Why Invincible By Micheal Jackson Was "Doomed To Fail"

When you think of Michael Jackson, you usually think of his bigger albums first like Thriller and Bad. And if you are a little bit more knowledgeable about his discography, you might think about Off The Wall or Dangerous. But an album that most people don’t know about that MJ made is Invincible. Invincible is Michael Jackson’s 10th studio album and his 6th studio album made in his adulthood. Invincible was released on October 30th, 2001, the day before Halloween. However, compared to the stuff he released before, this album didn’t do too good. You may ask yourself why it didn’t do so well. I mean, the man’s Michael Jackson after all, so it should’ve done well. So I decided to research this issue to see why it “flopped”.

1.  Invincible’s Production costed over $30,000,000

Invincible was a very expensive album to make. Most albums from the time cost around $150,000-$500,000 to make. Invincible though, it cost over $30,000,000. You might be asking, why would he spend this much on one album? But for context, Michael Jackson was already spending a lot of money on his albums. Dangerous and HIStory cost around $10,000,000 each to make. So if you compare it to those two, Invincible cost three times the amount to make. The reason for such a high price tag is because the album took four years to produce. In fact, the lead single off the album (You Rock My World) was made in October 1999, while the single came out on August 22nd, 2001 (Funny enough, August 22nd is my birthday). He also worked on the album at multiple studios instead of just one. He worked on this album at eleven studios. He also had around seven to nine producers and worked with over 100 artists for this one album alone. He also recorded around 50 to 70 tracks before settling on the final 16 tracks. 

2.  There Was No World Tour

For most of the albums that he put out, he would do a world tour for them to promote the albums. That was how you promoted your album at the time. But unlike all the albums before it, there was none for Invincible. The question is why did he not tour? It is because of many reasons. First of all, Michael was in a public feud with Sony, so they weren’t gonna help him out. Secondly, 9/11 had just happened seven weeks before the album was released which changed everything which made a global undertaking way harder to achieve. Lastly, Michael decided he wanted to personally focus on family after a lot of burnout. Because at the time when Invincible released, Michael had two kids and was about to have a third one, so he was gonna have to stay home and raise them.

3.  The feud between Michael and Sony

Michael and Sony weren’t really best friends, in fact they nearly despised each other. The feud started over the rights for his master recordings and ownership stake issues. He even went as far as labeling Sony executive Tommy Mottola “devilish” and a racist who exploited black artists. So when you call someone you are working for things like that, leadership probably ain’t gonna treat you well. After the lead single “You Rock My World”, Sony pulled all advertising for the album and it is kinda hard for your albums to do numbers if no one knows about it. Sony was also accused of slowing down on restocks, causing people to not even be able to buy it. They also pulled a lot of funding for future singles, music videos, and of course marketing.

4.  The tracklist was “Overstuffed”

Critics said that the project was too long at 77 minutes and a 16 song tracklist. In 2001, the average album length at the time was 45 to 55 minutes for pop and rock albums. But Invincible was about 20 minutes longer than the average. Critics also said that the tracklist should have consisted of 12 songs instead of the 16 it had. At the time when this album was made, CDs could hold up to 80 minutes of audio and Michael liked filling them to their limit, which he did on Dangerous and HIStory. He was also an absolute perfectionist. Like I said earlier, there were around 50 to 70 tracks that he recorded and throwing almost all of it away would be a shame after all of the effort and money spent on it.

So Did It Really Flop? Kinda?

Commercially, it did pretty well. It debuted at #1 in 16 countries and has sold 6 to 10 million copies since release. So it didn’t really flop compared to albums that actually flop. But you must remember that these are Michael Jackson standards, not Yuno Miles standards, not MGK standards. Michael Jackson has some of the best selling albums of all time, Thriller has been estimated to have sold over 100,000,000 records. So it didn’t really fail.