Motown Milks Michael

Many of the remixes on “Michael Jackson: The Remix Suite” are guilty of an all-too-common sin: Instead of approaching Jackson’s vast anthology of Motown recordings at interesting angles, they just make the original versions sound better. Though it’s true that Jackson’s a tough act to follow, none of the producers who make appearances here seem content with merely putting a modern spin on the songs that laid the bedrock for the singer’s legacy, and they insist on creating bizarre experiments that don’t provide his voice with the support it needs. Besides, a prayer like “Never Can Say Goodbye” was haunting enough without any help from Pharrell Williams, who chimes in with “Get ’em, Mike!” on the Neptunes remix.

You’d think a project like this would have more to offer, especially in light of what they had to work with. Not only did Jackson leave his childhood at Motown, but he made a bunch of records there in the process – by the time the Jackson 5 released their third album, Motown had been involved with them for all of nine months. Like other products from Motown’s assembly line, part of what made them such an outstanding act was that they could take puffery like “Dancing Machine” and give it a longer shelf life than most other pop records get. These new remixes, on the other hand, separate the source material from its immortality, and what was once timeless is now dead on arrival.

Although most of what’s on here’s pretty dismal, the biggest offenders might be Benny Blanco and Frankie Knuckes, who take “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Forever Came Today” and make Jackson sing backup on his own songs while they construct electronic mazes around him. Even the producers who don’t make a total mess – Dallas Austin, Emile Haynie, Salaam Remi and Sturken & Rogers are the only ones who seem to know what they’re doing – steer the material in quizzical directions. (Do we need a Jamaican remix of “ABC”?)

The fact that Jackson died only a couple of months ago suggests that there’s more memorabilia on the way for fans who’ll pay for anything with his name on it, which explains the sticker on “The Remix Suite” that reads “Complete Your Michael Jackson Collection!” Apart from his forthcoming “This Is It” concert documentary and the accompanying soundtrack, if you’ve bought everything Jackson ever recorded, the best thing to do might be to quit while you’re ahead.