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Michael Jackson’s Estate Is Secretly “Reworking” Songs for Future Release

The Michael Jackson estate is plotting a new project, which will feature a “reworking” of “a batch of tracks alongside a high-profile producer the estate wants to keep secret for a one-off release,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The potential project would likely be a collaboration with Sony Music. Sony Music representatives were also interviewed in the same LA Times article, which was centered around the new “Michael Jackson: On the Wall” exhibit at London’s National Portrait Gallery. The company’s Chief Executive, Rob Stringer, said the label is “constantly scouring the catalog for ideas, but there are no plans at the moment to put any more full-fledged albums out. We are looking at one-off songs, and in this streaming world that works because it’s a track-based world. There are a few gems out there that we may unearth individually over the next months and years.”

“We’ve done a lot of big idea projects and things aimed to attract new fans,” co-executor of Jackson’s estate John Branca told the paper. “Michael was so multifaceted and in trying to manage the brand we want to do things that capture each facet of who he was. But we start by thinking: What would Michael do?”

Recently, controversy and erroneous reports arose after a court hearing which addressed a fan’s accusation that Sony Music had included four tracks featuring a Michael Jackson impersonator on the 2010 posthumous album Michael. Currently, there has been no ruling on whether or not any of Jackson’s vocals on that album are fake. In 2014, Sony also released the posthumous LP Xscape. Since Jackson’s death, the label has also released last year’s Halloween-inspired Scream and the 2011 remix album Immortal, which formed the soundtrack for  Cirque du Soleil’s Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour production, among other projects. Drake’s recent album Scorpion of this year features a song, “Don’t Matter to Me,” which is based around a previously unreleased Michael Jackson demo that Jackson did with Paul Anka in 1983.