On Remember the Time, he is soft and teasing, ruthlessly manipulating his former paramour, before unleashing ferocious passion at the climax. In its mechanic complexity and tautly funky precision, it mirrors and amplifies Jackson's corporeal and vocal exactitude it also reflects Jackson's fascination with the robotic that imperceptibly crept into his dance moves and continued in his Moonwalker film. Produced mostly by Teddy Riley, the tracks are fiendishly intricate, loaded with scratching, multiple layers of drum programming, and shiny smashes of hyper-artificial brass. The reality is that Dangerous is Jackson at the very peak of his powers, with his widest ever emotional range set to production that makes new jack swing seem much more than just lame dance moves and fluorescent man-made fibres.
My own has inevitably (and nostalgically) honed in on Dangerous, and one thing is objectively clear: this album rules.Īs its initial release dovetailed with the Jordan Chandler allegations, the album is now falling neatly into an accepted narrative – that it's part of Jackson's decline, both artistically and personally.
Looking at the sales figures, it's clear that everyone's currently on a Jacko reappreciation binge. What was that dog in ermine robes about? Was In the Closet about literally keeping something in a closet? All that was certain was that Macaulay Culkin, in being allowed a spoken-word intro to Black Or White, as well as starring in Home Alone 2, was the luckiest kid alive. Michael Jackson's Dangerous was the first album I ever owned, a cassette copy that I pored over like the Rosetta Stone.