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Commercially, HIStory can't miss, though its hefty cost -- a list price of $32.98, which may be discounted by as much as $10 in some stores -- could be an impediment to megasales. Russ Solomon, head of Tower Records, asks, "What ordinary high school kid is going to shell out 25 bucks unless they want it awfully bad?" Still, early indications are good. Scream hit No. 5 on the Billboard singles chart in its first week-the highest debut for a single ever. Says Mike Shallet of SoundScan, which tracks music sales: "Naysayers are going to be surprised. There's an immense difference between consumer reaction to Michael Jackson and the press reaction."
There is also the endless fascination with Jackson -- a man turned inside out, his inner child on the outside, his adult self buried deep within. While recording part of the CD in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Jackson sneaked out for visits, in disguise, to the giant Mall of America. "He likes to see people," says producer Jam. "He would go to the mall at the busiest time, and I would ask him why, and he said, 'I want to go when it's jumping.'"
Yet Jackson is all grown up now -- married, with legal problems, moaning and groaning about the world like any bloke with a hard hat and a lunch bucket. During the recording sessions for HIStory, gospel singer Andrae Crouch, who appears with his choir on several tracks of the CD, took time out to pray for Jackson. Says Crouch: "My singers and I gathered around him and prayed that everything would settle and all the sparks would stop." The hype surrounding HIStory is more like a four-alarm fire, a marketing campaign that will blaze through Christmas 1996. Crouch should say a prayer for us all.
--Reported by Patrick E. Cole and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and Deborah Mitchell/Orlando