Janet’s new single, “Nothing”, will have a VIDEO (which is great news). It is also a very, very lovely song which will be my #1 this coming Monday and which is totally classic Janet and which will appeal to nobody but The Core Fanbase.

But there is a simple way to increase the appeal of the single. Instead of using this cover:

…my Slightly Redesigned version needs to be used:

Here, I fixed that for you. No need to thank me…

Well! The Janet Jackson week is ending on a Friday. That’s a good moment to end a week, isn’t it! Especially as it started on a Monday. And [that's enough -- Ed.]

“Discipline” is a rare case: it is a flop album that got Janet dropped from her label despite debuting at number one on Billboard. It is a strange one, too. The dance tracks sound very contemporary; the ballads sound… like Janet ballads; the whole thing is strangely bland and personality-less, perhaps because for the first time since “What have you done for me lately” Janet hasn’t co-written or co-produced any of the songs.

Still, “Feedback” became her biggest hit in years… to be sabotaged by the record label. There was no commercial single released, which could perhaps explain the fact it didn’t sell very well. The remixes all remained promo-only. Then “Feedback” was followed by “Rock With U”, which was followed, a week later, by “LUV”, which was followed another two weeks later by “Can’t B Good”. That ensured radio stations didn’t give much attention to either — as good as “Rock With U” and “LUV” were, I don’t think radio was interested in playing two songs by Janet Jackson at the same time.

The “Rock Witchu Tour” was doomed from the start. Cancelled appearances, unsold tickets, far too extensive setlist (I believe it is the fact the setlist was 37 songs rather than 17 that killed off the tour — it must have been simply too exhausting), lack of attention from the label (which dropped Janet before the tour began), awful styling and the strange fact that Janet has for some reason moved from showing all she had into being dressed from head to toe in awful costumes have combined into a giant, very expensive case of “WTF?”. Still, I wish I could have seen it…

Is there future for Janet Jackson the musician? Absolutely no clue. Apparently she’s working with Jam and Lewis on new material. As to who will release it, remains unknown. If it’s as good as “Feedback”, “Rock With U” and “2nite”, I’m buying. If it sounds like “Curtains”, “Discipline” and “Can’t B Good”, I think I’ll pass. Although, who am I kidding, if she releases 80 minutes of herself going “ommm… ommm… I’m chanting as we speak darling”, I will still buy it.

(Yes, I know by now the Janet Jackson week is lasting 9 days, but let’s not put too much attention to silly details.)

‘20YO’ was promoted as the real successor to ‘Control’. It isn’t. What it is, is an amazing hip-hop-dance album that sounds current in 2009. Sadly, it was released in 2006, before Ne-Yo’s brand of hip-hop-dance became the most fashionable sound. Also, there were two other things that went wrong with ‘20YO’:

1. The lead single, ‘Call On Me’ is the only weak song on the record. How do you listen to ‘Get It Out Me’, ‘This Body’, ‘Enjoy’, ‘So Excited’, ‘Take Care’, ‘Do It 2 Me’ and ‘Show Me’ and then arrive at the conclusion ‘Call On Me’ needs to be the lead single is completely beyond me. (For more amazing albums with worst tracks chosen as lead singles, see Robbie Williams’ ‘Rudebox’.

2. Janet held a competition for fan-made cover art in which she herself chose the winners. The first million (i.e. the only million) copies of the album in the US featured the fan-made covers. Here are the beautiful and amazing pieces of art:

Can I just say “O RLY?”

Those things killed ‘20YO’ stone dead. People who bought into the ‘new Control’ line hated the album. People who wanted a new ‘Together Again’ hated the album. People who believe cover design represents the music hated the album. People who heard the (non-)amazingness that ‘Call On Me’ was decided to not buy the album because if this is its lead single, it must be a reeeeeeally bad record.

Here are some songs from the album. Enjoy! (SEE WHAT I DID THERE ETC.)

“Velvet Rope” with all its plushy darkness was followed by two rather disastrous albums, which more or less killed Janet’s career stone dead; well, those two and the Wardrobe Malfunction which became the defining Janet moment the same way George Michael is now known as a stoner with a tendency to flip his dick out in public toilets. But while George turned it into a pop video, disco single and one of the biggest hits of his career, Janet until this day is still being dragged around courts explaining how Justin wasn’t meant to tear the red bra, just the leather costume. Because, as we know, showing violence, torture, shootings and killings on the telly is a good thing, but a nipple may scar a person for life.

Before that happened, though, something was already going weird. “All For You”, the lead single from same-titled album, features a dog panting sample which is so disgusting it turned me off listening to the album altogether. The whole record is probably her weakest, trailing the same paths as her previous records, with pop sound, breezy interludes with a lot of fake laughter and “sexy” photographs, and lyrics that are rather tasteless. “Damita Jo”, the next record, released in the wake of the Wardrobe Malfunction, is no better lyrically, but amazing musically. There are many songs on the record that should have been singles, had the lyrics been, erm, different. “Sexhibition” is a MAJOR Jacko-style dance jam. “All Nite (Don’t Stop)”, the album’s third single, is properly amazing. For some odd reason, though, it was the disastrous “Just A Little While”, which is more or less nymphomania set to (not very good) music, that was the lead single.

