Unbreakable emerges marked by both events, and also marks the prodigal daughter’s return to her famed collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, but it’s not the sort of album that battles with any one particular theme or emotion. In the interim, she lost her brother and gained a husband. With flop sex jams scattered in her wake, Janet was starting to feel like an Empress Nero, flicking the bean while the dance floor did anything but burn.Īnd then she disappeared, reportedly dismayed by those albums’ failure to generate even one single Top 10 hit.
came on at best like a misguided R&B Sunset Boulevard, and Discipline sacrificed the bigger picture in exchange for a few transitory bolts of lightning (“Rock with U,” the still massive “Feedback”). The string of albums she released following the 2004 Incident That Will Not Define Her Career So Let’s Please Never Speak of It Again all groaned under the pressure of living up to whatever it is Janet felt she had to prove: relevance, momentum, royalty status, libido.ĭamita Jo found the reigning champion of effortless pop struggling not to sweat, 20 Y.O. And at a stage in her career when critics are sharpening up ageist phrases like “this stage in her career,” Janet’s relaxed confidence comes as a relief. Then again, back in 1986, no one expected sweet, baby-faced Janet to boss up, slam the door and snarl in some dickhole’s face, “No, my first name ain’t ‘baby,’ it’s Janet, Miss Jackson if you’re nasty.” From the easygoing sound of Unbreakable, she doesn’t snap like that anymore, but we still wouldn’t recommend trying her.It could be the ample bank she and her husband, Wissam Al Mana, are sitting on, but Janet Jackson’s Unbreakable is so luxuriously chill it’s almost narcoleptic.
#JANET JACKSON UNBREAKABLE SONG FULL#
Who would’ve ever envisioned her slipping on a pair of boots and cowboy-cut Wranglers to sing “Lessons Learned,” a country-tinged ballad about co-dependency? Or that she and the boys would’ve gone full Nashville and let a steel guitar cry and a little twang curl the edges of her voice on “Well Traveled” (and that the whole thing would work!)? Yet the best thing about Unbreakable is that it proves Janet can still surprise us. Cole, is a certified quiet storm classic. And “No Sleep,” even with the (bless his heart) not remotely sexy J. The tingly “Night” will soon be a new Pride after-parade staple. Mostly, the trio keep it super funky throughout, but at the family reunion does drag on just a couple songs too long.īut enough nitpicking Unbreakable also enters a new candidate for the 2015 Banger of the Year race with “Dammn Baby,” which is so rhythmically contagious I couldn’t help two-stepping with a knife in my hand to it while making chicken salad in the kitchen. For all the she-can’t-sing criticisms that have dogged her career, I actually prefer Janet’s vocals powder-soft like they are on “Black Eagle.” On Unbreakable she occasionally drops her register on a song like the shuffling “The Great Forever,” where the result sounds so much like Michael that it’s unsettling and kinda creepy. All three produce the entire album, with help here and there from Dem Jointz (who helmed the highlight “Genocide,” among other tracks, on Dr.
Thank goodness the gang - Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Ms. “I lived through my mistakes, it’s just a part of growing,” she sings on the opening track before shrugging and reclining back into a swingy, breezy Sunday afternoon of a beat. The older you get, the less compelled you feel to assert yourself all the time, though, and that’s probably why Janet’s albums - including Unbreakable, her just-released 11th - have proceeded to sound more effortless, and also sexier. Madonna’s perma-bedhead and “boy toy” belt were sexually sophisticated and therefore mostly confusing to elementary schoolgirls, but from the minute Janet barked, “Gimme a beat,” there was no mistaking her message. Instead of rhinestone-spangled gloves or stacks of jelly bracelets, she dressed in all-black ensembles usually topped with a blazer. Sure, the smile that melts snow was still there, but she was serious about her s–t. It was her third studio album, but it felt like her debut. “I will be bigger than Michael,” she says, before firing her dad and flying to Minneapolis to work with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, associates of Michael’s only competition, Prince.Ĭrazy to think that it’s been almost 30 years since Janet Jackson danced out from under the shadow of both Madonna and her big brother Michael when she released the revolutionary Control.
Inside, Miss Jackson is screaming - at him, at all the hands constantly pawing and trying to tear off any little piece of her. Fan fiction: It’s 1985, and an apple-cheeked Janet Jackson perches on a chair across from her father.
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