Release and Legal Issues
Epic Records allowed Jackson to record the album for MCA Records on two conditions:
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was not to be released until after Christmas 1982. (This was to avoid the audiobook competing with Jackson's new album, Thriller.)
- The song "Someone In the Dark" was not to be released as a single.
The conditions were breached by MCA Records, which released the storybook in November 1982 and gave 7-inch promo copies of "Someone In the Dark" to radio stations. After Epic lodged a $2 million lawsuit, MCA Records were forced to withdraw the album and prohibited from releasing "Someone In the Dark" as a single. Epic executives had felt that MCA were misleading members of the public into believing that the then-recently released single "The Girl Is Mine" was featured on the storybook album. The plaintiffs further requested that MCA Records be banned from working with Jackson in the future and that any other media owned by MCA featuring the singer be prohibited from release.
As a result of the legal restrictions that prohibited the public release of "Someone In the Dark" as a single, the promo copies which were made have since become one of the singer's rarest and most sought-after records; some have been sold for over £1000 ($1587). The song was later included as a bonus track on the 2001 special edition of Thriller, as well as the box set Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection.
Read more about this topic: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (album)
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release, legal and/or issues:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“Come, thou long-expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.”
—Charles Wesley (1707–1788)
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“The “universal moments” of child rearing are in fact nothing less than a confrontation with the most basic problems of living in society: a facing through one’s children of all the conflicts inherent in human relationships, a clarification of issues that were unresolved in one’s own growing up. The experience of child rearing not only can strengthen one as an individual but also presents the opportunity to shape human relationships of the future.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)