Off The Wall (MJ Part II)

9.2/10

Best Track:

Rock With You / It's The Falling In Love

Worst Track:

Girlfriend (Still a really great song, none the less)

(Continued from Part I)

MJ starts the album by quickly proving his worth. The two most famous songs off “Off The Wall” are packed up front, setting the stage for big expectations that are later, throughout the album, fulfilled. Jackson’s hushing and sexy vocals giving start to “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”, separate the man (“man”) from the little boy that sang “Ben” and “I want you back”, shaping the new sound that starts taking form on “Off the Wall” and matures completely on “Thriller”. With a swinging guitar riff and pulsing bass groove being supported by Jackson’s signature vocal grunts and scream “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” seems almost short, even though it tracks out at a surprising 6:06 minutes.

The following song not only doesn’t let the beat drop, but intensifies it in one of Jackson’s finest tunes ever. “Rock with You” mixes all styles of pre-eminent black music of the time, mixing R&B, soul, and funk, perfectly together. Granted, “Rock with You” reeks of Quincy Jones’ musical arrangement – the key synthesizers, groovy and languid backing vocals, and jazzy brass section arrangements would be the definite highlights of the track – if it weren’t for Jackson’s vocal range and incessant swing constantly stealing the show.

The following tracks, despite not having the star power of both “Rock with You” and “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”, simply can’t be deemed worse tracks. “Working Day and Night”, “Get on the Floor” and the title track “Off The Wall” all have inventive arrangements, with amazing bass lines and percussion sections. With Michael Jackson singing in front of the mic, and Quincy Jones coordinating the musicians behind him, they form a team that proved to be one of the most successful ever, not only in musical terms, but in financial and commercial terms as well.

Despite the slower songs of the CD, inevitably, taking the backseat to the faster up-tempo songs, they still have their charm. The Paul McCartney penned “Girlfriend” sounds like a foreshadowing of the fun and go-lucky songs Macca and MJ would wind up doing together later in the decade, and the Stevie Wonder penned “Can’t Help It” has a slow groove and harmonic chord progressions reminiscing to Wonder himself and his instrumental CD released in the same year “Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants”.

The CD’s finest moment, however, happens right after “Can’t Help It”, despite it also being one of the most under-rated MJ tracks ever. “It’s the falling in Love” shows a maturing Jackson delving further and further into his own brand of pop-funk. Not only “Falling in Love” have the arrangement staples of all the former tracks in “Off The Wall”; synthesizers, trumpets, bass lines, etc; it is a prime example of a great, traditional pop song, with contagious verses and a chorus that hooks you in, not to mention the electric guitar wails that sparkle the gem that is “Falling in Love”. “Falling in Love” gives way to “Burn this Disco Down”, which ends the CD on a funky, yet considerably less impacting, tone.

Despite this plethora of great and varied tracks, people tend to forget “Off the Wall”, which is, in Michael Jackson’s case, almost understandable, as he collects smash hits and amazing CDs the way I collect breaths or socks. None the less, “Off The Wall” stands as a landmark of pop music, solidifying the end of the Jackson 5, the start of the myth that turned Michael Jackson into the king of pop, and, as I said before, simply fucking great music.