Michael Jackson ft Akon - Hold My Hand

The question for Michael Jackson's latest posthumous single -- "Hold My Hand" -- isn't whether it's actually the star who's singing. It's how much of his singing do we get?

The song, created with the African-born pop star Akon, features Jackson on much of the first verse, then shunts him off to a backup singer status for most of the rest.

Akon, who wrote and produced the number, dominates the final version of "Hand," which serves as the first official single off the forthcoming "Michael," CD, arriving December 14th. On three quarters of the piece, Akon leads the verses and choruses. While Jackson can be heard whoo-hooing and offers a ballet series of runs throughout, they're essentially accents to Akon's starring role.

It's not hard to figure out what likely happened here. The song -- which Akon started working on with Jackson a few years back only to shelve it shortly after -- probably had the outlines of a usable vocal from Jackson, along with lots of vamps left over. Those bits wound up becoming the bulk of Jackson's contribution, pieced together to approximate a duet.

Genuine duets, constructed with both the singers' full participation, show real chemistry between the singers -- at least ideally they do. This feels every bit as padded and pieced-together as it must have been.

The structure of the song encourages that. It's more a suggestion of a song than a fully developed piece: a forced anthemic chorus hog-tied to a rote verse.

The brightness of Akon's vocal, and mere presence of Jackson, may get the song significant airplay. But, like the two other songs released so far from the vaults, "Hold My Hand" feels Frankensteinian, an uncomfortably stitched-together, and vain, attempt to bring the dead back to life.