The buzz didn’t last long. Michael Jackson‘s newest posthumous single, “Love Never Felt So Good,” is a flop. Tonight the single, released on May 1st, is at number 21 on iTunes. It got as high as number 4 and then dropped quickly. The single was supposed to be the signal charge for a marketing plan that launches the “Xscape” album on May 9th. It even featured a vocal by Justin Timberlake recorded 31 years after Jackson made the original demo with Paul Anka.

This could be a problem.

The “new” album consists of 8 tracks that Jackson never finished and never intended to be released. His estate took the tracks, and instead of going back to Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien, Jackson’s producer and engineer during his period of greatest success, they turned to a bunch of contemporary producers and artists. They also let John McClain, co-executor of the Jackson estate, have a hand in the production as well.

The result was a blip on the pop scene over the last four days. Most estates do not let their artist’s unreleased work be completed by anyone. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison– none of them have been subjected to that.We never had disco versions of their unreleased material. There was never John Mayer on tracks with Hendrix.

I can think of two instances where work was complemented or realized. One was the Beatles, with Yoko Ono’s permission, enhancing “Free as A Bird” and “Real Love” with the remaining Beatles. The other was Natalie Cole adding her voice and making a duet with her father, Nat King Cole, on “Unforgettable.”

If the Jackson estate had just released the demos as they were, it might have been interesting for an archive. Even if Paul Anka had been involved, since wrote the song with Jackson in 1983, that might have worked.

Instead, outside of the hard core fanatic Jackson fans, buyers didn’t flock to iTunes. They smelled something was up.

It’s interesting because a couple of years ago, the “Michael” album featured unreleased songs. Some of them were written and produced by Eddie Cascio. The fans refused to believe it was Michael’s voice. They killed the project even though it was their hero actually singing. There are other Cascio songs, and we may never hear them.

There were also legit unreleased tracks from the “Bad” anniversary album. They were terrific, and could have been promoted. They weren’t.

Three years ago, the Jackson estate announced a $200 million deal with Sony for Jackson records. So they’ve got to come up with something. But as I wrote in 2009, and still stands now, there isn’t that much in the vault. So “Xscape” was cooked up. With the single more or less rejected, it remains to be seen how the album– with its re-do of America’s “A Horse with No Name”– will be received.

Stand by.

The White House Correspondents Dinner is over, thank god. President Obama was very funny but hindered by technical problems. Joel McHale was not so funny. I don’t know how it played in the room, but on TV McHale was raunchy. Most of his jokes were strained groaners.

Worse: the coverage on CNN. Who were those people? The broadcast was just awful, as bad as Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin on New Year’s Eve. CNN’s efforts at comedy and camaraderie really don’t work. If they could get some sophisticated, funny people. Don Lemon keeps on insisting McHale was McHilarious. Eesh.

Cheers to Barbara Walters. She landed an interview with Donald Sterling‘s mistress, who calls herself “V Stiviano.” Then Walters lets her off the hook, asks few follow up questions. and misses many opportunities.

For one thing: who is this woman? Her name is not “V Stiviano.” That’s a corporate alias she uses for some kind of T shirt and baseball cap line. Her real name is Maria Perez or Monica Gallegos. Where is she from? How did she earn money before she met Sterling?

Second: Did she sell the tapes to TMZ? She said a friend did. How ridiculous. Walters asks nothing about the lawsuit filed by Rochelle Sterling against Stiviano on March 7th. Did that prompt the sale of the tapes? Why and how was Stiviano taping Sterling in the first place?

Walters asks one of her favorite questions: what are the biggest misconceptions about? One of Stiviano’s answers: that she’s a whore. Pretty much, that’s what Rochelle Sterling accuses her of in that lawsuit– of receiving from Sterling expensive cars, a condo, and $1.8 million. Walters ignores all that.

Walters retires in 2 weeks from ABC News. It may be just in time.

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EXCLUSIVE Get out the smelling salts! Alexa Ray Joel, ever a trooper, is coming back to Cafe Carlyle. Alexa fainted on her last night at the Cafe back on April 14th, cutting short her triumphant two week gig.An ambulance took her over to Lenox Hill Hospital.

Now the talented daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, I can tell you, will return to Cafe Carlyle from June 24th to June 28th and pick up where she left off. She could start with a cover of Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy.”

As it turned out, Alexa’s fainting spell was much ado about nothing– just a common faint. But nerves and exhaustion will do that to you. She was otherwise very funny every night, and her musicianship comes naturally. She’s very gifted. If anything, she should be writing a Broadway musical. She can do it.

PS All those crazy stories about plastic surgery were ridiculous. She had her nose done. Big deal. Nothing else. Let’s get back to the music.

Hilarious and like something from what could be a sequel to “SoapDish”: James Scott, who’s the popular, young, British leading man/villain of “Days of Our Lives” has quit the soap after eight years. NBC must be wondering what the  heck is going on. Is this a contract negotiation?

What happened? Earlier this spring, Scott went to Peru, hung out with shamans, and smoked hallucinogenics. He revealed this in an interview in which he also called obsessed soap fans “fucking idiots.” Cue “Bungle in the Jungle”:

Scott told a soap opera site:

“I just got back from Peru. I spent six days in the jungles of Peru doing Ayahuasca with the shaman.  It was the single most positive experience of my life. Ayahuasca is this hallucinogenic.  I sat in a tent, in a hut, in the jungle, on the amazons with three shaman blowing tobacco smoke into my crown, realigning my chakras and my energy, while I hallucinated for four to six hours.  I mean, this is all hard to explain.  It’s very spiritual and very interesting.  This is a medicine that the people of South America have been using for years to have a relationship with a higher consciousness.  It sounds wacky when you say it, but it was truly the most important thing I have ever done.  I came back a very different person.”

The TODAY show recently did a piece on this LSD-like medicine (it’s legal in Brazil) after Lindsay Lohan talked about drinking Ayahuasca tea after a miscarriage. Rock star Sting wrote about trying Ayahuasca on a trip to Brazil years ago in his excellent memoir, “Broken Music”:

“Ayahuasca has brought me close to something, something fearful and profound and deadly serious.”

The start of a Ayahuasca trip involves immense physical pain, severe vomiting, and other unpleasantness. Then you have a lot of revelations. Apparently Scott’s was to walk away from a full time job as the star of a soap opera. Scott is not exactly Cary Grant, but on daytime he is. Maybe once the Ayahuasca wears off he’ll back at his station bedding blondes and doing dastardly things.

And these are the day of our lives! Indeed!

“American Idol” will finish its season this month with a whimper. Last night’s half hour results show hit an all time series ratings low: 6.92 million total viewers, with a 1.5 rating in the key demo. It ranked third at 9pm after “Two a Half Men” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” It was the 7th most watched show on broadcast TV for the whole night. The “I Heart Radio Awards” beat it in the demo, but not the audience. The Wednesday “Idol” did slightly better. But it shows that with any competition now,”Idol” is an afterthought for viewers.  And for youngish audience, the interest is minimal at best. Two more weeks and the agony is over. Then Fox has to figure what the heck to do next.