FEATURE:
Behind the Velvet Rope
Janet Jackson at Fifty-Five: Her Five Essential Albums
___________
THIS is sort of like A Buyer’s Guide…
but I feel, ahead of Janet Jackson’s fifty-fifth birthday on 16th May, it was a good idea to point people in the direction of her five finest albums. Her eleventh studio album, Unbreakable, was released in 2015. I am hopeful that we get another album from the brilliant and awe-inspiring Jackson. Before getting to the albums, it is worth bringing in some biography:
“Janet Jackson, in full Janet Damita Jo Jackson, (born May 16, 1966, Gary, Indiana, U.S.), American singer and actress whose increasingly mature version of dance-pop music made her one of the most popular recording artists of the 1980s and ’90s.
The youngest of nine siblings in Motown’s famed Jackson family, Janet Jackson parlayed her family’s success into an independent career that spanned recordings, television, and film. She appeared as a regular on the 1970s television comedy series Good Times and later as a teenager in the dance-oriented series Fame. Following an unremarkable recording debut in 1982 and a 1984 follow-up album, Jackson took control of her career, moved out on her own, and developed her own sound and influential style.
She reemerged in 1986 with her breakthrough record Control, which featured five singles that topped the rhythm-and-blues charts, including two Top Ten pop hits, “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Nasty.” Her fierce independence struck a chord with the youth of the day, and Jackson rose to a level of stardom that rivaled that of Michael Jackson, the most famous of her brothers. Her collaborations with the production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (based in Minneapolis, Minnesota) produced bold, beat-heavy, catchy songs that defined the punch and power of 1980s dance and pop music. Jackson returned in 1989 with her most diverse work, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. The album delivered seven pop Top Ten hit singles, including “Miss You Much,” “Escapade,” and “Love Will Never Do (Without You).
Jackson continued to enjoy worldwide popularity and critical acclaim in the 1990s with the albums janet. (1993), Design of a Decade (1995), and The Velvet Rope (1997). Between the release of All for You (2001), which continued in the sensual vein of janet., and Damita Jo (2004), Jackson was at the centre of a debate on decency standards on television, when a “wardrobe malfunction” (that some argued was accidental and others said premeditated) caused a scandal during her live performance at halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl. Her later albums included 20 Y.O. (2006) and Discipline (2008). Unbreakable (2015), billed as a comeback album, used contemporary electronic arrangements to bolster the velvety vocals that had established Jackson as an R&B star. In 2019 Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”.
To mark the upcoming fifty-fifth birthday of one of music’s legends and icons, I think people should dig into the catalogue of Janet Jackson. Do a deeper dive if you can but, if you need to drill to the essentials, I think the five below should give you a lot of gold and genius Jackson. I think that her more modern music is incredible - showing how consistent she is as an artist and creative force! Jackson keeps producing such awesome albums. Let’s hope that this does not stop…
ANYTIME soon.
