Janet Jackson - The Moth and the Flame

A madhouse

I don't know about you, but for me following the goings-on of the Jackson household is like watching the Moira Orfei circus - nothing is missing. Success, money and the legendary aura surrounding its members seem to have created a glass case around that family, through which everyone can witness their scandals and personal dramas, the quarrels between siblings and the resentment some of them harbour towards their parents, not to mention the countless solo careers, the dozens of grandchildren and the compulsive plastic surgery. An entire family, in short, put through the entertainment world's wringer as never before. After all, there are so many of them in that house, and all dysfunctional to just the right degree - it's like having an entire soap opera cast conveniently gathered under one roof. Why not make the most of it?

It all starts, of course, with the notorious father Joseph Jackson, the frustrated ex-musician who instilled his own passion in his children with blows from a belt. Regarded at once as both the chief architect of the clan's success and the man responsible for the psychological troubles developed by the more sensitive members of his family, Joseph is the archetypal domineering father figure, and his parenting methods still spark heated debate among the public to this day (which, when the occasion calls for it, turns into a panel of expert child psychologists). But credit should also go to mother Catherine, the family's grey eminence as well as a talented pianist and costume designer, a devout Jehovah's Witness portrayed by the public as a woman who was too silent and complicit with her husband, when instead "she should have stepped in whenever needed" (again, according to the aforementioned panel of psychologists). The truth is that no one has ever managed to glimpse Catherine's true soul beneath her stony face, and that remains rather suspicious.

And then there are the nine children the couple had (they would have been ten had one of them - Brandon - not died from complications shortly after birth).
The eldest is the little-known Rebbie, who faded from view after a brief and rather incongruous career in the mid-80s; today she's remembered only for that piece of entomologic-disco "Centipede" (which, incidentally, wasn't bad at all). But the same goes for Jackie, the oldest of the five boys and the first member of the Jackson 5, whose solo career went almost entirely unnoticed. Both of them now keep a decidedly low profile. Tito, best known as the family guitarist, didn't do much once the adventure with his brothers ended, recycling himself between one reality show and another to keep things afloat, but his three sons - Taj, Taryll and Tj - formed the hugely famous 3T in the 90s (all too derivative).
Jermaine, on the other hand, is without doubt the family's unlucky one; handsome and talented, besides his work with the Jackson 5 he has to date released a whopping thirteen solo albums, but despite all his efforts, and a few hits along the way, his career remains buried under a thick layer of ash (some will remember him for that supremely cheesy duet video with the none-too-charismatic Pia Zadora, "When The Rain Begins To Fall"). His much-discussed conversion to Islam, which took place in the late 80s, unfortunately gave the more ignorant members of the public reason to write him off for good, but rediscovering his old disco-funk-leaning work is recommended to everyone.

But that's nothing compared to poor LaToya, who also has a fairly substantial musical career behind her - to date, 9 albums released between '80 and '95 - though in her case often mercilessly vapid. It was the dramatic events of her private life that made her just as much a public figure (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say a "target"). Among other things, around the mid-80s she attempted a transformation into a Playboy pin-up, backed by a jaw-dropping silhouette, but the strictly conservative upbringing instilled in her by her mother ended up making her crumble under the weight of that image, turning her into a victim of excessive plastic surgery. But above all, many still remember her forced marriage to her manager Gordon (she was literally dragged to the altar by a bodyguard); he was a violent and possessive man beyond any limit, who controlled her financially and psychologically for years, and once left her at death's door after hitting her on the head with a bronze chair. Repeatedly disowned by her family, and branded by the rest of America as the black sheep of the Jacksons, or even worse as the talentless one, LaToya instead survived the dramas and bounced back to health, becoming in the process a great gay icon, complete with her own consecration by RuPaul and his drag queens.

As for Marlon and Randy, almost nothing has ever been heard from either of them. With just one solo album apiece (both now nearly impossible to find), it's been speculated that for them, despite being genuinely excellent performers — Marlon as a dancer, Randy as a multi-instrumentalist — their father's belt ended up killing any passion for music once and for all, save for the occasional session work on records sung by other people.
A chapter of its own, of course, has already been devoted on these pages to the family's youngest son, Michael, that adorable little boy with the high-pitched voice, who went on to become one of the most popular figures in the history of entertainment of the last century. A man on whom oceans of ink have been spilled, discussing both his art and his bizarre, highly controversial private life: skin tone changes, dangling his son out of a window, the legal battles over his conduct with minors, and afternoons spent playing with water pistols alongside Elizabeth Taylor — an endless and rather grotesque list. To this day, years after his premature death, the gossip about him shows no sign of letting up, but his artistic influence still looms large over the world of pop music, almost as if we were still in 1982.

And so we come to the youngest child, Janet Damita Jo, born in 1966. Extremely shy, chubby and fragile by nature, initiated like all her siblings into the art of the stage from the cradle, Janet immediately found herself overshadowed by a string of loud, colorful personalities, not to mention a brother capable of steamrolling his way to public acclaim. She could easily have become just another troublemaker, then, or else remained stuck in a corner, unable to make her faint voice heard amid all the noise. Instead, the youngest of the Jacksons drew on her cooperative nature and managed to transform herself into one of the most important and influential figures in the history of r&b.
A superb dancer, energetic and sharp, blessed with a soft, delicate voice carrying warm, intimate inflections, but above all the author and performer of one of the most refined musical arcs of her era, Janet Jackson defined the sound of at least a couple of generations. From the birth of new jack swing to crossovers with electronic music, neo-soul, trip-hop, house and dubstep, if r&b today has become — not without controversy — a kind of Esperanto usable both by chart-topping names and by fringes of the indie crowd, much of the credit goes to the work of Janet "Miss Jackson If You're Nasty".
 
Of course, she too had her share of embarrassing beginnings, missteps, dips in inspiration and public mockery (need we say the word "nipple"?), but her legacy remains impossible to ignore. Out of that whole madhouse, in short, perhaps the most interesting one of all is precisely the youngest child.

Life is like bubblegum (stuck under the school desk)

Little Janet wasn't allowed to join the Jackson 5 ensemble, being a girl, but that certainly didn't spare her from being pushed into show business herself. At just 4 years old she was already treading stages across the United States, entertaining hotel and casino audiences with the American equivalent of the cutesy faces and ditties Italians associate with the Zecchino d'Oro festival (her duo performances with brother Marlon were famous, and quite amusing). But by the age of just 10, Janet had already made the big leap, introduced to the eyes of the entire nation via the family's TV show, "The Jacksons", airing every Wednesday night during the summer season for a total of twelve episodes straddling 1976 and 1977.

More TV appearances soon followed, but just a few months after her sweet sixteen, her father had already planned everything out: no boarding school, no law studies, no horseback-riding lessons as the young girl had requested — Janet would be a singer, full stop. A contract was duly signed with A&M Records, and soon enough the wardrobe and hairstyle (dreadfully conservative) had already been decided, along with the songs to sing, the producers and the photographers. Janet was like a puppet on strings. The most telling anecdote from that period was recounted by Janet herself years later: during the photo shoot for the cover — which shows her face while the rest of her body is submerged in water up to her neck — Janet hurriedly stripped off her clothes to get into the pool, then waited for everyone to leave before climbing back out, because the mere thought of being seen in a swimsuit in front of all those people terrified her beyond measure. Talk about not being in control of your own career.

Janet Jackson (1982), in short, is the textbook example of a record made entirely "by committee". A bubblegum-disco-soul album clearly modeled on the success of Michael's "Off The Wall", yet across eight tracks it can't manage to piece together a single standout song. Even when the songwriting is formally solid — the nearly 7-minute opener "Say You Do", with its decent disco-music vibe, or the closer "Come Give Your Love To Me", in a passable new wave key — the overall impression is of something generically neither fish nor fowl. Ballads like "Love And My Best Friend" or "Forever Yours" are already explained by their syrupy titles alone. But the weakest link in the whole project is Janet herself, very young and inexperienced, delivering everything in the same flat register without ever shifting gears; whether she's singing it or Topo Gigio is singing it, the songs on Janet Jackson remain stubbornly unmemorable even after a marathon of repeated listens. The album reached No. 6 on the US r&b chart, but as time went by it would be irredeemably forgotten. For the modern listener it's as if it never existed at all (made worse by the fact that 1982 is also the year "Thriller" came out).

At the time, though, the outcome was encouraging enough that for the follow-up, Dream Street (1984), her father decided to hire none other than the old golden duo Giorgio Moroder/Pete Bellotte. Of course, disco music had been dead for a while by then, and in those years of general confusion, eccentric colors and the Second British Invasion, the duo's stock wasn't exactly at its peak. For Joseph Jackson, then, the budget was convenient — though in truth, if he could, he'd have handed everything over to Quincy Jones and called it a night. Ah, if only he could... but hey, why not at least try to imitate him?
According to Giorgio himself, the recording sessions for Dream Street quickly took on a surreal tone. Janet was a sweet, easygoing girl, but in practice she had no say whatsoever. In fact, every time she showed up at the studio, she arrived surrounded by a crowd of friends and various hangers-on, people who should have minded their own business while she worked but instead seemed suspiciously curious about everything she was doing. In short, to cut things short, Giorgio's work was scrutinized and reported back to daddy Joseph day after day, and the latter didn't seem to appreciate a single bar of what had been recorded (too European, of course!). So, through a back-and-forth of garbled messages relayed like carrier pigeons, Moroder found himself forced to rework, clean up and synthesize the entire project; by the end, that normally instantly recognizable sound had been reduced to a completely indistinct sludge.

Dream Street, in short, is a genuine mess. An album that would like to have the same classic punch as "Thriller", but in reality sounds at best like a cut-rate version of "Donna Summer" — that is, the self-titled 1982 album by Donna Summer, also produced by Quincy Jones (though honestly that wasn't exactly top-shelf quality either). Forcibly trendy, yet in a muddled way and utterly lacking in imagination, Dream Street sounds generic and drained of all color from the first to the last of its nine tracks, a melting pot of dance-r&b rhythms and synthetic flourishes of the kind that were a dime a dozen at the height of (Michael) Jacksonmania. But above all, the album doesn't even have a performer capable of rising above the murk the way Summer had (in flashes) on her own pastiche, because once again little, tightly managed Janet is, vocally speaking, practically a non-presence.

For Giorgio Moroder's career, Dream Street is little more than a pebble in the shoe, soon to be filed away under curious anecdotes (while commercially he would redeem himself the following year alongside Philip Oakey on the eternal "Together In Electric Dreams"). But for Team Jackson, the album's fortunes were so dismal that the situation became untenable, and Janet would soon react by seizing the reins of her own career once and for all. Put into numbers (according to the certifications of the time): if the lackluster, forgotten Janet Jackson had still managed to sell a standard figure of nearly 200,000 copies in the US, Dream Street probably sold fewer than 20,000 — a scandalously low number for the physical-format era, especially for an album by Michael Jackson's sister (numbers like that we only see today, in the age of free streaming and illegal downloads).
Daddy Joseph's control over the youngest of his three daughters ends here, with the creation of an album that vanished within a week. But whoever happens to own an original copy should know that die-hard fans are ready to pay through the nose to complete their collection, since to this day Dream Street has never been reissued, and Janet's regard for her early work is so low that an official reissue will in all likelihood never see the light of day. Somewhere on the globe, then, one assumes that unlucky little Dream Street is still quietly doing its job, making some old buyer happy as they finally recoup, with considerable interest, the money wasted on it back in the day. The important thing is not to let it slip back onto the turntable.

Gimme a beat! Or: the future of Black music — the era of Control

Dad, you're fired!

And so adolescence ends with a bang. After the failure of her last album, Janet decided she'd had enough of her father's control, and in an unprecedented move, fired him on the spot. Such a decision was certainly far more agonizing than the sentence above might suggest, but the push was necessary for her growth. In fact, in a fit of rebellion against her family, Janet even went so far as to marry, out of sheer spite, the wayward and abusive singer James DeBarge (one of the six siblings in the group of the same name, famous for the massive hit "Rhythm Of The Night"). Fortunately the marriage was annulled the following year, with cited grounds including his serious drug problems, but emotionally Janet would pay dearly for years to come. According to James, the two reportedly even had a daughter together at the time, though this was never officially confirmed.

What's certain is that by now, even the youngest of the Jacksons had developed the desire to be a full-time singer — but if that's how it was going to be, then she'd damn well decide for herself! Janet is nowhere near as naive and inexperienced as she's often portrayed; she broke free from her family and cut ties with her father, but kept her contract with A&M Records alive, along with the label's deputy director, John McClain, who would soon become her new manager. Joseph Jackson took it very badly; not only had he been dumped unceremoniously in front of the rest of the family, he also felt betrayed by his former associate, who was "stealing" his daughter's career right out from under him, and he would do everything he could to keep her as close as possible, asking her at the very least to keep working at a studio in town. Janet, of course, hopped on the first flight out and fled to Minneapolis.

McClain soon introduced her to two old acquaintances of his, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, excellent musicians and beatmakers, who had already worked with Prince. The two were true studio rats, driven by an insatiable curiosity, spending hours tweaking, synthesizing and reshaping the sounds produced by a brand-new drum machine — the Roland TR-808 — loosely following ideas sketched out a few months earlier by people in their circle, Teddy Riley and Bernard Belle in particular. But Jimmy and Terry were also skilled songwriters with several tracks already in rough form, and they were precisely looking for a voice able to tie it all together — ideally someone capable of marrying their distinctly "Black" sound with the energy of mainstream chart-pop. The chemistry with Janet was instant, and within a few days the trio was already recording new material. It would mark the start of one of the longest, most fruitful and inspired partnerships in the history of r&b, one that continues to this day. Janet, in particular, breathed deeply the fresh air injected by Jimmy and Terry; she soon began revising and rewriting much of the lyrics, drawing on her recent personal experiences, and in doing so she unleashed a vocal grit and interpretive fire that was entirely new. Overnight, the girl had grown up.

To the ears of teenagers at the time, the sound forged by the trio was the very quintessence of cool: think of the rawest hip-hop beats reprocessed through tribal-industrial textures à la Peter Gabriel, or thoroughly Prince-like keyboard treatments in the vein of "Parade"; think of frantic dance rhythms and near-jazz syncopations, with Janet's voice weaving aggressive urban-r&b melodies over the top. The Roland TR-808 has a thick, fat sound, the bass grain smears almost into techno territory: the seed of new jack swing had sprouted, and Control (1986) is the album that brought it to the world's attention, complete with Grammy and AMA nominations and sales in the millions.
Janet launched the new chapter of her career in the best possible way, with a hugely successful, historically significant album, one capable of setting trends for years to come while at the same time, once and for all, setting her apart from the output of her ever more famous brother.

American audiences are initially swept off their feet by the footage accompanying the iconic "What Have You Done For Me Lately". Her friend Paula Abdul – a skilled choreographer who had already worked with the Jackson 5, and a future popstar in her own right – spends her days with Janet crafting new dance routines, and the video for the new single plays out like a teenager's furious tirade against a clumsy, no-good boyfriend (the ex-husband, perhaps?). The scene is set in an ordinary diner, the kind frequented by countless kids her age; Janet moves like a tornado, oozing rhythm and energy from every pore, decked out in the classic look of the era, complete with an enormous mop of curls and the obligatory jacket with XL shoulder pads. A popstar is born, and the track – with its sturdy backbone wrapped in raw nerve – peaks at No. 4. The aggressive "Nasty" – the song featuring the famous line "call me Janet, Miss Jackson if you're nasty!" – climbs to No. 3, paving the way for the sparkling "When I Think Of You", which hits the top spot in July '86.
With "The Pleasure Principle", meanwhile, Janet delivers what would, in years to come, become her first true concert staple, even though at the time it didn't match the success of the earlier singles; it's a track with a more overtly funk-pop groove, and its accompanying video shows Janet to have all the makings of a top-tier dancer (and a physique light years away from her brother's slight frame).
But all this pales next to the image-defining triumph of the mini-film for the title track "Control", which exploits the communicative power of the music video in the MTV era to the fullest. The opening scene shows Janet arguing with her father, then leaving home with a group of friends to head to her first concert. On the record, in fact, "Control" opens with a brief spoken intro that reads:

This is a story about control
My control
Control of what I say
Control of what I do
And this time I’m gonna do it my way (my way)
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do
Are we ready?
I am
‘Cause it’s all about control (control)
And I’ve got lots of it

All utterly irresistible, in short. For teenagers of the era, Janet Jackson suddenly becomes the new icon to emulate, a feisty girl who's nonetheless down-to-earth and level-headed, capable of embodying the dream of every young person wanting to rebel against parental authority and start their own life outside the family nest.
Rounding out the picture of Control are the squared-off stride of "You Can Be Mine" and the carefree, diary-entry ditty "He Doesn't Know I'm Alive" (a forgivable lapse in taste). But audiences are most captivated by the two slow numbers: "Let's Wait Awhile", the customary good-girl moment that reads between the lines as "no, you're not getting it", and above all the limpid atmospheres of the closing "Funny How Times Fly (When You're Having Fun)", buoyed by an exquisitely delicate electro timbre and a measured beat – elements that would resurface throughout the following decade in countless tracks of the so-called neo-soul movement (and three decades later across the entire chill-r&b wave).

To today's ears, the sound of Control may well raise a smile for the somewhat clumsy way it has aged, and Janet's youthful vigor makes the whole thing at times overtly adolescent, but the themes it tackles are universal to pop music, and the project's execution is among the most accomplished of its kind. Add to that the creation of a sound capable of making an instant impact and setting the trend for years to come (even Michael and Prince would take cues from it), and what we have in hand is a small but significant piece of mid-80s American pop culture that's always worth revisiting.
Not only that: for anyone who loves wallowing shamelessly in the most unabashed new jack swing sounds of the era, it's also well worth digging up Control: The Remixes (1987), a compilation released exclusively in European and Japanese markets (where it was retitled "More Control"). The tracklist varies by country and format, but the UK CD version is the most complete of all, featuring eight tracks in dance-mix form, including two excellent remixes of "The Pleasure Principle" courtesy of Shep Pettibone, and the video-mix of "Control".

[Further listening: to get even a rough sense of the sheer reach of the new jack swing phenomenon, it's worth digging up at least the 4 volumes of "New Jack Swing Mastercuts", released between 1992 and 1995 by the Mastercuts series for Beechwood Music Ltd; from famous acts like Guy and Jodeci, to Bobby Brown, Keith Sweat and Wreckx-N-Effect, right through to the arrival of Mary J. Blige, TLC and R. Kelly & The Public Announcement, from the late 80s through the mid-90s the Jam & Lewis sound was everywhere, topping the charts as much as it ruled the most underground club dancefloors. Between those layering soul melodies on top, those invoking gospel, and those spitting brazen hip-hop rhymes, the new jack swing formula would serve as the scene's lingua franca for years to come – even in a negative sense, if you like, since once stripped of any trace of soulful feeling, that same rhythmic foundation would also become the blueprint underpinning the viral boyband phenomenon, particularly acts like *Nsync or the Backstreet Boys of the famous "Everybody"].

