Rockwell 'Somebody's Watching Me'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

You wait all this time for a Michael Jackson appearance and then there are two on the same album... For yes it is him singing the chorus, and cynical voices have suggested that this record wouldn't have been the hit it was without this; certainly no other Rockwell singles reached the Top 75 in the UK, although he managed to scrape the US Top 40 with 'Obscene Phone Caller' and the Top 100 with a cover version of 'Taxman', which seems like a fair summary of his lyrical agenda: paranoia and a difficult relationship with the IRS.

The other fact everyone knows about Rockwell is that his father owned the record company. Many sources claim that Berry Gordy didn't find out his true identity until after the album came out, which I've never entirely believed, especially considering the effort it must have taken to call in the big guests and producers for this, and the fact that, let's face it, he can't really sing or anything. There's enough money thrown at this to give it some entertainment value, and that's probably why it turns up regularly on Halloween compilations alongside Ray Parker Jr. But it's in no way an actual good record.

Incidentally, this is the third Motown track on Now 4, three more than I can see on the previous volumes put together; they must have taken some persuading because this was a hit in February nearer the time of Now II. Motown's biggest single of 1984 is still absent, but perhaps we should be grateful for small mercies.

Available on: True Motown / Spectrum 3 CD Set

Michael Jackson 'Farewell My Summer Love'

Chart Peak: 7

YouTube

You might have heard of this guy before. This is in fact his only fully-fledged appearance in the entire Now series (though he has a couple of cameos elsewhere). Even so, you'll notice, this isn't exactly current material from the man who was surely the biggest star in the world at the time.

In response to the overwhelming success of the Now albums, rival labels CBS and WEA teamed up to create The Hits Album (or, if you preferred cassettes, The Hits Tape) boasting two discs of tracks from their own catalogues including 'Thriller' (which had actually been a hit in late 1983 but we can overlook that). Now 4 manages to be simultaneously more and less topical with this unreleased track from 1973, dug up and overdubbed by Motown as part of a full album of barrel-scraping. Whilst this is unlikely to have been the main deciding factor, it did turn out that The Hits Album won the battle if not the war, spending seven weeks at the top and making Now 4 the only album in the official series not to top the chart before compilations were excluded in January 1989 (subsequent volumes have all topped the compilation chart, typically outselling the top artist album).

Of course, there was and is plenty of demand for even discarded Jackson material, as proved by the success of this single; indeed a previous Motown cash-in had broght him his first UK Number One with 'One Day In Your Life'. And even in recent months we've seen the ballyhoo about 'This Is It', a track he'd already already recorded his contribution to by 1984; in that case, though, Sony couldn't bring themselves even to release the track as a single, still less allow it onto a Now Album. In truth, this isn't a bad record, but there's something quite incongruous about hearing a 15-year-old Michael singing an appropriately teenage song with such a very eighties session-musician backing. That it succeeds at all is a testament to the voice he had but I suspect that were I a Jackson fan, I'd be disappointed that this was the only time I got to write about him.


Available on: Hello World - The Motown Solo Collection