YMMV / HIStory: Past, Present, and Future -- Book I

• Awesome Music: You've got features from Biggie Smalls & Shaq Diesel, powerful ballads, New Jack-club bangers, hard rock, a Beatles cover and MJ himself rapping on multiple tracks, as well as a Remix Album featuring remixes of virtually every song from the regular album plus several more original songs. What's not to like?
• Contested Sequel: For listeners outside of Jackson's devoted fan following, HIStory remains his most divisive album, even when discounting the personal circumstances of its release. Many people criticized the packaging of a Greatest Hits Album as the first disc and dismissed the disc of originals as playing into his artistic excesses, additionally criticizing the decision to continue the New Jack Swing sound of Dangerous well after the genre's fall from grace. Other listeners, meanwhile, praised the album's Darker and Edgier tone, especially since a recurring criticism of Jackson during his prime was his family-friendly image, and viewed the material as still containing many of the songwriting strengths that made Jackson famous in the first place (to the point where its RateYourMusic score is higher than that of Dangerous, which is often considered Jackson's last great album).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Although this trend really began around the Dangerous era, HIStory was arguably when Jackson had his highest commercial peak internationally. By the time Blood on the Dance Floor was released, only ten percent of his total album sales were from within his native U.S.A. For comparison, the U.S. made up about half of his sales from Thriller and Bad, and thirty-three percent for Dangerous.
• Glurge: "Earth Song" and "Little Susie" are notable examples of this. It might explain why the former was never released as a single in the USA.
• Harsher in Hindsight
  • "Morphine", which is about the drug addiction that would eventually kill him. Even worse is the line "a heart attack, baby". A cardiac arrest is the official cause of his passing.
  • Earth Song also did predict the Amazon Rainforest Fire 14 years later after its release.
• Just Here for Godzilla: After Sonic the Hedgehog fans discovered Jackson's involvement with composing at least some of the Sonic 3 & Knuckles soundtrack, many of them flocked over to HIStory to check out "Stranger in Moscow", which interpolated the Sonic 3 credits theme.
• Misaimed Fandom: Jackson ended up receiving controversy over "They Don't Care About Us" containing the lyrics, "Jew me, sue me / kick me, kike me," with critics proclaiming him to be propagating antisemitism. However, the entire point of "They Don't Care About Us" is that it's a Protest Song, and that it's meant to show how minority groups are trampled over by domineering groups, Jewish people included. This is also in contrast to the fact that the normally family-friendly Michael Jackson included the N-word on the album by way of Biggie Smalls' guest appearance on "This Time Around", which conversely ended up not sparking controversy.
• Tear Jerker: The music video for "Earth Song".
  • "Stranger in Moscow", in spades.
• Vindicated by History: Both the HIStory album, and the "Blood On the Dance Floor" expansion. While very popular internationally, sales of both albums (especially the latter) didn't do as well in the U.S. because of Jackson's personal life overshadowing his music during his lifetime in the late 90s. Retrospective reviews noted that both albums had great material that were overlooked in Jackson's life.

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