Are you an obsessive music collector? Do you dream of owning that one obscure bit of music history, just so you can claim sole ownership of it? Of course, it’s a natural desire as a music fan. But now, an upcoming New York auction is giving you the chance to own some previously-unheard Michael Jackson tracks.
As Rolling Stone reports, the New York auction house Gotta Have Rock And Roll is set to hold a public auction of musical memorabilia from July 19th to 28th. This huge cache of musical history, which includes Tupac’s breakup letter to Madonna (which has an opening bid of $100,000), and some handwritten Bob Dylan lyrics to ‘Girl From The North Country’ (a steal at $30,000), also includes an unreleased Michael Jackson album, and it can be all yours.
The album, which looks like a blank CD featuring the world ‘Bible’ written on it in pen, features a total of twelve tracks. Three of these tracks, ‘Keep Your Head Up’, ‘Monster’, and ‘Breaking News’, had previously been released on Jackson’s posthumous 2010 record Michael as alternate mixes. The remaining nine tracks have never been heard before in any format.
All of the unreleased tracks are of mastered quality, which means that you could rip a few copies on iTunes and make bank, right? Not quite, the auction grants you rights to the CD, not the music contained therein, so you won’t be able to distribute it in any way.
As Rolling Stone reports, the auction house states that the album was obtained by “the personal friend and personal assistant to Michael whose family was very close to Michael for many years, traveling all over the world with him.” It’s unclear who this refers to though, as they have wished to remain anonymous.
While the item is not currently available to view on the auction’s website, the starting bid is $50,000. However, auction organisers believe that the album’s final price could go as high as $1 million.
Whether or not we’ll eventually hear these unreleased songs remains to be seen, but considering that $1 million is quite a bit of cash, we probably won’t be hearing it anytime soon.
Check out ‘Monster’, one of the tracks from the unreleased album below, and view the full track list as well.
Unreleased Michael Jackson album track list
1. ‘Monster’
2. ‘Breaking News’
3. ‘Stay’
4. ‘Keep Your Head Up’
5. ‘Everything’s Just Fine’
6. ‘Black Widow’
7. ‘Burn Tonight’
8. ‘All I Need’
9. ‘Water’
10. ‘Let Me Fall In Love’
11. ‘Ready To Win’
12. ‘Soldier Boy’
