Voice on album isn’t Michael Jackson’s, daughter reportedly says
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A video that allegedly shows Paris Jackson questioning the authenticity of her late father’s vocals on the King of Pop’s posthumous album “Michael” is reportedly being shopped around to various media outlets, according to TMZ.The video was supposedly taken from an online video chat with Paris and several friends in 2010, before the disc was released. Jackson died in June 2009. During the chat, Paris allegedly played one of the songs from the disc, the Akon-produced “Hold My Hand,” when one of her friends asked the 13-year-old if it was really her father.
“It’s not him ... the whole album isn’t even him!! Go online ... go on YouTube and look up Jason Malachi. That’s him,” Paris Jackson says, according to TMZ. “I should know if it’s him or not because he would sing to me all the time.”
Jackson’s reported comment will surely reignite claims that “Michael” was largely completed by Malachi, a well-known MJ sound-alike. When Sony released the first offering from the disc, a jarring kiss-off to the tabloids that preyed on his eccentricities called “Breaking News,” the song was immediately met with controversy from fans debating just how much of Jackson they were hearing on the track.
It was reported that the singer’s children and his own mother, Katherine Jackson, had questioned the authenticity of his voice on a number of tracks, including “Breaking News,” which Michael Jackson reportedly recorded in 2007 at a friend’s New Jersey home.
Sony Records released a statement saying it had “complete confidence in the results of our extensive research as well as the accounts of those who were in the studio with Michael that the vocals on the new album are his own.”
TJ Jackson, the son of Jackson’s brother Tito, took to Twitter to argue that the song was a sham and that fans should be wary.
“There’s many MJ vocal impersonators. Some better than others. But there is only ONE Michael Jackson. Deceptively merging shady vocals with MJ samples (from prior MJ records) will never fool me,” he tweeted after the song’s release.
Sony Records and Jackson’s estate continued to deny the claims and said the songs were newly completed recordings from the legend’s vast unreleased archives.
“Unbeknownst to many fans around the world, [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,” read a statement regarding the album’s release. “Now, through the unique stories that will be told about the songs that comprise ‘Michael,’ fans will get mind-blowing insight into how this artist worked and a chance to hear the songs he most recently created along with tracks that Michael had a desire to bring to fruition.”’
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-- Gerrick D. Kennedy
