{"id":48685,"date":"2022-01-28T20:04:08","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T20:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=48685"},"modified":"2022-01-28T20:04:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T20:04:08","slug":"revisiting-janet-jackson-album-janet","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/revisiting-janet-jackson-album-janet\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Janet Jackson\u2019s Pivotal Fifth Album, \u2018Janet.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Janet
Janet Jackson, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier for the cover of her fifth album Janet.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I was 11 years old, if you had asked me to name my favorite pop star, I would almost certainly have said it was Janet Jackson<\/a>. And this was based entirely on my adolescent devotion to her 1993 album, Janet.<\/em> I\u2019m not sure I had much awareness of, let alone any meaningful engagement with, her previous work. I don\u2019t even think I really understood that Janet.<\/em> was essentially a mid-career album, her fifth to be exact, and not, in fact, her breakthrough. \u201cEscapade\u201d? \u201cNasty\u201d? \u201cWhat Have You Done for Me Lately\u201d? I can\u2019t tell you exactly why<\/em> none of these songs registered in my wee brain as part of Ms. Jackson\u2019s cannon, except to say that I was a child. And it was with a child\u2019s myopia that I listened to Janet.<\/em> over and over and over again, the way that little kids can watch the same movie a million times without ever considering that there might be other films in the director\u2019s oeuvre.<\/p>\n

Actually, I think this sense I had that Janet.<\/em> was a breakthrough album, that it was the one that finally put her on the map, had a lot to do with the fact that it represented a turning point<\/em> in her career. Control<\/em> and Rhythm Nation 1814<\/em> were, of course, massive hits, but Janet. <\/em>was her first record to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. But more than that, the album signaled a shift in her public persona. If Rhythm Nation<\/em> was Jackson\u2019s message album, Janet.<\/em> was her bedroom album. To be clear, this is some of the horniest<\/em> music ever made! (I cannot believe that I listened to some of these songs in the car with my mother and younger brother when I was a kid!) According to FX and The New York Times<\/em>\u2019s recent documentary Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson<\/em><\/a>, this made Janet a lightning rod during the \u201990s culture wars.<\/p>\n

Not that I had any idea any of that was going on when I was 11. I just\u2026really liked Janet Jackson!<\/p>\n

\"The
The cover art for Janet Jackson’s fifth album, Janet.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Janet. <\/em>was one of the first albums I ever owned\u2014other highlights included Ace of Base\u2019s The Sign<\/em>, Des\u2019ree\u2019s I Ain\u2019t Movin\u2019 <\/em>and Madonna<\/a>\u2019s Bedtime Stories<\/em>. I would probably describe this as the VH1 period of my still-developing musical taste. Then came Alanis Morissette and Garbage, and by the time The Velvet Rope <\/em>was released in 1997, I considered myself someone who listened to \u201calternative\u201d rock\u2014whatever that meant\u2014as opposed to pop and R&B. That\u2019s an oversimplification, of course. I mean, obviously, I\u2019ve enjoyed Janet\u2019s hit singles over the past 20-odd years. \u201cTogether Again,\u201d \u201cGo Deep,\u201d \u201cAll for You,\u201d \u201cFeedback\u201d\u2014I\u2019m not a monster! But the upshot is I can say, definitively, that not only have I not listened to a full Janet Jackson album since the mid-90s, I also haven\u2019t listened to Janet.<\/em>, an album that was a major part of my adolescence, start-to-finish since I was probably 12 or 13. Which seems wild<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The final two installments of Jackson\u2019s new four-part documentary<\/a> are set to air on Lifetime and A&E this weekend. Episodes 1 and 2 covered the singer\u2019s childhood through her rise to fame as a pop star in her own right in the late \u201980s. Episode 3 promises to pick up in the early \u201990s and cover the recording and wild success of Janet.<\/em> This seems like as good a time as any to revisit the album for the first time in over 25 years.<\/p>\n

Note: Half of the album\u2019s 28 tracks are seconds-long interludes. They add some lovely texture to the record\u2019s narrative, particularly those featuring Jackson\u2019s spoken-word contributions. But I\u2019m not going to cover each of them individually. I just don\u2019t think anyone needs my reaction to an 11-second recording of wind.<\/p>\n