It was nominated for six Grammy Awards, winning Best Engineered Recording – Non Classical and Best Music Video (for "Leave Me Alone"). The album has been named by several publications as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2021, it was certified 11× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). With sales of over 35 million copies sold worldwide, Bad is one of the best-selling albums of all time. It was also Jackson's last tour where he performed on the mainland United States. Jackson performed 123 concerts in 15 countries to an audience of 4.4 million including a record seven sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium. The Bad tour, which was Jackson's first solo world tour, grossed $125 million (equivalent to more than $291 million in 2021) making it the highest-grossing solo concert tour of the 1980s. The film became the best-selling home video of all time. The album was promoted with the film, Moonwalker (1988), which included the music videos of songs from the album, including "Speed Demon", "Leave Me Alone", "Man in the Mirror" and "Smooth Criminal". By 1991 it was the second-best selling album of all time at the time, behind Thriller, having sold 25 million copies worldwide. Seven charted in the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, including a record-breaking five number ones: "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror" and "Dirty Diana". Nine songs were released as official singles, and one as a promotional single. It was the best-selling album worldwide of 19. The album also reached number one in 24 other countries, including the UK, where it sold 500,000 copies in its first five days and became the country's best-selling album of 1987. One of the most anticipated albums of its time, Bad debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, selling over 2 million copies in its first week in the US. With Bad, Jackson departed from his signature groove-based style and high-pitched vocals. Written and recorded between January 1985 and July 1987, Bad was the third and final collaboration between Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, with Jackson co-producing and composing all but two tracks. It was released on August 31, 1987, by Epic Records, nearly five years after Jackson's previous album, Thriller (1982). And if that wasn't evident proof that Jackson was losing touch, consider this - the best song on the album is "Leave Me Alone" (why are all of his best songs paranoid anthems?), a tune tacked on to the end of the CD and never released as a single, apart from a weirdly claustrophobic video that, not coincidentally, was the best video from the album.Bad is the seventh studio album by American singer and songwriter Michael Jackson. For this dreadful stretch, everything is mechanical, and while the album rebounds with songs that prove mechanical can be tolerable if delivered with hooks and panache, it still makes Bad feel like an artifact of its time instead a piece of music that transcends it. Part of the joy of Off the Wall and Thriller was that craft was enhanced with tremendous songs, performances, and fresh, vivacious beats. And they constitute a near-fatal dead spot on the record - songs three through six, from "Speed Demon" to "Another Part of Me," a sequence that's utterly faceless, lacking memorable hooks and melodies, even when Stevie Wonder steps in for "Just Good Friends," relying on nothing but studiocraft. 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. 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"). For one thing, the material just isn't as good. He wound up with a sleeker, slicker Thriller, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not a rousing success, either. This meant that he moved deeper into hard rock, deeper into schmaltzy adult contemporary, deeper into hard dance - essentially taking each portion of Thriller to an extreme, while increasing the quotient of immaculate studiocraft. The downside to a success like Thriller is that it's nearly impossible to follow, but Michael Jackson approached Bad much the same way he approached Thriller - take the basic formula of the predecessor, expand it slightly, and move it outward.
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