Much of the music is drawn from the height of Jackson's career, particularly from the principal seven albums: Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, ', ' and Invincible. Notable tracks on the box set include the first release of the demos of songs such as "P.Y.T. ", "Shake Your Body ", "Cheater" and the original demo of "We Are the World" featuring Jackson as a soloist. The set also contains 8 unreleased songs, including "In the Back", "Beautiful Girl", "The Way You Love Me" and "We've Had Enough". The song "The Way You Love Me" was remixed for the posthumous album Michael with the title " The Way You Love Me", and was released as a single on July 8, 2011.
Rarities
The Ultimate Collection box set also contains songs previously out of print:
"Enjoy Yourself" is 15 seconds longer than the album version.
The full version of "You Can't Win" was only available on the 12-inch single.
"Sunset Driver" which was originally set to be one of the track listings for the album "Off the Wall".
"Someone in the Dark" was first released as a two-part song on the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial double LP and re-issued on the 2001 special edition of Thriller.
Both the early version of "Dangerous" and "Monkey Business" were previously available only on the rare 2001 special edition acetate of the Dangerous album.
"On the Line" was part of the "Ghosts" boxset released in 1997 but containing an earlier fade out.
"You Are Not Alone" is 15 seconds longer than the album version, featuring more vocals.
"We Are Here to Change the World" is a previously unreleased song from the Disneyshort filmCaptain EO.
To sum up, fourteen previously unreleased songs and demos are included in "The Ultimate Collection", such as "Beautiful Girl," "Cheater" and the demo to "We Are the World".
The addition of "Another Part of Me" pushes the number of tracks down by one.
Sampler CD
"Someone Put Your Hand Out"
"Someone Put Your Hand Out" is a song originally written by Michael Jackson in 1987 for the Bad album and re-written in April 1992 with Teddy Riley, having failed to make it on to Jackson's 1991 albumDangerous. It was released May 1992 in Europe as an exclusive Pepsi promotional single, to promote Jackson’s upcoming Dangerous World Tour. 500,000 copies were made available by collecting a winning token from certain Pepsi products. A cassette single of "Someone Put Your Hand Out" was also released as part of an exclusive Pepsi promotional pack in June 1992 throughout Europe. The promotional pack also included a Michael Jackson poster, a promotional sticker, and a press release about Jackson’s upcoming Dangerous World Tour. An instrumental version of the song was played by Michael Jackson's band during some of the concerts of the Dangerous World Tour.
