Bad

Not a fan

The album title says enough. I just can’t stand Michael Jackson and his hoo-ha’s for more than two song on end, so no surprise the rating here. I hate Speed Demon and Liberian Girl and the ever-present 80s drum groove throughout the album drives me insane. I also never realised how awful Man In The Mirror actually is and the two songs that follow make up the worst three song run I have ever heard. The fact that I quite liked the first two songs cannot save this album, probably because after those the amount of Michael Jackson I can handle was exceeded. hee hee 1/5

Worse

Artiste connu et détesté, impossible d'y échapper à l'époque, le matraquage était insupportable. Dans l'album 'Thriller' le morceau 'Beat it' était plutôt sympa avec son riff et solo de guitare mémorable. Ici rien ne sauve l'album de la note minimale, même pas 'Dirty Diana' et sa guitare électrique malheureusement noyée dans les synthés. =>1/5

I always had problems with Michael Jackson. There was a lot of hype about him in my day. I always found his attitude a bit annoying. It got really gross and tacky when the subject of his desire to have children came up - barf -, this strange marriage with little Presley, which seemed like a fig leaf to cover his true desires - gag - and this rather creepy Neverland Farm. In the end, Jackson (also optical) almost seemed like a horror clown. The Earth Song was really disgusting, when the multimillionaire dances through the tidy streets of a favela with the objects of his desire and sings about the misery of the world. So I find Michael Jackson disgusting and I could never really get into his music. I always found his sharp cries annoying when he grabbed his balls while dancing. The squealing is also used a lot on this album. I like to switch off the radio from time to time. I really tried to listen to the whole album. At "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" it was over. I couldn't take it anymore. The best thing about the title song "Bad" is the parody "Fat" by Weird Al Yankovic. I really had fun with that. I only just found out that Jackson gave Yankovic permission to produce the parody and use the same setting. I wouldn't have believed him capable of so much humor. But maybe there was something else behind it. I suspect that "Fat" has also boosted sales of "Bad" again. Conclusion: For me, Bad is an unjustly hyped album that I definitely switch off the radio when it is played. 1/5

Over-polished pop. Not for me.

Sorry - No nonces. Pass. Got any Rolf Harris Albums? How about Gary Glitter?

Childmolester

Can’t do this

Is it morally okay to like Michael Jackson's music? Don't care, I despise it. I'll never understand why people like this so much.

1 Star. No joy. Overplayed. 2 death. Never liked this music. Sorry Michael, you deserve more respect.

Not my thing

It’s not bad. Minus 2 stars for questionable personal history.

No I’m not listening to MJ, at least not a whole album.

No.

BAD

I was 18 when this came out and into thrash meta. So I looked on the noncing King of Pop with disdain. In later years I've realised just how talented he was. Off the Wall is incredible. So in the spirit of this enterprise I did listen to this as an album. It's horrible. The electronic sound is plastic and grating. The bass is especially awful. The songs are surprisngly poor quality too. Bad could be a decent pop song but Michael's affected vocals ruin it, IMO. Smooth Criminal is the best song on here, but we've all heard better covers of it. I think it can still be done better, it's a top song. Dirty Diana is the only song that stands up, for me. If we remove the not insignificant issue of his personal life, it's still just a 2-3 star album. The songs are average (apart from Liberian Girl which should be wiped from the face of the earth and would remove stars from any album). And the production, weirdly, is incredibly dated. It's sad to look back and think he only got worse from this point on.

Pedoooooooooo

paedophiles get ones.

I hated the production and the hee-ing and woo-ing and screeching. I liked Dirty Diana.

At the start of the Spotify era, didn't we already knew most of what we now know about MJ? How does this have so many Spotify plays?

More ballady shite with shit drum sounds and his whisky voice and hiccups.

I bought this on tape cassette at the time. No idea why because it’s not very good.

