You know your party's a bust when the biggest celebrity in attendance is the lawyer who helped you beat a child-molestation rap. Michael Jackson held parties on both coasts, in Los Angeles and New York City, to celebrate the June 20 release of HIStory, Past, Present & Future-Book I, his new, epic, hubristic double CD. Both affairs were surprisingly luminary free; even Jackson skipped them. However, Johnnie Cochran, the savvy superlawyer who helped get the child-sex-abuse charges against Jackson settled out of court and who is now defending O.J. Simpson, did show up at the L.A. function, along with fellow attorney Carl Douglas. The pair circulated fabulously and posed for photos with partygoers, who were mostly record-industry types and members of the press. "When those guys walked in," said an attendee, "they were treated like our biggest rock-'n'-roll stars."
Of course, practically everybody is a kind of rock star these days, from genuinely heroic pilots in Bosnia to spaced-out houseguests of celebrities charged with murder. And guess who's angriest about the Hard Copy turn the world has taken? That's right-Jackson, the man who brought show-biz hype into the mtv age; the megastar who, along with his wife Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson, will grant an audience to Diane Sawyer on this week's PrimeTime Live; the guy whose shameless promotional short for his new CD features him leading goose-stepping Soviet-bloc-style soldiers in a Leni Riefenstahl-like tribute to his own power and glory.
Yes, the main message of Jackson's new CD is, to quote from the first single, Scream, "The whole system sucks." Will any of his millions of fans notice the irony? "His whole self-aggrandizing stance seems inappropriate, considering what's gone down," says a record-industry insider, whose company is part of the album's multimillion-dollar promotional crusade. "But people have short memories; if the music's there, people will probably respond."
So is HIStory any good? In a way, the Iron Curtain motif of Jackson's ad campaign is on target. HIStory is a lot like communism-out of vogue but still capable of getting large masses of people excited. HIStory's first CD contains digitally remastered versions of some of Jackson's greatest hits, including such classics as Rock with You and Beat It. The second CD has 15 new songs, featuring plenty of guest performers (basketball star Shaquille O'Neal has a rap cameo on the song 2Bad, and sister Janet duets with Michael on Scream) and guest producers (including R. Kelly, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis). The result is that HIStory is full of musical ideas but feels too bureaucratic and lacks a strong, sure vision.
Still, individual songs shine. The hip-hopping Money features sly, smart vocals by Jackson and an aggressive, gnarled beat, aptly capturing the sensation of being strangled by consumerism. And although the media-bashing Tabloid Junkie might strike some as self-serving, the song is still cutting and catchy. Also, Shaq's mini-rap flows well. "Any time you get the chance to work with a legend," says O'Neal, who actually worked with an engineer, not with Jackson, "you don't pass on it."