Editor’s Note: By our name alone, one can easily deduce what we’re all about here at Albumism. Indeed, we celebrate albums of all stripes, all genres, all time periods, and all formats. With one exception, that is.

If there’s one type of album that we’re not particularly fond of, it’s those massively popular “Greatest Hits” and “Best Of” compilations. In our experience, most of them are dubious propositions, necessary evils to some extent. But we get it. Not everyone has the appetite or the financial wherewithal to seek out and stock up on the multiple entries that span an artist’s studio discography. It’s a helluva lot easier—and we suppose less risky for many—to simply skip the time-consuming exploratory work, in favor of embracing one consolidated sequence of an artist’s most successful or important songs.

The problem with this, however, is that these so-called perfect encapsulations of an artist’s recorded repertoire are invariably imperfect and incomplete, with plenty of gaps to be found in their track listings. Hence why we’ve decided to identify five worthy songs that were conspicuously left off the final running order of familiar hits packages. Our hope in shining a light on this quintet of songs is that it may prompt at least a few hits collection junkies to dig just a bit deeper and discover even more to love about the artists in question.

So without further ado, check out Chris Lacy’s picks for five deserving songs missing from ‘The Essential Michael Jackson’ (2005) below, and let us know which songs you would have added to the final track list via the comments section at bottom.

EXPLORE previous ‘Mind The Gaps’ features here

Michael Jackson | The Essential Michael Jackson
Epic/Legacy/Sony BMG (2005)

Official Track Listing:

Five Great Songs Missing from The Essential Michael Jackson:

“Working Day and Night”
Off the Wall (1979)

One of the fascinating parts of Jackson’s work was the way he turned his torture into music that made the whole world dance. Like many of his beloved classics, “Working Day and Night” starts with the groove. The song’s irresistible funk, jazz, and West African rhythms swell with a sense of racial pride and will rupture your speakers if you play it loudly enough.

Jackson worries that a life of constant work is unfulfilling and damaging to his relationship. “You say that workin’ / Is what a man’s supposed to do / And I say it ain’t right / If I can’t give sweet love to you,” he sings. “How can you live girl / ‘Cause love for us was meant to be / Then you must be seein’ / Some other guy instead of me.”

By the time Off the Wall arrived in record stores, MJ was already a master of pop entertainment. And whenever he brought “Working Day and Night” to the concert stage, my good friend Jehan from The Music Snobs said it best: “He wanted to be Barnum & Bailey. They should want to be him.”

“This Place Hotel (a.k.a. Heartbreak Hotel)”
The Jacksons’ Triumph (1980)

As the old saying goes, “misery loves company.” Well, if Billie Jean, Dirty Diana, and Susie (from “Blood on the Dance Floor”) all wanted the sauce, then “Heartbreak Hotel” had the recipe. The future King of Pop describes a hotel run by wicked women who break up happy couples. “Hope is dead / She thought that I had cheated for another lover,” he sings over the song’s rock-solid yet sweetly shuffling beat. “I turn my back to see that I am undercover / Now I can’t convince this girl there ain’t no other.”

The song rose to #2 on the R&B charts, but not everyone was happy about Jackson coming out with a scorchingly bitter song toward the opposite sex. “If this song, and later ‘Billie Jean,’ seemed to cast women in an unfavorable light, it was not meant to be taken as a personal statement,” he explained in his 1988 book, Moonwalk. “I just think that when sex is used as a form of blackmail or power, it’s a repugnant use of one of God’s gifts.”

“Scream” (Duet with Janet Jackson)
HIStory: Past, Present, and Future, Book I (1995)

After being accused of child sexual abuse in 1993, people wondered how Michael would respond. He (with the help of his baby sister, Janet) answered in the best way he knew how: through his music. Equal parts new jack funk and industrial rock, “Scream” fires a middle finger at the tabloids with the force of a blowtorch: “Tired of injustice / Tired of the schemes / The lies are disgusting / So what does it mean / Kicking me down / I got to get up / As jacked as it sounds / The whole system sucks.”

In a 2015 Rolling Stone interview, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis discussed what it was like to record the soft-spoken King of Pop for the first time. “He’s a whole different person, stomping, clapping, he’s got jewelry jingling—all the stuff you’re not supposed to do in the studio,” Jimmy Jam explained. “Me and Terry are sitting there going like, ‘Oh my God!’ [Terry adds, “Screaming like fans.”] He totally nails the song from start to finish. Janet leans in and goes, ‘I’ll do my vocal in Minneapolis.’ She wanted no part of following that. I don’t blame her.”

“Is It Scary”
Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix (1997)

Dating back to the late 1980s, Jackson was a piñata to the press. In some cases, he toyed with them, and other times, he felt like a victim. Either way, he believed the world didn’t see him for who he was.

“Is It Scary” spews venom at the media and the naïve public for what he saw as unfair criticism. “Am I amusing you / Or just confusing you / Am I the beast you visualized… I’m gonna be / Exactly what you gonna see / So did you come to me / To see your fantasies / Performed before your very eyes.”

Jam and Lewis give Michael room to vent with an operatic goth-soul backdrop. It sounds like the soundtrack to a vampire nightclub, played deep in the night while ghouls float above the shadowy dance floor, lightning flickering overhead.

Yes, it’s weird hearing Jackson sound more like Marilyn Manson than the Jackson Five prodigy he once was. But songs like “Is It Scary” allow us to watch the biggest pop star in the world face his inner demons, not run from them.

“Whatever Happens”
Invincible (2001)

Music fan or not, you’ve probably seen or heard people debate about who’s better: Michael Jackson or Prince? While I believe we can enjoy one without tearing down the other, it’s time to put one misguided myth to rest: “Michael was afraid to take chances with his art.” Allow me to present Exhibit A: “Whatever Happens.”

Nothing else in his catalog sounds remotely like it. The song begins with rock legend Carlos Santana whistling over spaghetti Western guitar lines. Next comes a Latin pop rhythm that sets the stage for a story about the birth of an unplanned child. “Everything will be alright, he assures her / But she doesn’t hear a word that he says / Preoccupied, she’s afraid / Afraid that what they’re doing is not right.” It’s a situation many people who’ve been in relationships can understand. You feel helpless and numb inside when someone you love is carrying a burden that didn’t exist before you met them.

Anybody that says Jackson is all style and no substance either isn’t listening or doesn’t care. “Whatever Happens” is a forgotten classic and deserves its place amongst his very best work.

LISTEN: