Janet Jackson has a new CD out, reports Michael Odell
Since Oprah Winfrey, and after Sinad O’Connor, Sting and Michael Stipe, superstardom is more than ever about public dysfunction. We used to require our pop stars to be healthier, wealthier and wiser than us. Now we want to know what keeps them awake in their king-size beds at night.
Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope (Virgin) is her first proper output since the mature, reputation-making Janet, and it’s the one charged with the emotional fall-out following her recent ”breakdown”.
The Velvet Rope alludes to that red cord that separates the celebs from us at life’s gala opening. Janet wants to take us inside – a sort of Hello magazine grand tour, but of her massive psychic pain rather than the grossly appointed snooker room in her LA mansion.
It’s a sprawling work: the music takes in disco, rap, pop ballad, jungle and power pop. She saves a lot of the confessional for the spoken-word interludes: Janet masturbates while on the phone to a girlfriend (no, really), Janet taps away on a computer and sends a fax (no, me neither) and on the interlude entitled Sad, Janet delivers the distilled message of this album: ”There’s nothing so depressing as having everything and still feeling sad.” Personally I reckon having no home, no job, blowing your benefit cheque on Prozac and still feeling sad just trumps it, but there you go.
So there is something peculiarly LA about the angst, but musically there are some stand-out moments. The single Got ‘Til It’s Gone finds Janet allied with A Tribe Called Quest’s Q Tip and Joni Mitchell. Janet’s last flirtation with rap brought a contribution from Chuck D, which is a bit like Gerry Adams duetting with Kylie Minogue. A Tribe Called Quest are pop- literate and a much more suitable pairing. It’s the best thing she’s ever done.
Together Again is an irresistible Euro- housey stomper: it beggars belief that something so obvious could be so fabulous. Empty simply proves the Roni Size album is now on sale in Minneapolis, and producer Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have prodded the button labelled ”wicked junglist riddim, seen?”
But JJ has never been much of a vocalist, and elsewhere Jam and Lewis are called upon to layer her cloned whimper over their cavernous production. Velvet Rope, You and Special replicate the epic pop of Rhythm Nation.
But she progressed from that to be an R’n’B contender on Janet – here she regresses musically as well as emotionally. It all reaches a low on her cover of Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night. She doesn’t change the gender of Rod’s barely-legal lover, so we get Janet relieving her ”virgin child” of her ”pretty French gown”, and the whole thing becomes a lesbian serenade.
Rarely are albums so good and so crap simultaneously.