______________
Control
Release Date: 4th February, 1986
Label: A&M
Producers: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis/Monte Moir
Standout Tracks: Control/Nasty/The Pleasure Principle
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/250716
Review:
“Although Janet Jackson had released two records in the early '80s, they were quickly forgotten, and notably shaped by her father's considerable influence. Janet's landmark third album, 1986's Control, changed all that. On the opening title track, Jackson, with passion and grace, declares her independence, moving out of the gargantuan shadow of her brother Michael and on to the business of making her own classic pop album. The true genius of Control lies in the marriage of her extremely self-assured vocals with the emphatic beats of R&B production wizards Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The duo was already well established in the music industry, but the practically flawless Control showcased Jam and Lewis' true studio mastery. For the better part of two years, Janet remained on the pop chart, with two-thirds of the album's tracks released as singles, including the ever-quotable "Nasty," the assertive "What Have You Done for Me Lately," the frenetically danceable "When I Think of You," and the smooth, message-oriented ballad "Let's Wait Awhile." Jackson achieved long-awaited superstar status and never looked back” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: What Have You Done for Me Lately
Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814
Release Date: 19th September, 1989
Label: A&M
Producers: James ‘Jimmy Jam’ Harris/Terry Lewis/Janet Jackson/Jellybean Johnson
Standout Tracks: State of the World/Escapade/Black Cat
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=92699&ev=mb
Review:
“That some dismissive critics then thought the politics were separable from the love songs was an incorrect reading. Jackson’s further assertion of self was as personal-as-political as the era demanded, reflecting in part her relationship and eventual marriage to René Elizondo, done in secret to keep both the press and her former dadager at bay. She was fully growing into herself as a human, exploring her internal territory and reconciling it with the world outside, while pushing herself musically more than ever. “Black Cat,” which she wrote entirely herself, was the fully manifested example of this internal and external congealing. She threw down a slinky, sexy snarl over a rock guitar shred that was also wildly jiggy, making an unlikely dive-bar banger that spoke to both gang members and the wronged women who loved them. Another nod to history—topically, the bad boy lament could be traced back to Big Mama Thornton, the black blueswoman who invented rock’n’roll—Jackson was proving to the world she was as versatile as any other chart-topper of the day, and no move she made was without substance. Perhaps by presenting her self-made utopia, she also envisioned that the real-life dystopian one would recognize her not for what it wanted her to be, but for who she was” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Rhythm Nation
janet.
Release Date: 18th May, 1993
Label: Virgin
Producers: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis/Janet Jackson/Jellybean Johnson
Standout Tracks: You Want This/Because of Love/Whoops Now (hidden track)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=92705&ev=mb
Review:
“Dignity firmly in pocket, Jackson is ready to try anything. You can view her various styles as a plethora of different positions. Janet. touches R&B, hip-hop, soul, funk, rock, house, jazz and opera with the singer’s pop sensibility. The mix may lack purity, but the ambitious choices and flexibility leave a bold impression.
Bold indeed are the juxtapositions of Jackson with opera star Kathleen Battle and Public Enemy’s Chuck D. Battle’s voice soars and sounds like an instrument imitating the human voice on “This Time,” while “New Agenda” finds Jackson gliding over hip-hop-inspired beats as Chuck bursts through. The lyrics of “Agenda” follow that same pattern: It fits a Jackson to write a song demanding a new program and leave the rapper to propose the plan.
On Control and Rhythm Nation, Jackson’s collaborators, producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, were hotter than a flame’s bright yellow center. Those albums are exemplary late-Eighties state-of-the-art R&B. But the Jam and Lewis fire no longer cracks and roars as it once did. Predictably, Janet shares the bill this time as coproducer, resulting in a less groundbreaking sound but a wider-ranging album.
The seventy-five minutes of Janet. are less long than long overdue. A significant, even revolutionary transition in the sexual history and popular iconography of black women — who have historically needed to do nothing to be considered overtly sexual — is struck as the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? girl declares herself the what-I’ll-do-to-you-baby! woman. The princess of America’s black royal family has announced herself sexually mature and surrendered none of her crown’s luster in the process. Black women and their friends, lovers and children have a victory in Janet” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: That’s the Way Love Goes
The Velvet Rope
Release Date: 7th October, 1997
Label: Virgin
Producers: Janet Jackson/Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
Standout Tracks: Velvet Rope (ft. Vanessa-Mae)/Got 'til It's Gone (ft. Q-Tip and Joni Mitchell)/Go Deep
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=100041&ev=mb
Review:
“If Janet Jackson made much ado of janet. being the Let’s Get It On to Rhythm Nation’s What’s Going On, then 1997’s The Velvet Rope is clearly her I Want You, respectively Jackson’s and Gaye’s best and least-heralded albums. (Both incidentally recognized at the end of their creators’ respective marriages.) The chief difference between The Velvet Rope, the least “perfect” album of Janet’s increasingly careful career and the one that most threatens to collapse at each turn, and all the albums that Janet has released since is that all the subsequent albums have been cheery, forcedly carefree collections of would-be singles without any cohesiveness behind them; they’re kiddie cocktails by someone old enough to know better. The reason none of them sound particularly convincing—like Jane Adams’s Joy from Happiness gamely grinning “I’m doing good” seconds before peeling into miserable, anti-cathartic tears—is because of The Velvet Rope, an album by a still very inexperienced person attempting to convey maturity and worldliness.
