Bad

"It's very wise to leave things by itself, as the album is best absorbed without any additional ephemera (or, like the 2001 re-releases, elongated audio interviews with the behind-the-scenes crew tacked on at the end). The biggest takeaway for fans, though, is the second disc, featuring "bonus tracks, demos, and remixes", and save for both a Spanish and French version of "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" (which exist as curiosities for collectors and nothing more), it is uniformly excellent".

"He wound up with a sleeker, slicker Thriller, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not a rousing success, either. For one thing, the material just isn't as good. Look at the singles: only three can stand alongside album tracks from its predecessor ("Bad," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "I Just Can't Stop Loving You"), another is simply OK ("Smooth Criminal"), with the other two showcasing Jackson at his worst (the saccharine "Man in the Mirror," the misogynistic "Dirty Diana"). Then, there are the album tracks themselves, something that virtually didn't exist on Thriller but bog down Bad not just because they're bad, but because they reveal that Jackson's state of the art is not hip".

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