A nation pulsing to a beat

In a dark, rain-soaked, post-apocalyptic industrial setting straight out of "Blade Runner", a caged elevator descends from above. Footsteps, deafening noise, and the desperate gaze of a survivor. Then the countdown begins: 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1.. Janet and her dance crew explode into a razor-tight choreography, moving in sync with the precision of a well-oiled machine. Paramilitary jumpsuits, leather boots, dead-serious faces and black-and-white cinematography: "Rhythm Nation" bears down like a tank over a merciless industrial beat, verse and chorus bound together by Janet's ferocity and an all-male chorus.

Three years after her first wildly successful breakthrough, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) presents itself to the entire world with an aggressive new image, immediately staking its claim as the album that would finally carry its star across the threshold into full-time icon status.
The Jam/Lewis/Jackson trio remains firmly in charge behind the boards, and the new jack swing formula grows bigger, more bombastic and more explicit than ever. Having left behind the teenage anti-patriarchal outbursts of the previous record, Janet now turns her gaze to contemporary America, highlighting themes such as social inequality and the importance of education. The album is in fact presented as a concept album, 12 tracks plus 8 interludes binding everything into a deliberate, front-to-back listen. Of course, the fact that Janet came from a family that had grown financially comfortable well before she reached adulthood doesn't go unnoticed, but her stance comes across as genuine and largely free of rhetoric; hers is still a young, politically correct voice, yet one capable of speaking with integrity, to the point that for audiences it felt like listening to the comforting – and at times sharp-tongued – voice of an older sister.
The dark cover art and a jacket buttoned up to the neck capture well how much of the album unfolds: a relentlessly synthetic run where tracks like "State Of The World" and "The Knowledge" press forward on powerful rhythms, while the aggressive guitars of "Black Cat" even flirt with hard-rock touches.

But it's not all industrial beats and social commentary; Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 also knows how to deliver moments of lightness and intimacy, tempering the relentless march of Jam and Lewis's keyboards and offering up a few delightfully catchy pop songs. Wisely chosen as the third single, "Escapade" is a deliberately carefree, romantic flight into youthful pop, though still carried by a consistently robust beat, and the same can be said of the tight yet spirited "Miss You Much" (both tracks topped the charts).
But once again Janet is at her best when the tempo eases and the tone turns delicate, because few other voices in her field can color a whisper quite like she can. A track like "Lonely" stands out, a tender, confessional moment dedicated to anyone suffering from loneliness and mental isolation (lyrics that, years later, Janet would have to rededicate to herself), but the crown goes to the more than 6 minutes of the closing "Someday Is Tonight", an intimate, nocturnal piece seasoned with a thread of noir-jazz trumpet.

The success of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 is overwhelming, and for a while it nearly rivals her brother's "Bad", though by this point the comparison between the two barely makes sense anymore, since Janet is now on a trajectory entirely her own, propelled by a sound that makes her a trendsetting artist on her own merits. The rest of the world finally takes notice of the youngest Jackson sibling's existence, while in America the triumph is unstoppable: over the nearly two years separating the first and last singles released from the album, all seven of them land within Billboard's top 5 (four of them hitting No. 1 outright). It's a record that remains unbroken to this day, a clear testament to the album's staying power in the public imagination. Sure, its sound has remained frozen in time, and Janet herself would be the first to shed it heading into the '90s, but then as now, the legacy of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 makes it one of the most respected and celebrated albums in r&b history, a true piece of American pop culture.

The rest is taken care of by the "Rhythm Nation World Tour 1990", her first-ever concert run, which bulldozes its way around the globe, racking up over 2 million tickets sold across 113 dates – an all-time record for a pop singer's debut tour. Audiences and critics alike are thrilled, and Janet confirms herself as an outstanding live performer, punching another crucial ticket on her way to becoming an icon of popular music. It's worth noting, though, that many immediately pick up on the fact that vocals aren't the strongest part of the show; while she's capable of always hitting a flawless pitch (just like her brother, good ears run in the family), Janet's intimate, gentle timbre is undoubtedly better suited to the studio than the stage. Pre-recorded backing tracks are therefore used to accompany the songs, over which Janet sings live, aiming to get as close as possible to the sound of the studio records, though the difference between what's performed live and what isn't remains fairly evident to the audience. It's a technique often criticized by some professionals, but one that is, all things considered, honest, since it doesn't attempt to paper over any weaknesses, but rather aims to deliver a pleasing effect for the paying audience in the room – and it remains widely used in pop music to this day.
Above all, though, the use of these backing tracks makes perfect sense the moment Janet steps on stage, because where the voice falls short, the body more than makes up for it. Watching her move together with her dance crew – carefully assembled from both trained professionals and street break dancers to recreate on stage just the right blend of formal technique and urban energy – is a spectacle in itself, a visually dazzling, high-adrenaline tour de force, with one tightly-wound choreography following another in a breathtaking sequence. Janet isn't just another popstar shuffling about on stage while the rest of the crew builds the show around her, no: Janet is the leader of the entire group, and everyone else has to keep up with her. No one, frankly, should really expect a human being – however young and fit – to carry a 90-minute show performing demanding choreography while singing every note live without ever losing their breath. Madonna knows this well too, the true queen of the stage who, more than anyone, managed to turn the concert into an all-encompassing event, transcending the voice altogether. Someone ought to remind jealous old auntie Elton John.

Naked, as if the 80s had never happened

The room is quite crowded, with people shouting and singing, dancing and chasing each other around the table. Everyone has an opinion and raises their voice to make it heard – "do this, do that, listen to this!". Sitting in a corner, Janet watches it all with the patience of a mother, letting everyone else go at it as much as they like. Then, when she's had enough, she gets up and starts weaving her own web, exactly as she pleases. The advantage of growing up in a large family like the Jacksons shows itself in an innate team spirit, in being able to feel at ease amid other people's opinions without ever losing sight of her own goal. Light years away from the typical overbearing, egocentric popstar image so beloved in the 80s, Janet is the quiet girl next door who flashes a knowing smile while letting the waves carry her along. No point stressing out, since in the end she'll do exactly what she wants anyway: an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Indeed, with the shift of a decade and a newfound emotional and artistic maturity, Janet completely changes her approach to her art; in September 1993, the cover of Rolling Stone shows her to the entire world half-naked, her breasts barely covered by a pair of male hands reaching in from behind her – one of the most iconic and talked-about photos of the era. Welcome to the bombastic 90s, where attitudes toward sex and the body take on a bolder, more libertine role, almost reminiscent of the disco era, and where Janet too has become a woman, amid shock and cheers from an audience going wild at the sight of a perfect navel and a sinuous body toned by years of dancing. But the whole world jumps out of its seat again upon discovering that those male hands belong to one René Elizondo Jr, a dancer she met through her sister LaToya, whom Janet had, in the meantime, secretly married. A new multi-million-dollar deal with Virgin (the largest ever signed in the record industry up to that point) officially puts Janet on the final stretch toward the pantheon of the great popstars of the last century.

The thing is, her navel may be bared, but Janet's got the goods to back it up. "That's The Way Love Goes" storms the world's charts that year, immediately establishing itself as her new manifesto, a smooth, nocturnal track steeped in innate softness and a certain sensuality; it becomes a massive hit, helped in no small part by its iconic accompanying video showing Janet surrounded by a colorful group of friends (and if you look closely among the extras, you'll spot a very young Jennifer Lopez).
The secret, in short, lies in knowing how to shed one's skin at just the right moment without losing one's identity, and janet. (1993) is the most striking example of this. Janet, Jam & Lewis put together a sort of catch-all album, 14 tracks and as many interludes forming a sprawling concept spanning over an hour of music, ranging far and wide across decades of popmuzik, shuffling the deck until it all melts into a sonic magma bearing Janet's own imprint. There's talk of love and sex, racism and freedom, repressed anger and loneliness, but the typical sounds of new jack swing are by now ill-suited to the task. So Janet makes a sharp turn, revealing a brand-new attitude within the world of r&b: it's no longer about decoding, at all costs, the new sound of Black America, so to speak, but rather about expanding that palette out to the rest of the world, opening up new possibilities for intersection, where communication happens between human beings before it happens between races or social classes.

Working your way through janet., you'll come across a frantic house track that looks to British club culture ("Throb"), a pop-rock moment ("What I'll Do"), and the single "If", seasoned with hefty electric guitars, which arrived with a famous video riding the wave of America's fascination with the imagery of old Asia and martial arts (audiences would have plenty to debate over the fact that the object of Janet's desire in said video is an Asian man, and the term "blasian" was suddenly on everyone's lips).
But also standing out are the more than 6 minutes of the vengeful "This Time", featuring a lyrical soprano counter-vocal, and above all the sampledelia of "Funky Big Band", a synthetic track built by sampling the sound of an entire 1920s brass band (Timbaland and Pharrell would have only had to take notes). The fashion of the moment, meanwhile, is tracks like "You Want This" and "Because Of Love", true examples of crossover between r&b and dance-pop, capable of taking over the collective imagination, though the more delicate numbers like "Where Are You Now" and "The Body That Loves You" also do well. Nor could a proper piano-and-orchestra ballad like "Again" be left out. But Janet also knows how not to take herself too seriously: the ghost track "Whoops Now" is essentially a moment of pure trolling, poking fun at the bland bubblegum sound of her early days – at first Janet even sings it straight-faced, but soon the track descends into chaos, amid general laughter from her and her backing singers.

The real highlight, though, is "Any Time, Any Place", a genuine neo-soul moment well ahead of schedule; a hushed groove kept in time with a finger snap, while Janet's voice aches with the desire of a love that's both delicate and carnal. Here too the video does its job of grabbing the audience's attention, playing on the viewer's voyeuristic streak as we watch a courtship unfold between next-door neighbours. Virgin would also release a trendier, far flatter alternative version of the song courtesy of R. Kelly, which doesn't come close to the atmosphere of the original but still does well with the public.
Symptomatic of its era yet carrying an attitude visibly ahead of its contemporaries, janet. is a record that's still an absolute pleasure to listen to today. The artist's personality finally takes centre stage within the work, her voice a beacon in the night for countless listeners at home, who find in her comfort, honesty and spicy confidences, as though she were a trusted friend. While much of the scene is still grappling with new jack swing, and the Houston/Carey/Dion triumvirate is shifting truckloads of records and bringing the power-vocalist back into vogue, a versatile Janet slips away fresh and light as a fish in the current, and in doing so ends up gathering an even bigger audience than her already formidable following; the success of janet. and its singles is enormous, the album remains to this day her multi-platinum bestseller and is one of the defining moments in the popular imagination of the Nineties.

But the success now engulfing Janet soon shows its side effects too. The 125 dates of the "janet. World Tour" — played out between November 1993 and May 1995 — would be a monstrous tour de force during which she poured out all her energy, exhausting herself to the point of nervous breakdown, and surfacing a whole series of insecurities and phobias that would later find release on her next album. This is also the period in which her beloved brother Michael finds himself facing the first of a long series of legal cases over his conduct towards minors, and the stress sets family relationships ablaze (as well as the entire American justice system...). In a gesture of pure sibling love, as much as controversial unconditional support, Janet stands by him to record a much-anticipated duet: "Scream", a true hi-tech production that spares no expense and marks a new frontier for 90s r&b production. The accompanying video goes down in history as the most expensive ever made up to that point, and despite the overload of nineties symbolism that now makes it feel almost like a caricature, it's still well worth revisiting.

But regardless of the criticism Janet drew over her choices concerning her family, the public had by now crowned her as the new champion of r&b, so in Europe and Japan Janet.Remixed (1995) was released. There are two B-sides: "And On And On" is already a well-known track in its own right, a great radio moment inexplicably left off the original album. But the best is without doubt the sex-jam turn of the previously unreleased "70's Love Groove", a proper slow-burner full of whispers and coy affectation, reminiscent of Donna Summer and all the ladies of the night who ruled the charts in that era (and for the occasion Janet even staged a photoshoot inspired by the period, as you can see alongside here).
The remixes, meanwhile, cover the entire spectrum of 90s dance music and beyond. Brothers In Rhythm handle a very soulful version of "If", but the biggest names are Frankie Knuckles & David Morales, who take on a synthetic version of "Because Of Love", while Morales alone also reworks the already dancefloor-oriented "Throb", turning it into a techno-orgiastic bacchanal of over 9 minutes — and so Janet too clocks in at the Warehouse. There's an amusing contribution from Dave Navarro, who cranks up the rock guitars on "What I'll Do", while from England Nellee Hooper lends his services with a soft version of "Where Are You Now".
Janet.Remixed might be filed under curiosities, but it's a solid record warmly recommended to genre fans, since it flows with all the careful attention of a proper studio album, moving between soulful-house, r&b, rock, with no unnecessary repetition. Worth noting, if anything, is that the double-vinyl version contains 4 extra tracks compared to the standard edition, including a ballad that strongly recalls her brother's style, "One More Chance" (originally the b-side of "If").

After this orgy of sounds and colours that's utterly nineties, it feels strange to then hold Janet's first career retrospective — Design of a Decade: 1986-1996 (1995) — and realize that, aside from two not-exactly-memorable new tracks ("Runaway" and "Twenty Foreplay"), the only 90s song on it is "That's The Way Love Goes". Everything else is just singles from the Control and Rhythm Nation era — all perfectly valid material, but in this context it feels like turning the clock backwards, and does nothing to showcase the new direction of her career, which by this decade is capable of offering so much more.
Various pressings of the album feature different tracklists, but the limited international edition adds a second disc with 5 further tracks that timidly attempt to dig up a few moments from her two largely forgotten early studio albums. Either way, this is once again a multi-million-selling record around the globe, one that helps cement Janet's image in the eyes of the whole world, while at the same time piling the pressure onto her.

The velvet cord

It's also thanks to Janet herself that, by the mid-Nineties, the landscape surrounding black music seems particularly receptive to other sounds. A new movement called neo-soul is taking hold thanks to the unconditional support of critics and a decent slice of the audience — figures like Meshell Ndegeocello, Maxwell and D'Angelo are hailed as champions of a new way of understanding the roots of African-American culture, through a mix of nostalgia for old 70s soul, urban alienation and an intensely contemporary social awareness. The fabric of r&b, too, is starting to shift ever more visibly, with the mainstream charts having to reckon with products that combine huge sales with a pop quality that's anything but a given, from TLC to the voice of the ghetto Mary J. Blige and the much-talked-about r&b "conversion" of the 90s' ultimate bestseller, Mariah Carey. But across the ocean things are even more interesting, with trip-hop capturing the imagination of the most attentive listeners, while various styles of dance music slip in and blend into the fabric, from drum'n'bass to techno to eurodance.

The hip-hop world, too, is in ferment, and not just around gangsta aesthetics; there are powerful, probing figures like The Roots, for instance, and Guru with his existentialist flow set in a smoky jazz bar. But above all, this is the moment of the talented and visionary J Dilla, whose productions expand and deconstruct decades of black music into a new language that would go on to influence generations to come. It's him, together with Q Tip, who created — among countless others — a beat that circulates unreleased within recording-studio circles; a few years later Jam & Lewis dig it up and get their hands on it, while an enthusiastic Janet goes all in and personally contacts Joni Mitchell to ask her permission to sample "Big Yellow Taxi" and splice it with Q Tip's part. The result is this little masterpiece:

Janet is on the move again, pushed forward like never before. The track isn't officially released as a single, but it introduces the world to the uncompromising new direction of a thirty-year-old woman in the full stride of her journey. But this time it's no longer simply a matter of staying current or getting ahead of some trend. René, her husband, joins the Jam & Lewis team, and the three of them, along with various other collaborators, butt heads for over two years of work, trying to deliver a hugely anticipated follow-up to the previous album, by now re-secured to Virgin with a monster $80 million contract. But Janet takes her time and stays away; she sits apart and leafs through her diary, rereading pages crammed with words written in handwriting so dense it spills out of the lines and piles on top of itself in a thick magma of memories and seemingly unspeakable emotions.
What people don't know, in other words, is that within a few years, the famous popstar who leaps onto the stage with the energy of a gazelle has suffered an emotional collapse that often makes it impossible for her to get out of bed. She's in therapy to treat the depression gripping her day and night, and to curb the severe anxiety attacks that keep her from leaving the house. She's even gone on a pilgrimage into the desert, to meet a "cowboy" of dubious magical powers, hoping to find some spiritual guidance that might reconnect her with the world around her. Fame and money mean little if you're not at peace with yourself, and that long-cherished American dream — once attained — proves to be just smoke, especially when the price to pay is the pressure of having to keep a career going that's measured in staggering numbers, and of always having to look her best the moment she steps outside and gets mobbed by paparazzi. When Janet is alone and looks in the mirror, she finds herself overwhelmed by severe bulimia and dangerous episodes of self-harm. The natural obsession with the body, typical of any dancer, compounds with the social and cultural pressures dictating the image a Black woman must conform to in order to keep her place in the spotlight; in Janet's case, the debilitating result of such pressure is the constant whittling-down of her nose, which by now has already crossed the threshold of realism in pursuit of a shape that's essentially impossible to achieve (even though, in the Jackson household, the obsession with the delicate French-style nose has been standard practice since the 70s). That's why "Got 'Til It's Gone" and its accompanying video matter so much to her: the union of J Dilla's skin-deep urban atmospheres, the idealization of a more tribal Africa, Q Tip's rap and the words of a titan of world songwriting like Joni Mitchell essentially amount to the creation of her own very personal world, a kind of quiet island where she can express her identity outside the standards set by her family, the media, the musical conventions of the time and the colour of her skin.

The whole of The Velvet Rope (1997) is her personal masterpiece, a record that musically looks outward in order to help express the feelings stirring within. She herself explains it in these words:

We've all driven by premieres or nightclubs, and seen the rope separating those who can enter and those who can't. Well, there's also a velvet rope we have inside us, keeping others from knowing our feelings. In The Velvet Rope, I'm trying to expose and explore those feelings. I'm inviting you inside my velvet rope. I have a need to feel special, and so do you. We share a burning need to belong. During my life, I've been on both sides of the rope. At times, especially during my childhood, I felt left out and alone. At times I felt misunderstood. Times when I ran into the backyard to confide in our dogs. Through them, I felt like I was talking to God. But no human heard those feelings expressed. They stay buried in my past. But the truth has to come out, and, for me, the truth takes the form of a song.

