fincher as well as “Ghosts,” his rarely-seen collaboration with special effects legend Stan Winston.
Michael Jackson's Vision will be available in a limited edition deluxe boxed set featuring a 60-page glossy hard-bound book that includes behind-the-scenes photos from Michael's personal archives.
The state-of-the-art packaging includes cover art using lenticular virtual imaging technology to vividly represent memorable scenes from Michael Jackson's signature short films.