No

No thanks

It’s really difficult to come at this with an open mind. I tried, but even the couple of times I absentmindedly started tapping my toes, it was only for a couple of seconds because I would remember who I was listening to. Those woos and eeheeeees and chh-chamonnnahs are ridiculous. Why did he do that? The synths and drum machine sounds exemplify everything I hate about 80s pop music. The love songs are trite and trying really hard to sound sexy. That style of love song always gives me the creeps, even without the context here. There’s a growing list of artists of all types whose art is no longer accessible to me because I can’t get past what they did. It’s impossible to view their lyrics, jokes, and movies through an untainted lens anymore. Even if he truly wasn’t a pedophile, he was definitely a guy with severe mental illness who had weird, creepy, ill-advised sleepovers with prepubescent children. All that said, Smooth Criminal is really hard to not like, even if I can’t fully enjoy it. And Thriller, depending on the mood I’m in when it comes up, may get a slightly more generous rating than this one, but Bad, in my opinion, is just not good or deserving of a list like this.

Sorry, I can't do MJ.

I just can’t separate the music from the man and his life here. I grew up with Jackson 5 and the rise of Michael Jackson. He was talented, yes, and he shaped or captured the essence of an era with this one, but I think of the totality of his music, the places he could have gone, and I’m just saddened for him and repulsed all at once. I generally skip his music when given a choice…

I remember lots of things from 1987. It was the year I finished school and went off to university; the year I worked in the US over the summer; the year it was Very Windy. I remember The Joshua Tree, Solitude Standing, Appetite for Destruction, Hold Your Fire, The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death, Cluthing at Straws, and even Hysteria. But I honestly wouldn't have placed this in 1987 - it seems earlier than that. Certainly no one I knew was playing it and it seems kinda dated in the context of the other albums produced that year. As I vaguely recall, this is Jackson in his crotch grabbing, staccato, most affected, whoa shouting period. Maybe moon walking - I don't know, this shite all merges into one really. I tried to listen to this. It might not be quite as bad as Thriller in total, but it gets repetitive with those "whoa!s" and so on, and I struggled to listen to any complete songs after the first couple. Maybe I just don't like Jackson. This is a 1 or 2 star album for me - I just don't like it I'm afraid and if you love it then I'm sorry; I'm sure you're right. Jackson being an utter twunt drops it to 1.

I swore I'd listen to every one of these 1000 albums, and some have tested me for sure, especially ones where i have a moral objection. Some of the best songs ever sang by one of the worst kinds of person, I can't separate music from life. Sorry. 1/5

First LP I ever owned as a kid. It definitely fell out of favor as I grew older. Not as good as Thriller. IMO, this album begins the decline of Michael as an artist. For a pop album it's alright.