And to achieve such a result, the typical r&b formula has to be reshaped into new territory. The opening is among the most overwhelming; "Velvet Rope" moves over a velvety, tense electronic pulse and the intricately woven sample of the famous "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield, while in the bridge Vanessa Mae's classical violin goes wild in a jarring solo. By contrast, the sweltering mood of "You", framed by synthetic violins, drags itself through a mumbled vocal and a chorus where the voice rises but is filtered through a phone receiver, as if trying to convey that very sense of anger and numb indifference running through the lyrics. When instead Janet turns her attention to the gripping sense of loneliness and isolation, the result is "Empty", whose shifting, digitized polyrhythm dusted with little bells sounds like a clear homage to Bjork, and the gorgeous productions of "I Get So Lonely" and "My Need" — three tracks for which the correct term today might well be "alternative r&b".

It's never been made clear, however, who exactly the tale of domestic violence in "What About" is really about, a passive-aggressive track built on the contrast between the languid verses and the outburst of the chorus; some believe it's about her ex-husband, others draw a strained parallel with the Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair, but it could just as easily be about her current partner René, a husband as passionate and talented as he is an unrepentant womanizer and male chauvinist, just as it could be a reference to her sister LaToya's stormy relationship with Gordon. Around this time, after all, the furious and draining fights between Janet and LaToya reach their peak, to the point that the two won't speak for years. The underlying reason behind the trouble in their relationship isn't so much jealousy as the hateful realization of seeing themselves helplessly mirrored in one another, because — albeit with different outcomes — both are perpetually subjugated by a male presence trying to control their every move: once it was their father, now it's their respective husbands (“What about the times you lied to me/ What about the times you said no one would want me/ What about the shit you’ve done to me/ What about that?”).

But to be fair, René is also a man capable of showing love and evidently having a great deal of sex, helping Janet open up her intimacy after years of repression and religious upbringing, and at the same time spurring her on to write and put her thoughts down on paper (most of the tracks are also co-written by him). The unprecedented jazzy swing of "Rope Burn" and the steamy "Anything" get tangled up in the sheets, talking frankly about S&M and masturbation, while musically setting a new standard for the development of certain strands of r&b and the soul-step of years to come: that idea of "space" within the track, achieved through minimal arrangements and the barest thread of rhythm, kept in time with little more than a finger snap.
It's also striking to hear Rod Stewart's "Tonight's The Night" turned into a sensual game of mutual understanding with possible homosexual undertones, since — in the midst of searching for herself — Janet had also begun exploring new horizons. The question of homosexuality is addressed above all on "Free Xone", a wonderfully original collage that could only be described as "stop/pop & go/funk"; Janet delivers her tribute to diversity without compromise, even at the cost of drawing criticism from the Catholic wing of her audience, and of seeing The Velvet Rope pulled from shelves in some Asian countries.
Everything is then sealed with "Together Again", the true linchpin of the record, dedicated to a gay friend who had passed away after a long battle with AIDS. Over a very simple eurodance backing, Janet sings a purely pop melody, able to shift with the slightest chord change between the ache of missing a loved one and a sense of hope rooted in the firm belief that, one day, the two will be together again — all the unbearable lightness of pop hidden inside a dance track. Knowing that the song remains (rightly) one of the best-selling singles in history, and that part of the proceeds went to AIDS research, is always a small comfort against the ills of the world: don't trust anyone who tells you otherwise.

The success of The Velvet Rope is once again enormous, even though it doesn't quite match the sales of the previous record; paradoxically, it's America itself that proves coldest towards the album, taken aback to see one of the biggest popstars of the era tackling uncomfortable subjects like violence, depression and masturbation, while her musical fabric transcends the notion of African-American music to embrace new currents within pop music at large. By contrast, it's Europe that welcomes Janet with open arms, thanks first of all to the success of "Together Again", which fits perfectly into the eurodance wave sweeping the continent at the time, and then thanks to a record that, as a whole, manages to speak on multiple levels. Janet has crossed the finish line, her voice has gained a new depth that officially makes her a singer-songwriter worthy of the title, and one that — no offense to the fans — has by now far surpassed the polish of Michael, since the latter, however creative and talented, never had (and never will have) the nerve to set his true personality to music so uncompromisingly.

Alongside the equally huge success of a brilliant Lauryn Hill the following year, The Velvet Rope is a record that, in its own small way, makes history. Janet is certainly not the first to express such feelings, nor is she the first to shuffle the cards of r&b, but she is undoubtedly the most prominent woman of her time to carry out such a transformation, bringing to the attention of millions of listeners a new way of understanding African-American music. Over the years, in fact, The Velvet Rope has taken on an almost prophetic role, since its influence still looms large today, both across the charts of half the world and in the more indie-leaning corners of music: from the brilliant attitude of Kanye West, Timbaland and Missy Elliott, to the shadowy melancholy of the UK contingent made up of James Blake, Jamie Woon and Rosie Lowe, from the existentialist confessions of Drake, The Weeknd and Frank Ocean to the rising stars Tinashe and Kelela, and to the frenzied dances of DAWN and Ciara — Janet Jackson serves as godmother, and The Velvet Rope is her Bible. After all, it's enough to glance at some of the heavyweight names invoked here — Mitchell, Oldfield, Stewart — to grasp just how important Janet's role has been in the development of contemporary popular music. And should any doubts remain, always remember one thing: Joni Mitchell never lies...

Sex songs for the new Millennium

How do you deal with the end of a marriage? How do you pick yourself back up with pride, maybe telling the person who hurt you to go to hell? Has anyone ever asked you if you've truly been in love at least once in your life? All tremendously irritating questions, but ones that force whoever's being asked into an inevitable reckoning with their own past relationships. Janet is no stranger to the feeling either; the new millennium finds her single again after the dramatic end of her marriage to René Elizondo, grappling with the aches of the past and a renewed desire to take hold of her own life and have a little fun, helped along by that shiver of new possibilities running down her spine. The answer to all these questions is wrapped up in an album with an unmistakable title: All For You (2001).

A cover as spotless as a fabric-softener ad, a 36-tooth smile and a naked body wrapped in a white fur stole (open up the CD booklet for a closer look), All For You marks the start of a new chapter in Janet's life and career: new millennium, new love, new life. It's all sealed by a desire to discover new music and expand her list of collaborators even further in search of fresh energy. Not everything will make it onto the record — far from it — but Janet's new attitude ends up drastically changing her sound anyway. This includes, for instance, sessions with the Neptunes, Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, with whom Janet recorded several tracks that would never be released under her own name — though at least two of them would later be re-recorded by other artists: "Boys" would find success through Britney Spears, while "What It Is" would turn into a duet between Busta Rhymes and a rising Kelis. There were also flirtations with the sound of Basement Jaxx and Thievery Corporation, Missy Elliott and Outkast, and even two attempted duets — one with Aaliyah and one with Robbie Williams — neither of which was ever finished.
The die was cast: for the first time since 1986, Janet brought in a fourth co-producer, Rockwilder, a well-known name in pop-r&b circles, and All For You bears his mark all over it. In fact, when Janet returns to the fold with Jam & Lewis, the two barely recognize her anymore; she shows up with messy hair and a goofy grin plastered on her face, at times staring off into space with her head in the clouds, at others bouncing on the couch like a lunatic. What happened to the fragile, hypersensitive author of The Velvet Rope? Simple: after the far-from-amicable collapse of her marriage to Elizondo, Janet met the not-exactly-handsome but decidedly charismatic producer Jermaine Dupri, and between the two of them sparked the tenderest and, at the same time, wildest of passions — one that would last nine long years of cuddling, emotional storms and terrible tattoos (Google it: Jermaine Dupri + tattoos).

All For You splits roughly into four sections. On one side there are the massively successful pop singles that catapult Janet back to the top of charts around the world; radio-friendly to the point of sickly-sweet thanks to that electric piano sample, "All For You" finds Janet setting out to conquer a good-looking guy she's spotted at a club, and the words she dedicates to him are anything but shy (“All my girls at the party/ Look at that body/ Shakin’ that thing/ Like I never did see/ Got a nice package alright/ Guess I’m gonna have to ride it tonight”).
Gentler but still damned irresistible is the other hugely famous single, "Someone To Call My Lover," built on that springtime guitar riff borrowed from "Ventura Highway" by America and the famous piano line from Erik Satie's "Gymnopédie No.1," lifted and rewoven into the chorus. Also included is the r&b-pop with garage syncopation of "Doesn't Really Matter," a 2000 track pulled from the soundtrack of the thoroughly dumb "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" with Eddie Murphy. All three songs top the charts in the US for weeks, and do extremely well in Europe, Japan and the rest of the globe too.

Then there are the tracks clearly aimed at her ex-husband, bruised with anger and muted disappointment, such as the synth avalanches backing "You Ain't Right," and the savage electro-rock of "Trust A Try," famous for that opening refrain over which Janet rattles off words at supersonic speed — decent, but far too polished and already-heard-before. But the real unforgivable lapse in taste comes with "Son Of A Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You)," a track that unimaginatively rehashes the formula of "Got 'Til It's Gone"; this time the guest of honor is Carly Simon, repeating ad libitum a line from her famous "You're So Vain," while the rest of the song is built around her exactly as you'd expect — but the result has none of the lightness or the genius of the original idea, and it all gets lost over nearly six incredibly tedious minutes (not even the remix by Missy Elliott and P. Diddy, released as the single version, manages to save it).

But what really creates a stir now are the so-called sex songs, Janet's new obsession. These are slow, hazy tracks bordering on the intangible, genuine slow-jams conceived between the sheets and whispered into the microphone — while imagining that microphone to be a certain part of Dupri's anatomy (that's not a joke). "When We Oooo" and "Love Scene (Ohh Baby)" are self-explanatory just from their titles, but the peak of brazenness is reached (literally) with "Would You Mind," whose lyrics at one point go:

Baby would you mind kissing me
All over my body
You missed a spot – there
Baby would you mind tasting me
It's making me all juicy
Feeling your lips on mine

[…]

Baby would you mind coming inside of me
Letting your juices free
Deep in my passion

There's really not much to add here, except to point out that the interlude "Lame," which comes right after "Would You Mind," has Janet — after moaning like a Donna Summer for the four minutes of the previous track — complaining that her man has already come while she still hasn't finished. A warning to all the men listening: Janet is absolutely not a fan of premature ejaculation.

