This is “Love Never Felt So Good” and by all reason, it shouldn’t be any good.
Seriously, a posthumous release from Michael Jackson, a great musician whose last few albums were floundering despite what you might consider memorable singles. And it’s accompanied by Justin Timberlake, a talented artist in his own right, who nonetheless borrows so much of his act from Michael Jackson that the whole thing feels redundant.
And yet “Love Never Felt So Good” feels like a lost track from Off the Wall-era MJ. That’s a great thing.
That album was the bridge between disco-era Jackson and pure pop Jackson who dominated the ’80s and ’90s. The sound in “Love Never Felt So Good” is way more danceable than later works from Jackson, who began to add R&B and rock elements to his music, which was a perfect fit for his typically very cinematic videos.
This video, directed by Timberlake and Rich Lee, isn’t any great shakes, though: mixing old video of Jackson projected on screens along with a multi-ethnic crowd of dancers pulling off some of his moves, it feels like a temp video before someone delivers the real thing. I guess the goal was to not draw focus away from Jacko? Jackson was a pioneer in music videos and I think I was kind of hoping for something a little more daring here.
XSCAPE, which is out this week, releases tracks from an incomplete album Jackson was working on prior to his death.
HT:Â Bullet Media
