One cannot argue the influence that Michael Jackson has had over the years on the pop world. During the '80s, with the releases of Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, it seemed no artist could come close to both the critical and commercial success that Jackson had. Songs such as Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough, Billie Jean and Beat It are eternally embedded in pop culture for all time, and who doesn't have at least one memory of getting down on a Saturday night at some club to at least one of the above songs?
Here we have the complete music video collection from Jackson's Dangerous album. The videos included are;
Black or White
Super Bowl Heal the World
Remember the Time
Will You Be There?
In the Closet
Gone Too Soon
Jam
Heal the World
Give in to Me
Who is it?
Dangerous
The album, released in 1991, garnered over seven top ten singles and went on to sell more than ten million copies worldwide. The first single, Black or White, was the biggest selling single of 1991 and received record ratings when it premiered on CBS that same year. All this makes for a great collection of videos and here we have them released on DVD in this fine document of the Dangerous album.
As well as the above mentioned music videos, numerous 'making of' segments are scattered throughout the disc which give insights into how each video was made, while the last chapter, entitled Dangerous, is actually the title track song played over highlights from the Dangerous world tour that took place in 1992 and 1993.
The majority of the videos are presented in the full screen 4:3 aspect ratio, with the exception of Remember the Time, Who Is It?, Will You Be There? and Jam which are presented in the 1:85 aspect ratio. The video quality varies greatly throughout the program, but remains consistant for the music videos themselves. The videos look a lot better than I thought they would - delivering sharp and detailed pictures with rich colours being displayed throughout, and without any noise or artefacting present. The TV segments leave a lot to be desired, with the Super Bowl performance looking like an old VHS copy of something that has been played one too many times. TV segments aside, this is a great looking release.
There are two soundtracks available on this release - a PCM 2.0 stereo and a 5.1 Dolby Digital track. The PCM track is encoded at the maximum 1536 Kbps, resulting in a very full and detailed stereo mix. The 5.1 mix is also encoded at the maximum 448Kbps and really gives both the surround and subwoofer channels a workout. I was very impressed by the detail and separation that the 5.1 mix produced. Music videos in my experience rarely produce a full soundscape, but here we get full use of all 5.1 channels which really adds to the enjoyment of each video.
This is one of the better music video compilation DVDs that I have heard.
Dangerous seemed to be the beginning of the end for Michael Jackson - as both critically and commercially he is yet to equal the dizzying heights of Thriller or Bad. Watching this compilation really makes you realise what a great album Dangerous was, and Jackson must be credited for being one of the very few artists to take the music video medium and push it to its limits. His mini-film epics like Remember the Time and Black or White are amazing music videos in their own right and really make the three minute fluffs that most record companies pump out today look very pale in comparison.
This is a great document of what may be Michael Jackson's last great album, and is great watching for both fans of Jackson and music-video lovers in general.