Reading the top rated review, I waited in horror for 2:45 to come up. The dreaded unnoticed synth riff. ‘My God,’ I thought to myself as it played drearily on in the background. ‘This is bad.’ Little did I know, my horror had only just begun. For when I was reading through the personnel on Wikipedia, a familiar name stood out to me. No, surely not. But as my heart began to beat faster and faster, I knew I was not mistaken. For the name with which I was so acquainted was… Jimmy Smith! One of the great Jazz organ players, one of the greatest improvisers of all time, and they got him in to do 20 seconds of trite sounding rubbish on a badly programmed synth. There are three big problems with most of the songs on Bad. The first is that they go on for too damn long. The Way You Make Me Feel is a prime example. Jackson gets to the point where he’s ad-libbing, the point where the great Soul songs of the 60’s and 70’s would fade out, and the song goes on for another two fucking minutes! It’s fucking arrogance is what it is, oh of course you want to listen to two minutes of Jackson and the band cooking because he sold 32 million copies. The second problem is that they are often unintentionally hilarious. The best example comes from the very first line of the album. ‘Your butt is mine,’ is not a badass line. Instead it’s overtly homoerotic, and exhibits a clear misunderstanding of the sort of character that Jackson’s supposed to be portraying. What makes this EVEN MORE ironic is that there’s some pretty compelling evidence that Jackson was involved with the LA Crips! He was a gangster who couldn’t write gangster characters. Mario Puzo he ain’t. Liberian Girl’s Wikipedia page has a section about the reaction in Liberia whose only source is a Washington Post article that only let me read three paragraphs before sending me to a spam page, so please forgive me if I don’t think that it is the best argument to be made that ‘women from the country foun[d] the song empowering.’ I find this particularly hilarious considering the non-English vocals are sung by a South African woman in Swahili. If we were to put this into a European context, imagine a fabulously wealthy entertainer wrote a song called British Boy, and had an Italian bloke singing a few words in Russian. I’m not sure I’d feel particularly empowered by that. Just Good Friends is also hilarious. ‘Oh, I know she loves me, but if you ask her she’ll deny it.’ You’re either getting strung along, or cucked mate. This is not romantic. Also, it was the only song not released as a single anywhere. This is a running theme in Jackson’s albums, why release the album as an album in the first fucking place? What’s the point? But also, I feel bad for Stevie Wonder, just for his 80’s output in general, but specifically because the song that he duetted on was the ONLY ONE not released as a single. Damn, gotta feel bad man. The third problem with Bad is that is incredibly fucking boring. They are dreary sentimental ballads, they’re repetitive, they’re really annoying at times. Jackson’s vocal tics are so overdone that by the end of a full album in his company they become grating. My theory about Thriller and Bad and the reason why they’re so critically acclaimed is two fold. Nostalgia and circular thinking. Most of the people who have reviewed this positively have mentioned specifically fond memories of listening as children. They have good memories and so cannot think of it badly. I admit that I’m guilty of this as well, I wrote a whole thousand words justifying why I like an Arctic Monkeys album that I first listened to when I was 7. But I think that there’s something more interesting going on with the professional reviews. A fallacy of because it’s popular, it must be good, and therefore I must give it a good review. I think it’s popular, not because it’s good, but because it was well promoted. It sold well, because it was well promoted, and therefore it’s popularity must be justified. There are too many instances when critics get things wrong, when we tell the public they’re stupid for liking something, and for the most popular artist of all time, well we can’t let a large amount of the public think that we think they’re stupid. So what does this all add up to? Well in my opinion, a series of fantastically dull, gratingly long and hilariously underwritten slabs of dated 80’s cheese, that was, of course, the second highest selling album of all time at some point. I’ll never understand people. But, what I really wanted to do was to prove that there is stuff to be talked about on this album, and that the conversation can be more than just repeating that he was either the GOAT or a nonce. Those who don’t like his music can have reasons for disliking it other than his personal life. I’ve spent the full review outline quite a few of them. And you’re at perfect liberty to like the album if you do. But I’d love to know why you think he’s so good, why you think he’s worth having the best selling album of all time. Let’s have a conversation. Because that’s what being a critic is all about. P.S. Do you want to know what the real kicker is? I still like this album more than I like Thriller

This album is everything I hate about the 80s. Over-inflated ego of the lyrist. Bass replaced with synth. False depth. It's bad.

Not my style. Only like smooth criminal

bad. music: hated. (⌐■_■)

Poopoo

I’ve never purposefully listened to Michael Jackson, because I thought I’d hate it. Turns out I was right.

Ow gyashhhh what a confusion. I have really connected with some of these songs in the past like Man in the Mirror still even, but some of them just sound super creepy now I know more about Jacko's disgusting behaviour later in his life. Liberian girl I found really scary for some reason! I can't enjoy most of the songs any more and the ones I can enjoy are the more energetic poppy dancy songs like Bad etc but just ew it's not the same any more. Also thinking of where all of the money is still going for those listens I just gave it, to the complicit people hiding grim information...

I’m happy to live without the entirety of MJ’s catalog from here on out. Yes, the songs are often good (if not great). However, the accusations are unignorable and largely undisputed. No stars. Goodbye forever, MJ.

You know, I tried. I'm just not an MJ person.

