A pair of standouts from Beaumont West Brook in town today for camp:
• 2028 DB Aidan Mills-Teate
• 2029 ATH Brock Anderson
@football_brook // @TA_Recruiting
Michael Jackson died in 2009 with more than $500 million in debt. His estate also owed $40 million to the company organizing his comeback tour. Xscape, released 12 years ago today, was one of the first things they put out to start paying that down.
The album was built from old recordings Jackson never finished, sitting in his archive from 1980 through 1999. The estate hired Timbaland to update the sound. He finished about one song a day. The album hit number 2 in the US, sold 157,000 copies in its first week, and went number 1 in the UK, France, Spain, Belgium, and Denmark. The main song from it, a re-recorded duet with Justin Timberlake, became Jackson’s first top 10 hit after his death.
The catalog sales came next. In 2016, Sony bought out Jackson’s half of the company that owned the rights to the Beatles’ songs for $750 million. In February 2024, Sony paid at least $600 million more for half of Jackson’s own music, including Thriller, Bad, and the rest of his albums. That valued his music at $1.2 billion, the highest amount ever for a single artist’s catalog.
In April this year, the new Michael Jackson movie, “Michael,” made $217 million in its first weekend worldwide. His estate helped pay to make it. That was the biggest opening ever for a movie about a musician, more than four times Bohemian Rhapsody’s $51 million.
Forbes says the estate has earned over $3 billion since Jackson died. Court papers had described his finances as “in disarray.” Today his estate runs one of the most profitable businesses in music, and Xscape was one piece of how that started.