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Jackson Was Working On Two Albums
2-Jul-2009
Written by: Stephanie DeLuca
Besides working on his much anticipated tour, Jackson had two albums in the works.
Michael Jackson was working hard on perfecting his 50 city “This Is It” tour in London. However, was this really it for Jackson? Billboard reported the “King of Pop” was working on two albums at the time of his death.
According to Billboard, one of the singer’s albums was supposed to be his usual pop album and the other would consist of an instrumental classical composition.
Songwriter Claude Kelly and Akon were working on the albums with Jackson. Knowing that Jackson still had fans motivated him to work even harder on his music.
"He said, 'My fans are still there. They still love me. They're alive,'" Akon told Billboard. "His kids are like his first priority, and they had never seen him perform live. He was trying to create the most incredible show for his kids."
Kelly, who wrote the Akon-Jackson track, “Hold My Hand,” said Jackson was always inspired to write more music.
"He was the ‘King of Pop,’ the biggest to ever do it, and the one thing you never lose—whether known by the whole world or just 10 people—is your love for music," Kelly told Billboard. "That never goes away, and it never went away for him amidst his troubles."
Billboard also reported that Jackson wanted to collaborate with composer David Frank Michael, who had worked with Jackson on a tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. in 1989, to work on an instrumental album.
“He had two demos of two pieces he'd written, but they weren't complete," said Frank. "For one of them, he had a whole section of it done in his head. He had not recorded it. He hummed it to me as I sat at the keyboard in his pool house and we figured out the chords—I guess this recording I made is the only copy that exists of this music."
Jackson told Frank he wanted to record more music as well as a jazz piece.
"I hope one day his family will decide to record this music as a tribute and show the world the depth of his artistry," said Frank.
Greg Phillinganes, a keyboardist who collaborated with Jackson on his “Bad” tour, said Jackson was a perfectionist and lived up to everyone’s expectations.
"It was the biggest comeback of his career, arguably the biggest comeback in pop music—even bigger than Elvis," said Phillinganes. "So obviously he'd want to do the best he could. He never did anything half-assed, which is what originally got him to the stature he had."
According to NBC, on Jackson’s last interview on Access Hollywood in 2006 he mentioned he will be recording music with Black Eyed Peas member Will.I.Am. Jackson had held onto these recordings.
“He had all the hard drives because I didn’t want to be responsible for that,” Will.i.am said. “It’s one thing to lose a Black Eyed Peas hard drive. I move around a lot and to make songs with Michael Jackson and risk me losing that music, I didn’t want that responsibility. So he kept all the stuff that we worked on.”
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