Only one track uses bass guitar, which is “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”, and as always Nathan East offers a perfect supporting low end performance. The Bassists: Synth bass dominates here, with much of the work expertly handled by Greg Phillinganes. Michael and his band are on fire (no, not Coke-commercial fire), and the concert is a spectacular event, as the gang run through songs from every era of Michael’s career from early Jackson 5 hits to the then-current radio staples of Bad. The concert is filmed well, the audio is excellent thanks to the original multi-track recording of this show and the 5.1 audio version included in this release. The show was taped in July 1988, in the middle of MJ’s 16-month global tour in support of Bad. The real bonus of this deluxe set is the DVD concert at Wembley. Of course, what’s a dance mix without Pitbull these days, but to hear him on a 25 year-old Michael Jackson track is truly something else indeed. There are also three brand new remixes, the best of which is a “Bad” remix by AfroJack featuring Pitbull. These too are all written by Michael, but his songs like “Free”, “Abortion Papers” and “I’m So Blue”, had they been finished, probably would have been better choices than several of the songs that appear on the original. A nice surprise is the additional CD of bonus tracks, as we hear unreleased songs in various stages of completion that Jackson had been working on for possible inclusion on Bad. Sonically, the new Bad 25 offers a well-done remastered version of the original, yet for all it’s clarity and punch there is a still a rather dated quality to the heavy synth and drum machine arrangements.
It would seem Quincy took a backseat for this outing, perhaps understandably so considering MJ’s global explosion at the time, but artistically questionable in hindsight. Yes it did sell 8 million copies, and musically it certainly has its moments– “Man In The Mirror” (one of only two songs on Bad that Michael didn’t write) remains one of his best ever– one could argue that Michael could have sequeled Thriller with a CD of white noise and still reached platinum status.
Therefore, while Wall and Thriller featured a full six tunes written by Rod Temperton, and a bunch more by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Quincy Jones and others, that successful formula was all but missing on Bad, and the result was a fairly one-dimensional sounding album. What he failed to realize was that his previous writing worked so well because it was heard in full-album context with other songs written by some of the best in the business. For this dreadful stretch, everything is mechanical, and while the album rebounds with songs that prove mechanical can be tolerable if delivered with hooks and panache, it still makes Bad feel like an artifact of its time instead a piece of music that transcends it.Perhaps emboldened by the success of his own songwriting on Off The Wall and Thriller, Jackson seemed intent on writing the entire Bad album himself. Part of the joy of Off the Wall and Thriller was that craft was enhanced with tremendous songs, performances, and fresh, vivacious beats. And they constitute a near-fatal dead spot on the record - songs three through six, from "Speed Demon" to "Another Part of Me," a sequence that's utterly faceless, lacking memorable hooks and melodies, even when Stevie Wonder steps in for "Just Good Friends," relying on nothing but studiocraft. Then, there are the album tracks themselves, something that virtually didn't exist on Thriller but bog down Bad not just because they're bad, but because they reveal that Jackson's state of the art is not hip. Look at the singles: only three can stand alongside album tracks from its predecessor ("Bad," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "I Just Can't Stop Loving You"), another is simply OK ("Smooth Criminal"), with the other two showcasing Jackson at his worst (the saccharine "Man in the Mirror," the misogynistic "Dirty Diana"). For one thing, the material just isn't as good.
He wound up with a sleeker, slicker Thriller, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not a rousing success, either. This meant that he moved deeper into hard rock, deeper into schmaltzy adult contemporary, deeper into hard dance - essentially taking each portion of Thriller to an extreme, while increasing the quotient of immaculate studiocraft. The downside to a success like Thriller is that it's nearly impossible to follow, but Michael Jackson approached Bad much the same way he approached Thriller - take the basic formula of the predecessor, expand it slightly, and move it outward.