Way back in the days when the planet was wrapped up in the phenomenon of Thriller, I remember walking through the aisles of Kmart and discovering an album in the bargain cassettes – a self-titled offering from The Jacksons. This was a time when it was almost required to own anything and everything that Michael Jackson had been a part of. I don’t quite know what I expected from this tape, but it got a few cursory listens… and then found the nether regions of my room.
The truth was that, in 1976, what was then the Jackson 5 was in decline. Yes, they had experienced chart success with songs like “Dancing Machine,” but they were far removed from the salad days of Motown where anything they released was like manna from heaven to the record buying public. After ten albums with the label, most of the brothers Jackson decided to depart for greener pastures – everyone except Jermaine, who was married to Berry Gordy’s daughter and chose to stay with Motown.
So, while The Jacksons was technically a “debut” of sorts for the revamped band (now featuring brother Randy in Jermaine’s place), it is actually the 11th album overall for the group. Now, instead of “The Corporation” writing the hits for them, the powerhouse duo of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff (among others) were crafting disco-infused tracks for the family.
So what was the end result? I can sum it up in one word: meh.
Look, it’s not that The Jacksons is a bad album, per se. There’s a reason the lead-off track (and first single) “Enjoy Yourself” gave them their first top 10 single in two years, peaking at number six. It honestly was a brilliant move to open the album with that song, as it tries to set the listener up for what was hoped to be a fantastic musical experience.
The follow-up single, “Show You The Way To Go,” might have stalled on the US singles charts at the bottom of the top 30, but is actually a very pleasant follow-up to “Enjoy Yourself” that put more emphasis on the vocal work of the brothers Jackson, with the music properly taking the back seat this time around. Gamble and Huff’s songwriting makes this one a true groove that locks the listener in. Had there been more moments like this on The Jacksons, it would have been the ultimate declaration of independence from their Motown days.
The problem is that it was nearly impossible to keep that momentum up – though Michael would discover the magic formula a few years later. “Think Happy” just seems like too much of a period piece and feels more forced joy than organic. “Good Times” puts the brothers back into balladeer mode, but doesn’t have the emotional pull it needed to turn it into a really powerful track. “Keep On Dancin'” starts off in a plodding beat, but explodes into pure disco orgasm – and what might have worked in 1976 just doesn’t age very well. The same argument can be made for “Living Together” – I fully expected John Travolta to burst forth from my speakers.
Maybe, the cynic says, the problem was almost exclusively using outside sources for the songs. Maybe it would have been a better idea to have the Jacksons themselves write the music more often. And, I’ll say this much for “Blues Away,” one of only two tracks to come from any of the Jacksons (this one written by Michael): it’s a stylistic shift. It’s not great, but it’s certainly not bad. If anything, it defies the logic of Top 40 radio and challenges the listener to accept it as it is. It wasn’t going to win any Grammys, but it was definitely a palate cleaner for the ears.
The end result of The Jacksons is that it’s not an unpleasant album overall, but it doesn’t do much to establish them as anything different than what they did as The Jackson Five for Motown. It didn’t do much overall for the consumers either – the album peaked at number 36 on the Billboard album charts, the same position their final Jackson Five album Moving Violation did. It’s an album that has its moments, to be sure – but, like that cassette I bought for three bucks all those years ago, this is one that might end up relegated to some long lost part of your music collection.
