Album Review: Michael Jackson - Dangerous (1991)

I was big on the music of Michael Jackson since the mid-late 1980s, when I was very young.  In fact, "big" is probably the wrong word to use - "fanatic" is perhaps more appropriate, and it's a label you could've used to describe a great number of people back in those days.  I mean, Michael Jackson was HUGE.  And even when he was seemingly put on the back burner, not forgetting of course, the molestation scandals that dragged him back into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, he was still pretty damn big.  The scandals made a mockery of his public image, and he was of course the butt of numerous jokes for many years.  But it took his death for the world to snap out of it and really appreciate the unparalleled musical genius that he was, and that his loss was a significant one, not just for popular music or popular culture, but perhaps also for the history of humankind.  But even when his popularity was supposedly waning, he still had the magic.  Dangerous was released when it seemed his career had reached an impasse, and it was still as brilliant as his previous works.  There's plenty of great songs on this album, fillers are well and truly far and few between here, and that's what I like.  Much of the raw emotion and passion from the previous album is on here, "Jam", "Give In To Me" and "She Drives Me Wild" all resonate with that energy that made his stage presence so powerful and so enamoring.  Of course there was the "softer" side of Jackson - "Heal The World" comes to mind here, and even though it's a song I wouldn't play on the daily, I still find myself going back to it once in a blue moon, albeit, perhaps, merely for the sake of reflection and reminiscence. Everybody will know doubt know about "Remember the Time" and "Black or White" too, but I care little for them.  There's the rest of the album to be savored.  A