Invincible has its moment. I really like "Break of Dawn" "Butterflies" and "Dont Walk Away"
Even the commercialized "You Rock My World" was great despite being somewhat of a rehash of his older tunes.
I completely agree. Invincible has some amazing tracks. The ones you mentioned along with "Whatever Happens" are all awesome songs that I love. It's just to me all the previous albums are the best albums ever made and Invincible just has some great tracks, and some mediocre tracks. It has nothing to do with his talent diminishing though, like I said the Ultimate Collection songs that were made in 2004 are amazing and the unreleased Invincible songs that have leaked have all been great.
Ouch, my ears. Was kinda liking it up to the vocals, but when introduced it's jarring and sounds misplaced.
Maybe there'll be a few gem tracks on release, like Invincible. Can't say I'm a big fan of his later work in general though.
Don't judge this based on the shitty Timbaland contemporary version. Wait for the full album to come out since we will get Michael's most completed demos of all the tracks on the bonus disc. No tampering, just how the genius left the songs.
If you want an example of why contemporarizing music is bad, listen to the 2010 song "Hollywood Tonight" versus Michael's 1999 demo that leaked a few weeks ago. The music and production on Michael's demo is brilliant and sonicly interesting, his vocals are better for being not auto-tuned, and the song becomes about someone going to Hollywood with false dreams and being taken advantage of, "Casting Couch" and all. The Estate felt the need to remove this from the album. As Michael says in the original "She's giving hot tricks to men to get in, they're told that she's not clean, she's only fifteen!".
These songs were already produced anyways and don't need a producer and don't need to be reworked to sound like modern music. I am so glad we are getting the demos of each track. I don't need Timbaland's generic movie trailer strings version of Slave To The Rhythm, which is supposed to be a rock track.
Michael's composing and arranging skills, and general ear for melody doesn't compare with any of these modern talents.