Both those records feature bright points; as albums, though, they are at best forgettable. There is a really amazing 10-track record among those two, but sadly instead of releasing said record Janet chose to go the route of two 22-track albums which plod for much longer than they should. Still, sales-wise they did alright; it wasn’t until the next record — the one that was meant to boost her career back into the stratosphere of relevancy — that she really had something to worry about…

The first decade of Janet’s career was closed neatly by a compilation entitled “Design of a Decade”, featuring a very nice cover art (a huge poster placed on Tower Records apparently caused cars to crash and had to be removed), two not very exciting new songs (although I still don’t get the hate for Twenty Foreplay) and most of “Control” and “Rhythm Nation”. It was a first sign that there might never be a complete Janet Jackson compilation because of the label changes; while “Control” was represented by 6 tracks, “janet.” got two — “That’s the way love goes” and, somewhat randomly, “Whoops Now”.

The compilation was followed by Janet’s darkest album to date. “Velvet Rope” was also the first sign that her imperial phase was over. Janet’s audience didn’t take well either to the lyrics about sadomasochism, depression, loneliness, bisexuality and AIDS nor to the new sound, which strayed further and further away from the new jack swing of “Control” and closer to the same R&B that filled the American charts. It has taken me, erm, until more or less now to finally fall in love with “Velvet Rope”, even though the lead single “Got Til It’s Gone” is probably my favourite Janet song ever.

The album is both amazing and flawed. The lyrics are her career best; she managed to write about sex and explore it in a way MUCH different from the cheap porn of “Damita Jo” (which we will talk about later, readers), to include the excluded and to turn a poignant song about friends she lost to HIV into a dance fest. The said song was her biggest hit ever, and so — perhaps you can explain this decision to me — she has never recorded anything similarly sounding afterwards. (In fact, I believe the success of “Together Again” hurt the long-term career of Janet; people would buy her CDs, realise there’s nothing remotely “Together Again”-ish on, and get somewhat pissed off. That happened to me with Velvet Rope, and it was the reason why I didn’t play it for a long time.)

When “janet.” was about to be released, I was well prepared. I would like to say I queued for hours to pick up a copy, but most Polish people wouldn’t give a toss about any record, much less Janet’s, so I went to the shop on the day of release and bought the tape, which I then played hundreds of times until I learned every single word of the lyrics.

“janet.” sounded more American to me than “Rhythm Nation 1814″. From the lead single, “That’s the way love goes”, a saucy midtempo ballad, through tracks like jazzy “Funky Big Band” and gay dancefloor filler “Throb”, until the closer “Any time, any place” Janet sung about love, sex, relationships and other similar themes. Gone were the social themes of RN1814, with the exception of feminist “New Agenda” (with the Chuck D rap subtly undermining the purpose of the song — “if it wasn’t for our mothers there would be no brothers/And if it wasn’t for our sisters there would be no misters” — is that REALLY all women serve for, Chuck? producing brothers and misters?). It was the big sensual album, sexy, warm and, at this point, still not explicitly pornographic; even the moans of “Throb” are more funny than anything else.

The cover, with Rene Elizondo’s hands covering Janet’s breasts, became one of the most famous images in the history of pop music, lampooned, copied and censored. And the song “That’s the way love goes” became Janet’s biggest hit to date, topping charts in the US, Europe and Australia alike. Janet was in her imperial phase and nothing could stop her.

As mentioned previously, it was Rhythm Nation 1814 that made me discover Janet. I bought the tape at a summer camp and begged our headmaster to let me listen to it on his cassette player. And I was in heaven. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. And she kept on putting out singles (and videos), all of them amazing; “Love will never do” assured me I was gay, “Come back to me” I played so often I wore the tape off, and “Alright” made me want to become a dancer.

I was really shocked to discover Janet wasn’t a megastar in Europe at that point. (The biggest UK single from the album, “Black Cat”, which charted at the dizzy heights of #15 was also the only song I disliked.) Six out of seven singles off “Rhythm Nation 1814″ charted in the US Top 2 though, and the “smallest”, my favourite “Alright” was #4. She could do no wrong, and the album was my soundtrack of 1989. And 1990. And 1991.

The death of Michael Jackson has made me rediscover an artist I used to love, then kind of got off a bit, then went back to liking a lot. Nowadays, though, I rarely listen to anything else. Both old and new records get a spin. Ballads make me tearful and uptempos make me dance. In fact, Janet Jackson might have just taken the top spot among my favourite female performers.

I have been mostly oblivious to her existence when Control came out, and it remains the one album I still do not own a copy of. (Yes, I am ashamed.) Still, 6 out of 9 tracks are present on “Design of a Decade”, the only Janet Jackson compilation available, so I do not miss that much. Or do I? After all, those six are bloody classics. “Nasty”, “When I think of you”, “What have you done for me lately”, “Let’s wait awhile”, “The pleasure principle” AND “Control” itself, all packed into one album? I just can’t believe the remaining three can be as good as those.

The early Janet videos have been choreographed by — then unknown — Paula Abdul, who appears in the videos alongside Janet, with a really really funny haircut. (Well, it was the 80s. Everybody had a funny haircut. Even me, although it was sort of on a different side of funny.) This, to me, brings a whole new dimension, as I am also a fan of Paula and there’s nothing more enjoyable than shrieking “OMGLOLZ THIS IS PAULAAAAA!!1!!!!” while watching the videos for “Nasty” or “When I think of you” with a fellow fan. So. Wanna watch with me?