Making Faking Michael Jackson

Australian journalist Damien Shields spent 14 years producing a podcast on songs removed from the album Michael

BY STEVE KNOPPER

IN 2010, DAMIEN SHIELDS, then 22, was reloading the official Michael Jackson website repeatedly from his home in Australia, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the heavily hyped unreleased track “Breaking News.” When it arrived, he was disappointed — then angry. He believed that the King of Pop, who died June 25, 2009, wasn’t singing on the song. It was an imposter. “I was outraged, the same as thousands of other fans,” Shields says. “But unlike those other fans, I wanted to do something about it.” That moment led to a 14-year, DIY investigative journalism project, involving expensive trips to interview Jackson’s nephew Taryll Jackson in Los Angeles and scour the archives of the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. Originally intended to be a book, Shields’ new, 12-part podcast, Faking Michael,…

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Billboard (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 26, 2024

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