Avid listeners of Michael Jackson may have noticed that three songs from his 2010 album Michael are no longer available on streaming services, amid allegations the ‘King of Pop’ didn’t actually sing them.
Specifically, the tracks ‘Keep Your Head Up’, ‘Breaking News’ and ‘Monster’, which features 50 Cent, have all been pulled from the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, reducing the 10-track album down to seven. The tracks are available on some fan and other channels, however.
The move comes amidst an ongoing legal dispute involving Jackson’s Estate and Sony Music, which was filed by a fan of the singer, Vera Serova, in 2014, who alleged that Jackson never sang on the three songs in question.
As a result, Serova filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony and the estate for violation of consumer laws, unfair competition, and fraud.
However, since the tracks were removed from streaming platforms, a spokesperson for Jackson’s website has said the decision “had nothing to do with their authenticity.”
Instead, they added, “The Estate and Sony Music believe the continuing conversation about the tracks is distracting the fan community and casual Michael Jackson listeners from focusing their attention where it should be, on Michael’s legendary and deep music catalog.”
After the case was filed by Serova in 2014, the situation resurfaced into the public limelight in 2018, after the estate and Sony were forced to issue a statement denying that the latter had conceded that Jackson didn’t sing on the three tracks.
In the lawsuit, Serova claimed that tracks were part of an “elaborate artistic fraud masterminded by co-defendants Eddie Cascio and James Porte,” who sold the tracks, also known as the ‘Cascio tracks,’ to Jackson’s estate for millions of dollars following his death in 2009.
Serova wasn’t alone, either. In 2010, the late pop star’s mother, Katherine Jackson, also said she believed the songs were “fake”, whilst his sister LaToya Jackson also said, “It doesn’t sound like him”.
“I know my uncle’s voice, and something’s seriously wrong when you have immediate family saying it’s not him,” she added.
Sony and the Jackson Estate were cleared in 2018, however, and won at appeal stage in 2020. The suit is currently in the California Supreme Court, whilst the tracks remain nowhere to be found on the major streaming platforms.