The title says it all, this album is Bad in the real sense of the word. I'd never listen to this album by choice in the first place and found no enjoyment from it. It needs to stay in the past.

bad is right

Non quero oir un pederasta

Vile.

Nope.

Nope.

cero. le tengo manía y creo que trae mala suerte escucharlo.

Just plain horrible. This is my *first* album in this "one album a day" generator thing, and I can't believe I have to start with that cheesy so-called blockbuster filled to the brim with saccharine-tasting manure "Bad"? As in "Hey look how bad-ass I look"? Er... What? That cringefest of boring ballads and mid-temp snoozers? Really??? This is a record without a shred of true soul in it. And even if it's not "soul" you're looking for, there should always be something *human* in music. Or monstrous, on the contrary. Or extraordinary. Or humble. Unfortunately, Bad is none of those things. It tells nothing. It *is* nothing. One can argue that "Dirty Diana" is kind of arresting, or that, at least, it's an interesting track towards the end of the album, since that's the only song that expresses something even remotely heartfelt (as ugly as the feelings actually expressed against Diana Ross are). I guess that after all the dumb schmooze that precedes, the aggro atmosphere in that song is a welcome (bad) breath of fresh air, and that we can all be grateful for that last-minute addition somehow. Thank you Slash for that electric guitar. You might not be very alert yourself, but I guess a tiny drop of whiskey in all that kool-aid does have a semblance of... taste (even though the subtle rock intrusions in Thriller were far more compelling and smartly executed than this still quite clunky shit here). As for the bouncy, hectic and hiccupy "Smooth Criminal", it *is* a killer dancefloor track and an instant classic. It would be foolish arguing about that... But everything else is just lame. Synth basses sound hollow. Horns are an imitation of their synth conterparts. Same with backing vocals. And the writing (both the lyrics *and* the music) is just... irrelevant. If not downright annoying. Case(s) in point,: "Liberian Girl" and "Man On The Mirror". Lyrics, since we must also talk about them, are just ridiculous. And they're made all the more ridiculous by the unmusical and rigid way they are displayed in these songs (just as in almost every other track). Telling the world is in danger, Michael's inapt and disconnected choice of words are no comfort for us. "And-if-you-want-to-o-make-it... a-bet-ter-place", well, just please shut up, Michael, please. And let us die in peace, at least. Admittedly, Thriller's successor could have gone other ways, and you can almost suspect the ghost of more "interesting" work under the surface from time to time--even though "Bad", probably Jackson's worst lead single ever, tells the lamentable story of the album that bears its name from its very first obnoxious seconds. It's true that this single *does* have something catchy. But embarrassing stuff can *also* catch your attention, and never let it go, unfortunately. And if you can't even tolerate a lead single on those sorts of grand commercial pop albums, how on earth will you find any redeeming features after it? How? The true problem of the album however, is that it doesn't even hold "Bad"'s promise of at least having a somewhat awkward laugh. From "Speed Demon" (the *awfully clunky* voice placement and delivery on that one, jeeze!!!) to "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", this is an album almost exclusively made of boring *fillers*, which is sort of an extraordinary feat in itself. Reminds a little of a visit to the dentist's (that clinical white backdrop behind Michael on the cover speaks tons about the surgical atmosphere here!!!). But you're going there with a set of teeth already punctured by a record amount of cavities, so the drilling takes an age AND the next one. Plus, it's painful. *Very* painful. Bad indeed. [Why, oh why, couldn't I review "Thriller" first? Now *that* was a Michael Jackson album that deserved its commercial success, thanks to its sophisticated production and the quality of most of its pop songs. Hope that one comes up soon... Number of albums I listened to: 1 Albums left to listen to: 1000 Number of albums I've found genuinely relevant: 0 Number of different albums you should listen to before you die: 1 ]

Historisch aber gecancelt. Ich glaube Er war es

Just don't like his music

éclaté sa mère

mala la wea.

Yea it was ok