The Original Soul of Michael Jackson
1987 remix album by Michael Jackson
The Original Soul of Michael Jackson is a remix album by American singer Michael Jackson. It features songs recorded early in his career mainly during the 1970s and remixed in 1987 before its release that year by Motown.
Release
While the album claims that it "contains music never before released", the only new song available was a re-dubbed cover of Edwin Starr's 1970 hit "Twenty-Five Miles", sung by the Jackson Five and solely credited to Michael. The original recording of the song was included on the 2009 set Hello World: The Motown Solo Collection. Some songs were newly edited on the album, with a newly dubbed version of "Dancing Machine". "Ain't No Sunshine" also had slightly different vocals and a modern drum machine was added to "Twenty-Five Miles". "Melodie" was planned for a single in an effort to promote the record in the US, but was scrapped for a promo-only single "Twenty-Five Miles"/"Up On The Housetop".
Critical reception
Reviewing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), Robert Christgau wrote, "Once you get past the slipshod cynicism of Motown's catalogue exploitation, you have to admit that this mostly remixed, sometimes synthed-up mishmash has its charms and even uses—that in fact it's superior to the 'real' 1975 best-of the label long ago deleted.
“The Original Soul of Michael Jackson” enters the record as 1987 remix album by Michael Jackson. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Original, Soul and Michael can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2452326. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1970, 2009 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Original Soul of Michael Jackson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.