Jacko may not be the voice on his ‘final songs’
THREE Michael Jackson songs released after his death may not have been sung by the King of Pop, Sony has admitted.
The music giant conceded it was unable to verify whether Breaking News, Monster and Keep Your Head Up, on Jackson’s 2010 posthumous album Michael, had anything to do with the late singer.
But although Sony says he “may not be the singer”, it still wants to sell the songs under his name.
Fan Vera Serova brought the original case to court, suggesting the songs, supposed to have been recorded by Jackson a year before his death at 50 in 2009, might be fraudulent.
Sony’s lawyers asked the Court of Appeal in Los Angeles for the case to be thrown out but the judge said what they were doing amounted to “ripping people off”.
Legal documents have said Sony Music and the Michael Jackson Estate “have conceded in trial court that Jackson may not have been the singer”.
The same documents said the songs were sold to Sony and the Jackson estate by producers Eddie Cascio and James Porte, who claimed that “Jackson recorded these songs in the basement of their house in 2007, without any witnesses”. But Ms Serova hired a forensic audiologist who concluded that they “very likely did not belong to Jackson”.
The producers have been named as defendants in Ms Serova’s class action lawsuit.
Jackson’s family, as well as former collaborators, first raised concerns in 2010 and Mr Cascio and Mr Porte were subsequently asked to provide evidence he was the true vocalist by way of handwritten lyrics, out-take vocals or even photos or videos of him recording the songs.
But they failed to provide any, claiming Jackson’s desire for privacy was behind the lack of evidence.
They said he did not want to be photographed in the studio and they had to delete originals of the vocals to make space on a computer hard drive.
They also suggested the vocals sounded so unusual on one of the songs because Jackson had sung them through a PVC pipe.
One of the two executors of the Jackson estate John McClain was reported to have sided with the singer’s family eight years ago in trying to block the songs’ release, but was apparently overruled.
Meanwhile a further nine songs bought from the same producers have yet to be released.