There are several ways of looking at All For You. On one hand, it's undeniably a massively successful record, its sound once again riding the crest of the moment and one that future pop stars will take as a model. With fifteen years of sustained success behind her, Janet Jackson is by now a true icon who has figured out the game and reinvents herself effortlessly with every move — a constant of her career that will never again be abandoned. But on the other hand, this is certainly the first album since her days under her father's control in which inspiration falters almost consistently, in favor of a formula that — however freshly dressed up — repeats itself without much bite. Then again, Janet is happy and in love right now, and has no need to torment her soul with existential troubles. So the more introspective tracks, like "Better Days," "Theory" and "China Love," no longer seem to leave much of a mark the way they once did, even though they offer a broad glimpse into the emotional and spiritual rebirth Janet is working through in her private life — another theme that's nothing short of "eternal" in pop music.
But above all, it's the first signs of audience fatigue that explain why All For You is today a largely forgotten record, except for those two or three massively famous tracks. Because nothing of it comes through in the radio-friendly singles, obviously, but anyone venturing into the sex songs finds lyrics that are, to put it mildly, explicit, and All For You rightfully earns itself the famous Parental Advisory black sticker. Janet has gone a bit too far, some say, her good taste is slipping. Poor souls — this is still nothing.

Nipples, sweat & oral sex: Janet mistakes the Super Bowl stage for her own bedroom and unwittingly sets off the explosion of social networks. In other words, all the hypocrisy of the people-behind-the-screen and the stubbornness of a Diva, summed up in 5 simple steps

1) The Facts: Houston, February 1, 2004. Janet Jackson is the main attraction of the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII, the famous and fiercely contested football final that has for decades marked the climax of the American sporting season (Michael's 1993 performance remains legendary). The show itself this time around is a tasteless, over-the-top spectacle; P. Diddy (in a fur coat) and Nelly (greasy, in a white tank top) rap surrounded by a troupe of cheerleaders, Kid Rock shows up wrapped in an obscene American-flag jersey and bellows into the mic, while fireworks and balloons explode all around, dancers hang from cables, and a marching band in military uniform rolls by. But a fired-up Janet initially makes a great impression, moving with the swagger of a panther amid the jubilant crowd on the field, dancing and singing along with her; she opens the show with "All For You" and returns later with "Rhythm Nation," while for the grand finale she's joined onstage by her protégé Justin Timberlake, and together the two romp around chasing each other happily while singing his massive hit, "Rock Your Body." But right at the very last second, as the music is about to end and the lights are about to go down, Justin reaches for Janet's leather bustier with his hand and pulls away one cup, exposing her breast and nipple for a split second — covered, as it turns out, by a metal ninja-star-shaped pastie.

2) The Reactions: Just a split second of exposed breast, then — so brief that the crowd present barely even notices. But for the 143 million viewers watching from their couches, the incident is apparently a huge shock, as if no one had ever seen a breast before. Janet is still in the car on her way to the hotel when the complaint calls start pouring in; the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is besieged, and will soon slap her with a $500,000 fine for indecency and obscenity. Apologies do nothing, nor does the (genius) term coined specifically to explain away the incident, "wardrobe malfunction." Even CBS — the network responsible for the broadcast — is pilloried for not cutting away from the footage in time, while MTV — the organizer of the show — has its contract for any future Super Bowl involvement officially severed, with the event to be handled by others from then on.
Within a single night the story is blown wildly out of proportion, and the following day the entire world seems to be talking about nothing else, while the image of Janet's half-exposed breast is replayed endlessly on news broadcasts across the planet. The media splits between those outraged beyond all reason and those who think the whole thing is a pointless non-story that shouldn't even be reported. But in a strange fit of anger and indignation, much of America — long the homeland of some of the most naked and foul-mouthed pop stars in history — seems instead to decide that Janet's nipple is a moral affront that absolutely cannot be tolerated. A public shaming for everyone involved, basically.

3) The Side Effects: The fallout soon goes well beyond the ridiculous/moralistic debate, and goes straight into the record books. The 2007 Guinness World Records lists Janet Jackson as the most searched-for person in the history of the internet up to that point, while the Nielsen Television Research Company ranks the episode as the single biggest media-impact moment involving a musician in the past 50 years (rivaled only by Whitney Houston's death in 2012). But that's not all: Jawed Karim, one of the three co-founders of YouTube, credits the incident as one of the inspirations behind the creation of his site — the spark, he says, came from the frustration of struggling to find a copy of the video of Janet's nipple that he could watch ad libitum and share online. Just four days after the event, meanwhile, a certain Mark Zuckerberg moves up the launch of a little website called Facebook; like Karim, he too claims to have been deeply intrigued by the "viral" effect an episode like Janet's could bring to his cause. The internet is fast becoming a communicative power to be reckoned with, and Janet's nipple seems to be the definitive proof of its enormous potential. The rest, as they say, is contemporary history. Like it or not, the spread like wildfire of social networks — on which all of us now live and communicate "embedded" in data up to our necks — owes something, too, to Janet Jackson's (lovely) breasts.

4) Stubbornness Doesn't Pay: The problem, however, grows even bigger when Janet decides to push ahead with her plans and release, as scheduled, Damita Jo (2004) just one month after the nipple incident. It's a rather crowd-pleasing record that, even more than its predecessors, shifts the focus toward bedroom intimacy, all damp electro-slow-jams and whispered interludes of pure bodily desire. Which doesn't mean Damita Jo is a bad record — quite the opposite. Compared to the less convincing All For You, and indeed to many contemporary works in the same genre — not least the solid solo debut of the statuesque Beyoncé, who was bringing the belter archetype back into vogue in r&b — Damita Jo boasts one of the best productions around: synthetic and futuristic, but also warm and tropical. Certainly, the delicate introspection of her best years is gone, but then again Janet is happy and in love with her handsome Jermaine right now, and like all Taurus-in-Venus types, she loves indulging in whatever brings her the most pleasure — namely love, cuddling, and plenty of sex.
From the airy urban-Motown atmosphere of "Damita Jo" to the sweltering heat of "Sexhibition," from the whispers of "Island Life" and "Strawberry Bounce" to the glossy neo-soul of "Spending Time With You" and the bounce of "R&B Junkie," Damita Jo is certainly another album-as-product that doesn't compete with the glories of the '90s, but this time it's damn well made and a genuine pleasure to listen to, at least for anyone already into the genre. It's no coincidence that a very young Kanye West, an avowed fan and eternal debtor of hers, pulls every string he can to get on the record, co-writing several tracks and dropping his rap on a solid radio moment like "My Baby." In the liner notes, Janet herself dedicates a rather cryptic line to him, open to interpretation:

Kanye, your infectious energy is felt on this album, and I thank you for that. I can’t wait ‘til our next juicy conversation

In America, Damita Jo debuts at number two on the chart and soon goes platinum, but its success doesn't seem to catch on the way her previous records' did, partly because both radio and MTV refuse to play the various singles released from it. The breezy, catchy pop-rock of "Just A Little While" isn't anything too thrilling, but it could easily have slotted into her run of successful pop singles alongside the previous album's hits. But the media boycott soon makes it vanish from circulation, despite an initially warm critical response and an early surge in digital sales (the accompanying video probably doesn't help the cause either, since it shows Janet dancing in front of the camera squeezed into a red latex bustier, her chest looking ready to burst with every step).
Far more worthwhile, if anything, is the following single "I Want You," a delightful revisiting of vintage soul skillfully updated for the times — both the rhythm section, all syncopation and bounce, and the sweeping string arrangement on top are excellent. Considering that just a few years later in the UK, artists like Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Adele would shine a spotlight on exactly this kind of sound (not always with such "modern" results), the track could almost have built a cult following of its own, but the media blackout holds and its chart presence amounts to zero (and here too, the accompanying video doesn't help the cause, because despite the intention of creating a romantic scenario, Janet is shown walking down the street with a neckline held up by what can only be described as a "horizontal push-up"...).
But it might have been "All Nite (Don't Stop)" above all that could have turned into a great dancefloor filler, built on a simply irresistible tribal-futurist beat over which Janet pants and rattles off words in a breathy half-whisper. But of course a track like that is the exact opposite of what the media want from her. And so, while other "tramps" of the moment churn out wildly celebrated, screaming urban hits — "I'm A Slave 4 U" by Britney Spears, "Milkshake" by Kelis, "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani and "Fergalicious" by Fergie — the ultimate "tramp," Janet, gets buried by censorship.

Damita Jo survives on the strength of past legacy, then, but plenty of people approach it almost warily, a bit like what happened with Madonna's "Erotica" after the release of that famous little photo book with the studded cover.
Damita Jo is an album that's largely forgotten today for its musical merits, and remembered only for its extra content; in Eastern markets, the tracks "Warmth" (a lesson in oral sex) and "Moist" (the damp consequence of said lesson) are cut entirely from the tracklist to create the so-called Clean Version of the album — a choice that speaks volumes about how much Janet's persistence was damaging her image on a global scale.

