Michael Jackson danced with zombies in the video for “Thriller.” Now he returns, reanimated.

But “Michael,” the first full album of his posthumous songs, is not a great start, frankly. The album has just 10 songs and 42 minutes of music. Jackson had been working with hit-making producers like Rodney Jerkins, Lady Gaga’s collaborator Red One and Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas, but none of those tracks are on “Michael.”

The album doesn’t include “This Is It,” the song reconstituted for the 2009 documentary of the same title. Nor does it unveil the long-rumored “Thriller” outtake “Don’t Be Messin’ Around.”

What “Michael” does include is more reiteration than revelation. Nearly a year and a half after his death it comes across as a rush job.

“Michael” isn’t shy about exploiting morbid thoughts. The first words on the album are “This life don’t last forever,” in “Hold My Hand,” an Akon song that gives Jackson about a verse and a half before Akon takes over.

Yet recording technology defies the finality of death, and now there’s always the possibility of another remix, another arrangement.

Particularly for a musician like Jackson, whose solo albums were slowly and painstakingly worked over, posthumous releases occupy an eerie artistic limbo. They are treasured as new relics from a voice silenced forever. Yet they are also suspect because the artist cannot have the final say. Is this how Jackson would have released these songs had he lived? It is impossible to know.

That question hangs over all of “Michael,” which is the first full album in a seven-year deal between the Jackson estate and Sony Music, reportedly worth $250 million, to put out previously unreleased material, probably video as well as music.

“Michael” has already had one authenticity crisis. “Breaking News” was released before the album, and some Jackson family members immediately asserted the lead vocal was an imitation. Sony Music produced a rebuttal with statements from many producers and musicians who had worked with Jackson.

In “(I Like) The Way You Love Me,” the vocals are unquestionably by Jackson, who released a different version - “The Way You Love Me,” now described by Sony as a demo - as bait for collectors in the 2004 boxed set “The Ultimate Collection.”

“It was pretty finished,” said Jackson’s co-producer on the song, Theron (Neff-U) Feemster . “The only thing to do was to finish the arrangement on the song - what instruments would go in certain places, what percussion instruments, what sounds we wanted to add.”

In other words, Jackson’s archives are being treated as works in progress. “Michael” is far more a reconstruction and fabrication than a remix. Tracks were completed after his death by producers who had worked with him.

In some of the songs it’s clear the producers are eking out all they can from what recorded vocals Jackson left behind, stretching them with backup choirs, guests and cut-andpaste repetitions.

“Michael” includes three songs from a period of seclusion: four months in 2007 when Jackson and his family moved into the Bergen County, New Jersey, home of Dominic Cascio, a manager at the Helmsley Palace Hotel, and Jackson worked on songs with Mr. Cascio’s sons in their home studio.

Perhaps Jackson was homesick; he had Hollywood on his mind . “You give ‘em your all, they’re watching you fall, and they eat your soul,” he laments in “Monster,” which is punctuated by screams and breaking glass . The singer is besieged by invaders, including the news media , until a guest rap by 50 Cent flips terror into belligerence.

A lover’s affirmations sound desperate in “(I Can’t Make It) Another Day,” a rock song that Lenny Kravitz wrote for Jackson, recorded with him in the early 2000s and revised more recently.

There are also mementos of a younger Michael Jackson. The album’s delicate closing song, “Much Too Soon,” dates to the early-1980s sessions for “Thriller.” It’s an unexpected companion piece to “Best of Joy.”

According to Sony, “Best of Joy” was one of the last songs Jackson worked on. Its vocal arrangements are elaborate, yet the sound quality suggests it’s a demo . It’s more touching without the gloss. “The moment was there,” said Mr. Feemster, one of its producers.

Sony and the Jackson estate have two possible paths. They can serve up Jackson’s archives as he left them . Or they can continue what “Michael” has started, treating Jackson’s work as mere source material.

The real Michael Jackson died in 2009. His musical artifacts can still be resurrected.


JON PARELES
ESSAY