In every conceivable way the most “adult” album of Janet’s career, The Velvet Rope is also the most naïve. Its vitality owes almost nothing to its stabs at sexual frankness. Because, truthfully, a lot of the “naughty” material doesn’t exactly seem that much more convincing than the Prozac-fuelled aphorisms of the follow-ups, nor is it more politically intriguing than her advocacy of color-blindness in Rhythm Nation. The bisexuality of her cover of Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night” never manages to convince that Miss Jackson has ever been so nasty as to even consider loosening pretty French gowns. “Rope Burn” isn’t so ribald that Janet doesn’t have to remind listeners that they’re supposed to take off her clothes first, though producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s Chinese water torture beat does approximate sonic bondage. It’s hardly surprising that when Janet uses the word “fuck” in “What About,” she’s not talking about it happening to her. For a sex album that also seems to aim at giving fans an unparalleled glance behind the fetish mask (literally, in the concert tour performance of “You”), Janet’s probably never been more cagey.
But behind the sex is something even more compelling, because it gradually dawns on you that Janet’s use of sexuality is an evasive tactic. That it’s easier for her to sing about cybersex (on the galvanizing drum n’ bass “Empty,” one of Jam and Lewis’s very finest moments, maybe even their last excepting Jordan Knight’s “Give It to You”) and to fret about her coochie falling apart than it is to admit that it’s her psyche and soul that are in greater danger of fracturing. Soul sister to Madonna’s Erotica (which, in turn, was her most daring performance), The Velvet Rope is a richly dark masterwork that illustrates that, amid the whips and chains, there is nothing sexier than emotional nakedness” – SLANT
Choice Cut: Together Again
Unbreakable
Release Date: 2nd October, 2015
Labels: Rhythm Nation/BMG
Producers: J. Cole/Dem Jointz/Missy Elliott/Janet Jackson/James ‘Jimmy Jam’ Harris/Terry Lewis/Thomas ‘Tommy McClendon’ Lumpkins
Standout Tracks: BURNITUP! (ft. Missy Elliott)/Dammn Baby/Black Eagle
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=892999&ev=mb
Review:
“Despite the shadow cast by her brother Michael, Janet Jackson has always been her own artist. And over 10 albums, most notably 1989’s Rhythm Nation 1814, the singer (along with production from fabled duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis) has fused a unique version of R&B, dance, and pop that’s succeeded independently of Michael’s career.
But since the King of Pop’s premature passing in 2009, the press-shy Janet has largely avoided speaking out about him. So it’s a surprise that on her first album since his death—produced once again by Jam and Lewis—the 49-year-old delivers her most MJ-sounding release. There aren’t just a few nods, either—Michael has worked his way into all corners of his sister’s sound. She matches the timbre of his croon on multiple tracks (especially “Unbreakable”) and drops many of his signature breathing tics into “Broken Hearts Heal.” Janet, who has always flaunted her sexuality, is also more lyrically guarded here, eschewing confessions about relationships in favor of Michael-inspired pleas for peace and togetherness.
Janet makes up for that lack of intimacy with her most sonically diverse set since 1997’s quirky, hypersexual The Velvet Rope. She rounds all the R&B bases, and there’s a healthy dose of club adrenaline, particularly on the Missy Elliott-assisted “BURNITUP!” and the heady house jam “Night.” But perhaps the most thrilling aspect of Unbreakable is her willingness to experiment. “Gon’ B Alright” is a Sly Stone-style funk bomb, and “Well Traveled” swoops with stately arena-rock flourishes. Unlike contemporaries like Mariah Carey, Janet strikes a solid balance between innovation and dependability, bridging past and future better than most—including her legendary sibling. B+” – Entertainment Weekly
Choice Cut: Unbreakable