Gold Coast Podcaster Solves True-Crime Case of “Fake” Michael Jackson Songs

Oath! Media is proud to announce Faking Michael—a true-crime podcast series detailing the 14-year investigation of Australian journalist Damien Shields, who sheds new light on claims that a posthumous Michael Jackson album included three tracks sung by an impersonator.

The gripping new podcast "makes a methodical case" that the vocals on the disputed tracks were "faked," writes Billboard magazine's Steve Knopper, who listened to all 13 episodes of Faking Michael in preparation for an exclusive interview with Shields.

Faking Michael takes listeners back to 2010, a year after the King of Pop's death, and retraces the production of Michael—Sony Music's controversial album of posthumous Michael Jackson material. Prior to its release, Jackson's family claimed that three songs on the album—"Breaking News," "Monster" and "Keep Your Head Up"—were fakes, with vocals sung by an impostor. In response, Sony asserted their "complete confidence" in the authenticity of the tracks.

Now, after 14 years of research, Gold Coast local Damien Shields, 36, proves in Faking Michael that the Jackson family were right.

Throughout his investigation, Shields made several trips from Australia to the United States, tracking down key witnesses and uncovering compelling new evidence. In Los Angeles, Shields interviewed Jackson's producers, engineers and members of this family, all of whom agreed that the songs in question lacked the trademark characteristics of a Michael Jackson vocal recording. In Washington D.C., Shields scoured the archives of the U.S. Copyright Office, where he discovered that Jackson's purported vocals did not appear on the disputed tracks during the pop star's life.

In a review of Faking Michael, award-winning investigative reporter Charles Thomson described the series as a "forensically researched podcast which uncovers bombshell after bombshell, meticulously building a case that ultimately proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the songs are fake."

Further evidence revealed in Faking Michael includes the scientific analyses of two forensic audio experts, commentary from a former FBI art crime investigator, the outcome of a class action lawsuit regarding the disputed tracks, and the ultimate confession of the actual vocalist—all of which amounts to the "untold story of the biggest fraud in music," says Shields.

From opposite sides of the world, Shields and his UK-based co-producer Dan Villalobos weave all this information together in Faking Michael, which they describe as the "inside story of the music industry scandal you were never meant to hear about".

"It was important for us to produce Faking Michael because of how underreported the story has been for more than a decade," says Villalobos. "But it shouldn't have taken this degree of citizen journalism to uncover the truth, which has been right under Sony's nose from the very beginning."

Faking Michael is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all major podcast platforms. Host Damien Shields is available for interview upon request.

ABOUT DAMIEN SHIELDS

Damien is an independent investigative journalist from Australia. He is the author of Michael Jackson: Songs & Stories From the Vault, a book about Michael Jackson's creative process as a recording artist, and the producer of The Genesis of Thriller, a documentary-style podcast detailing the making of Jackson's best-selling album, Thriller. He has previously been interviewed by Billboard, the New York Times, the BBC and other publications as both a fan and connoisseur of Jackson's work.

Click here to download high-resolution Faking Michael podcast artwork and rights-free photographs of host Damien Shields which can be used in online, print and broadcast media.

###