Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 05/21/2012 at 9:44 AM News

The Popdust Files: bad, michael jackson, reissues, upcoming releases

People go (understandably) nuts for Off The Wall and Thriller, but despite selling eight million copies upon its 1987 release, Bad often gets a little lost in the shuffle when discussing the peak-era Michael Jackson albums. Still, look at that tracklist 25 years later, and it’s hard to imagine how such a great collection of songs could be so underrated. I mean, c’mon—”The Way You Make Me Feel?” “Dirty Diana?” “Smooth Criminal?” “Man in the Mirror?” “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You?” (OK, maybe that last one’s not so great, but hey, even Thriller had “The Girl Is Mine.”) It’s a great album, and it deserves celebration.

Well, a quarter-century anniversary is as good a time as any to bring the album back into the spotlight, and Epic/Legacy Recordings is doing that with Bad 25, a deluxe reissue of the album with three CDs and a bonus DVD worth of extra material. In addition to the remastered original album, 25 will include an extra disc of previously unreleased Bad-era studio material, a live recording of MJ’s legendary 1988 concert at Britain’s Wembley Stadium, and—perhaps of greatest interest to MJ devotees—an accompanying DVD of that Wembley performance, taken and restored from Jackson’s own VHS copy of the gig.

If you can’t wait for the re-issue’s September 18 release, we have an exclusive trailer for the DVD of the Wembley show, and if the reaction of the fans is any indication—it looks like at least one passes out (or possibly dies) from excitement—it should be well worth waiting for.