5) History Teaches a Lesson: Janet's fall from grace opens the door to a new media landscape, where the line between gossip and news grows ever blurrier, and where the opinion of any random person can potentially carry as much weight as that of an expert. Justin Timberlake (a very cunning and very cowardly man, in this instance) saves his own skin at the very last minute, pinning the entire blame for the incident on Janet's bustier. It's Janet who ends up branded by the whole world as the slut of the moment; her presence quickly becomes an inconvenience, on radio, on TV, and on the Grammy stage alike. The price to pay is enormous: the swift and inevitable collapse of a career that only a few months earlier had still been one of the most lucrative around. It seems hard to believe today, over a decade removed from the event, but Janet's story will serve as a lesson for everyone: it only takes a split second to ruin an entire career.
But it's thanks to her sacrifice that every future pop star called on to perform during the Super Bowl halftime show will keep things tasteful, taking great care not to lean too heavily on innuendo, because in front of the American TV-viewing public, certain things simply are NOT done, full stop. Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry and Coldplay will all take the field doing their best to put on an entertainment show with guaranteed visual impact, while keeping a safe distance from anything that might smack of vulgarity, or from any subliminal political message beyond some vague notion of world peace. The finest triumph in that regard will be pulled off (as always, for that matter) by none other than that cunning old fox Madonna in 2012; in her case, it will be her guest of the night, M.I.A., who provides that necessary pinch of provocation for any self-respecting Madonna-style spectacle to succeed, and who ends up on the chopping block in the Diva's place after flashing her middle finger at the cameras, while Ciccone herself walks away unscathed and smiling wider than before. "But I had no idea about any of it!" she'll later remark, the cow. Thanks a lot instead, M.I.A.!

20 Y.O. & Discipline – towards the final collapse

The sudden drop in popularity doesn't seem to dent Janet's morale too much (for the time being, at least), and so, in the blink of an eye, we arrive at 2006, the year marking the twentieth anniversary of the release of Control. Janet still owes Virgin one more album to fulfil her contract, so what better occasion than to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of her own career with an album titled 20 Y.O.? Jermaine Dupri joins in full-time on co-production alongside Jam & Lewis, and the work proceeds briskly (though not without the odd inevitable skirmish between men fueled by an excess of ego and testosterone).

However, the quartet's intention is absolutely not to build an album leaning on nostalgia. Quite the opposite: the challenge of 20 Y.O. is to have Janet rediscover the mojo she had at 20, and then recast that energy in a thoroughly modern key. It's essentially a full-on rejuvenation operation, specifically designed to ward off the harsh law of showbiz that plagues anyone who's reached a certain age.
On paper, the challenge is actually won, because once again Janet Jackson's sound shifts dramatically, and 20 Y.O. is a constant swirl of samples and loops, Middle Eastern inlays, digitized dance-R&B rhythms built with the latest available technology, and hushed beats shaken by a sigh. Everything sounds flawlessly executed and perfectly up to date, in short, but the excessive use of filters and expensive software ends up making the sound overly glossy and surreal. Above all, this time, beneath the glittering production shell lies one of the weakest songbooks of her entire career. Despite its short runtime (11 tracks and 5 interludes for 49 minutes of music), 20 Y.O. leaks at every seam, proving to be a thoroughly dull listen from start to finish, with lyrics and performances that feel utterly predictable, whether in the dancier moments or the more explicit ones devoted to the pleasures of the flesh. No point beating around the bush: however young and inexperienced she was when she was actually 20, Janet was far more compelling back then than she is now.

For the lead single "Call On Me," Hype Williams directs one of the most expensive videos of the era: a series of dazzlingly bright digital landscapes against which Janet shows off some of her most elaborate looks ever – a curious cross between a tribal queen and a bird of paradise. Williams's imagery certainly nails the luxurious, decadent atmosphere they're trying to recreate, but the track itself really isn't anything new; it's the most generic kind of r&b-hip-hop midtempo in vogue at the time, built on an endlessly repeated sample and a tired back-and-forth between Janet and guest star Nelly. A formula, in other words, that after the global success of Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey's "I Know What You Want" had by then been imitated hundreds of times over – see, for instance, Ne-Yo's famous "So Sick," Blige's "Be Without You," and Mariah's own "We Belong Together," all massive hits during that very period.
And it's with Mariah Carey herself that Dupri would like to set up a duet to include on 20 Y.O., to boost its quota of glamour and bling (as well as its market value), but the plan never comes to fruition, since Carey is never even told about it – otherwise she would have gladly agreed, as she herself says today. But some backstage rumors suggest a slightly less charitable theory: having miraculously bounced back from a career slump thanks to "The Emancipation Of Mimi," it seems Mariah simply has no desire to align herself with a figure under full media embargo like Janet. The fact remains that "Call On Me" fails to achieve the hoped-for success, and Janet's slump continues unabated with the other single "So Excited," yet another heavily trend-chasing contemporary R&B cut put together with the help of rapper Khia, which in practice has nothing particular going for it except being thoroughly ignored by radio and TV.

Just like its singles, the rest of 20 Y.O. coasts along in a predictable groove. Only one track on the whole lineup is worth saving – "Enjoy" – a moment of rare and admirable elegance, built on an old-school soul melody and inlaid with a piano figure that moves in lockstep with the vocal line, while in the chorus Janet rises into an angelic falsetto. A truly top-notch track, in other words, sadly isolated and thus left completely forgotten amid all the plastic. As scripted, 20 Y.O. debuts sky-high on the charts as always, and soon vanishes into thin air, remaining to this day one of her least known albums. For Virgin, Janet's departure couldn't come at a better time: after 15 years of landmark hits, it's time to focus on other names and let the old guard go their own way ("off to the elephants' graveyard").

Janet also sets about preparing the tour, determined to take her album around the world, but with her hasty new signing to the other record giant, Island, the obvious request soon follows: drop the tour for an unlucky album (one that, on top of everything, was released under a rival label) and focus instead on a new studio record to mark the start of the new partnership.
The change is drastic once again. For the first time since '86, Jam & Lewis are no longer by her side. But above all, for the first time since '86, Janet doesn't write or produce a single note of her own music, as if she were surrendering herself to the passive construction of a "new Janet Jackson" – something she herself will later try, with little conviction, to describe as a "new creative process." On the whole of Discipline (2008), Janet oversees only the image and the hairstyles, and indeed the deluxe edition of the album includes the DVD "The Making Of Discipline," which shows the behind-the-scenes work of selecting designers and photographers. Honestly, the new image is actually one of the best-assembled of her whole career, but otherwise Discipline is an album that, artistically speaking, hurls her back in time, to when she was still under her father's control (allowing, of course, for all due differences). It falls to Jermaine to assemble the team of writers and producers around Janet to put together her tenth studio album, and it's a decidedly long, no-expense-spared list, featuring well-known names such as Stargate, Darkchild, and a nearly-debuting Dernst Emile.

The key clue for discussing Discipline this time around is provided by... Britney Spears. It is through her, in fact, that just the year before Jive released "Blackout," one of the most controversial yet certainly most influential mainstream albums of the past decade. Everyone knows the story: one day Britney has a nervous breakdown and shaves her head bald, while the entire world watches with bated breath. Drained and dazed by psychiatric medication, she's then surrounded by a team of "enlightened" producers – Danja and Bloodshy & Avant chief among them – who assemble for her one of the most rotten, yet at the same time fiercely truthful, albums in American pop. Britney has very little input in writing the record, but then again she hardly needs any, because the people working for her have fully grasped the spirit of the game and her current state of mind; "Blackout" is the album that legitimizes the dubstep-derived push coming out of England for the whole world, packing in 12 breathtaking tracks of electronic abrasions and vocoder delirium laid over a series of piercing, sickly nursery-rhyme melodies. The mainstream audience is baffled, but among musicians and producers in the industry there isn't a single person who doesn't talk about that record; soon plenty of others will jump on the bandwagon, from Rihanna to Kanye West and Flo Rida, all the way to the prim country-girl Taylor Swift, who years later will use the drop technique to give herself a makeover.

That explains "Feedback," the lead single from Discipline, which presents to what little of the world is still paying attention a Janet Jackson freeze-dried, chopped up, and reassembled into a robot. The track, incidentally, isn't bad at all, the video is of course supremely polished, and – despite the usual media embargo – critics can't help noticing that, on the surface at least, this now-legendary 42-year-old is still very much in motion. But soon the other limitation of an album conceived this way becomes apparent: Janet is not Britney, and for her the game of boardroom-built pop simply doesn't work (much as, often enough, it doesn't even work for Britney herself). And while the other single "Rock With U" just about survives by the skin of its teeth thanks to a crystal-clear electro-dance pivot (and a video shot in a single take with an epic dance choreography), the rest of the album flounders in cellophane, chafing at every move like the latex bodysuit wrapped around the performer.

