Yes, as you must have guessed from You Rock My World, it's got the Michael Jackson signature. Nor does it sound new at all, either and we're not talking about the contribution from the Notorious BIG, who's been pushing up daisies almost half a decade now, on the bridge movement of the tepid title track.

Despite the line up, though, overall the album lacks the spirit that created such killers as Bad and Thriller. Jackson's best, it seems, is clearly behind him – as You Rock... proved when it dropped out of sight from tenth place on the Billboard charts. The album neither takes dance nor romance seriously, both once Jackson's fortes, nor is it an egotistical tribute to the god Jackson thinks he's become. Anxious to convince the world about his sexuality perhaps, the album swings in chase of a woman.

Lyrically, Jackson doesn't seem to have benefited from his years out in the relative wilderness of wife and family. Unbreakable has him declaiming that he's untouchable (shades of M Night Shyamalan here): All that I`ve been through, I`m still around/ Why can`t you see that you`d never ever hurt me? Again, on Privacy, complete with anonymous heavy metal guest guitarist, he hits out against an old foe: the paparazzi. "Why do you go through so much/ To get the stories you need, You got the people confused," he prattles. And this from a man who supposedly once courted the media with stories about sleeping in oxygen chambers. A nice touch on the latter song, though, is the sound of cameras clicking and flashing away. Talk about desperation – after all, the man hasn't been true tabloid fodder for ages – except recently when a part of his nose flew off in a concert.

One highlight is Carlos Santana on the Latin-tinged Whatever Happens. Another is Break of Dawn, soft, caressing and totally formulaic, (remember Lady in My Life?) but working well within the formula. Heaven Can Wait sounds all right, too, easy and even-paced, while Heartbreaker is finally more contemporary than the rest of the album.

Songs like Cry, 2000 Watts, The Lost Children (another troubled strain like Heal The World), Butterflies (his voice has never sounded worse) and the tedious Babyface ballad You Are My Life which make up the body of the album, are the low points – pathetic and making for painful listening. It cost USD 21 million to produce this?

Jacko's written the truth himself, he's voluntarily relinquished his pop crown. When you look at Madonna's growth, or think that record companies are expecting Britney Spears to sell one million copies in her first week of release versus expectations of three lakh copies from Invincible, Jacko should have stayed with his animals on that ranch. Or at least looked in the mirror when he wrote this.