There are certainly other formally well-executed tracks, like the percussive march of "Rollercoaster," the amphetamine-party atmosphere of "LUV," or the all-glitter, mirror-ball "2nite," in which Janet elbows her way breathlessly back towards reclaiming her throne, much as the equally un-young but fierce Madonna is doing on her own "Hard Candy." But the arrival of tracks like the nauseating ballads "Never Letchu Go" and "Greatest X," or even the watered-down imitation of one of her brother Michael's old disco melodies on "Can't B Good," only makes for a listen that feels empty and predictable.
The mandatory erotic moment of the title track unfolds over a languid slow-jam with synthetic undertones that, sound-wise, isn't bad at all, but the lyrics are so forced that – incidentally – it ends up being the track that best explains Janet's current state of mind. As she herself put it when presenting the album:

I wanted to name the album Discipline because it has a lot of different meanings for me but the most important would be work—to have done this for as long as I have … And to have had the success that I’ve had—not excluding God by any means—but it takes a great deal of focus

And the overall feeling, in fact, is of an album conceived more out of duty than out of pleasure or any real need to say something, as if Janet were drawing on every ounce of discipline she's capable of to force herself to release something, no matter what. But the game obviously can't work for a guarded, sensitive personality like hers; Discipline enjoys yet another number-one debut in America (her sixth), followed by a swift disappearance from the charts and soon from popular memory as well.
But this time, already weighed down by the failure of the two previous albums, Janet ends up suffering an emotional breakdown of dramatic proportions. The "Rock Witchu Tour" kicks off with great fanfare across North America in September 2008, but Janet soon cancels 9 of the announced dates due to health problems, and things go even worse in Japan, where all 5 planned dates never see the light of day. The rest of the tour implodes in short order. Backed by solid financial leverage (and a good team of lawyers), Janet manages to narrowly wriggle out of her contract with Island after just 15 months, citing among the reasons the poor promotional campaign the label ran for Discipline. It will take over seven years to follow up on this setback with new material, something Janet will only manage to pull off once she aligns herself with the BMG consortium.

But for the time being, Janet finds herself utterly alone. Her relationship with Dupri has fallen apart after months of drama and infidelity on his part, the public seems to have forgotten her once and for all, and the sudden death of Michael in June 2009 deals the final blow. The paparazzi start hounding her once they notice that, in a very short span of time, Janet's weight has quadrupled due to stress and severe depression. That toned, sculpted body, chiseled by years of dancing, famous for a stomach as flat as an ironing board and a backside you could balance a glass on, now appears almost unrecognizable, wrapped in a series of baggy, shapeless sweats, and the story travels around the globe – "Janet is sooo trailer trash!" thunder the ever-ungracious tabloids (Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, and Britney herself know a thing or two about that too). These are dark times for her and for those close to her, one of the lowest points of her entire life.

Janet certainly keeps fighting, releasing Number Ones (2009), a collection of no fewer than 33 hits that topped various charts around the world, promoted by the frantic new track "Make Me." Next comes Icon: Number Ones (2010), which reprises more or less the same concept but trimmed down to just 12 tracks. Otherwise, Janet gets herself back in physical shape with the 81 dates of the "Number Ones: Up Close And Personal" tour, a show that does achieve a fair amount of success, even if it certainly lacks the charm and energy of her old concerts. It is, in short, pure self-celebration, which at this particular moment is certainly very useful for her, but which ultimately leaves little lasting impression on the rest of the public. Janet, the tireless explorer, seems by now to have finally run out of road.

Unbreakable – On the rebirth you don't expect, the fears you carry inside, and life's "surprises"

Janet soon seems to vanish into thin air; after a creative slump lasting for the better part of a decade and worrying signs of psychological distress, the youngest Jackson sibling appears to have finally given in to her nature as a shy, private woman, which is, after all, what she has always been. Aside from a handful of appearances around the globe, her retirement from the spotlight seems final and irrevocable. The last news about her finds her disappearing from the tabloids and relocating to Dubai, following a wedding held in great secrecy to a well-known Qatari businessman, Wissam Al Mana.
Instead, in the summer of 2015, a teaser just a few seconds long appears on Dailymotion, featuring that unmistakable voice that seems to smile even when it whispers: "[...] I've been listening, let's keep the conversation going..." And soon Janet reveals herself with a move nobody truly expects: she becomes an independent artist – Rhythm Nation is her own personal label, affiliated with the BMG group – cuts off any promotional circus (likely after the recent disputes with Island back during her last album), and announces a new world tour to reconnect with the loyal old fanbase that never abandoned her. But above all, 2015 finds Janet working on a new record that, once again, ferries her toward uncharted territory, one in which she seems to feel as at home as she hasn't in over a decade.

Unbreakable (2015), in short, couldn't sound more different from the dissolute recent past of her last few records; Janet picks up the pen most suited to her state of mind and gives voice to the melancholy, and the serenity she later regained, after the traumas she lived through in recent years — in particular the death of Michael, the end of her long relationship with Dupri, and the crumbling of a career that had gone irreparably downhill after the Super Bowl nipple incident. Yet among the dance-r&b-leaning tracks of this new chapter, curious sonic tributaries and quirky touches keep popping up one after another, giving the album a "collage-like" feel and highlighting her pronounced streak as an electro-songwriter, helped along by the renewed partnership with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.
Unbreakable plays a game of subtraction, yet its sonic fabric shifts with surprising coherence from plush, muffled dance beats to shadowy piano ballads, lone synth lines, guitars and electronic filters applied with real skill.
Michael, the great absence looming over her life, is openly paid tribute in a few disco-funk moments like the elegant title track and "Broken Hearts Heal", both of which look fondly back to the 70s without coming off as mere pastiche — if anything, they show a mature, thoroughly contemporary flair (the latter closes with an evanescent vocal rise filtered through an 808 that recalls the work of Imogen Heap). The presence of Missy Elliott and an almost Timbaland-esque sound make "BURNITUP!" a much-needed burst of energy, while the urban feel of "Dammn Baby", the mid-tempo stride of "The Great Forever" and the airy chorus of "Shoulda Known Better" are pure adult oriented pop elegance. The sparkling pop-rock of "Take Me Away" stakes a claim as her most distinctly melodic track since the underrated "Just A Little While" from the Damita Jo era — though the carefree energy of back then is now replaced by a faint veil of nostalgia.

But the beating heart of Unbreakable reveals itself in the moments where Janet transfigures the formula, paying unprecedented attention to composition, or to some particularly striking arrangement in its sheer essentiality — an almost indie drift that recalls the work of Frank Ocean, who is in turn an avowed disciple of the Jackson gospel. "After You Fall" is a stripped-down, moving piano piece; the plush atmospheres of "Night" and the nocturnal intimacy of the other single, "No Sleeep", unlock the old velvet rope and light the incense and candles. The vintage opening of "Dream Maker/Euphoria" quickly morphs into a curious Motown moment smeared with electronic deconstructions; the constant harmonic shifts at the end of every phrase make "2 B Loved" a lopsided, danceable r&b cut, while the mini-song "Promise" is a delicate, autumn-tinged bossa nova (the full version — by far the lovelier one — appears on the album's deluxe edition, retitled "Promise Of You"). But there's also real charm in "Lesson Learned", a very simple country song modernized by a well-judged electronic wash that leaves the slide guitar hanging in mid-air, and in the simple, neo-soul-flavored finger-snaps that keep time on the spacious, spirited "Black Eagle".

Unbreakable doesn't exactly scream "miracle" — the running time is as generously long as ever, true to tradition — and the overly feel-good tone of the last two tracks could perhaps have been toned down: the somewhat self-satisfied choruses of "Well Traveled", and a "Gon' B Alright" that leans a bit too heavily on vintage Jackson 5. But on the whole, this album is a rather welcome surprise. Faced with the eternal dilemma every pop diva of a certain age has to confront — keep up with the times, or keep up with herself? — Janet, for now, chooses the latter, taking on all the risks and criticism that come with it. But her art is anything but dormant; hats off to someone who, with 33 years of career and a handful of records essential to the development of contemporary r&b behind her, can still carve out her own little place in the world with a record that represents her fully and has no real stylistic equal on today's scene.
The album debuts at the top of the American chart with 119,000 copies sold in its first week — not an overwhelming number, but one that reminds her just how ready her audience still is to welcome her back, in spite of everything.

But as this is being written, it seems the controversies typical of the Jackson family are still very much the order of the day. Reactions to the "Unbreakable World Tour" are initially very positive; Janet has aged and no longer dances with the same grit as before, but she commands the stage with mastery and is visibly happy to be back in front of an audience, while a 33-track setlist (some songs obviously presented in medley form) gathers the best of over 30 years of a distinguished career.
However, in early 2016 some dates are suddenly cancelled due to an unspecified vocal cord procedure, and the whole world starts talking about cancer. "Don't believe anything until you hear it from my mouth," will be her words, but unfortunately just a few months after the tour resumes, the entire European leg is cancelled. Janet keeps up an unbearable silence, so rumors start circulating that Live Nation, the tour's sponsor, may have bitten off more than it could chew: an intimate, practically indie-flavored record like Unbreakable, while by far the most coherent thing Janet could have released at this point in her career, obviously can't on its own carry the media weight needed to support a grand comeback on the scale that had been planned. Announcing as many as 92 dates in medium-to-large arenas around the world was, in short, perhaps a somewhat risky move, and it seems that outside North America tickets weren't selling as hoped — perhaps also because of less-than-affordable prices, and the fact that Janet Jackson's name hasn't been in vogue for over a decade.

Indeed, the tour soon grinds to a halt again, this time suspended entirely and indefinitely, so much so that many fans can't even get a refund on their tickets, and a damaging — if frankly justified — wave of fan anger erupts on social media. But this time the reason leaves everyone stunned: at 49 years old, Janet is officially pregnant for the first time in her life (disregarding the speculation surrounding her first marriage). The timing is, to put it mildly, terrible, since at her age a pregnancy isn't accidental but clearly a deliberate choice ("she had eggs on ice"). But after a lifetime spent with not exactly reliable men, Janet seems to have found someone she feels secure enough with to bring a child into the world — no small thing, given the past storms of her love life. And as she herself explained, at her age you can't wait forever; her priorities flipped at the last minute, but she's keen to assure everyone that the story is far from over. For now, all that's left for us to do is offer her our warmest congratulations, and wait.

16/05/2016 – Happy birthday miss Jackson, to the great forever Xxx
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