It's POLL For You -- ILM artist poll #103 -- JANET JACKSON (voting open until July 24, 2020)

i'm not a big fan of "what'll i do" but otherwise yes otm

i was thinking 'hmm maybe janet is edging out velvet rope as my favourite album of hers' but now i'm listening to velvet rope again and it's impossible to choose

"what'll i do" isn't anything special but i like it enough and sequencing it after "throb" is inspired

I love the hubris of this track; only in an artist in her imperial phase would release it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsPb2EVCLdg

two of my favorite records this year do the "cohesive despite pretty wide genre-travel" thing and i wonder if it's because we all grew up on '90s janet

"this time" rules so much, like how did she get away with it - a 7 minute goth-r&b epic with a ridiculous operatic crescendo

the last two minutes of "this time".... fuckin legendary

the sequencing of the velvet rope is just fucking insane

"go deep" -> "free xone" -> "together again" -> "empty"

Listening to Damita Jo again, and still blown away that Janet not only included both "Warmth" and "Moist" on the album but programmed them back to back (including with the "my turn" transition).

― Tim F

This is the next album I'm going to revisit. Looking forward to it although without anything from this, I already have 50 songs on my shortlist.

i find it downright impossible to be objective about "if." if i were forced to find the "root" of my queerness it would certainly be watching the "if" video at the impressionable age of six, it was like a bomb going off in my life. the noteless guitar squalls, the percussion track's dense leafy compression, the fuckin... strings. the instrumental breakdown is like the logical endpoint of what "nasty" started

It's an insane production: the guitar squeal, the chinoiserie bit played on synths, then GIMME TEH BEAT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTSd4vqnMwo

the song is already its own atmosphere and then the video translates that atmosphere into perfectly-aligned images and choreography, i cannot begin to detangle them in my mind. janet walking in slo mo through the billowing red curtains @_@

good excuse to relisten here.

Listening to it last week, I relished how she sounds out of breath singing each word clearly when she gives the chorus a second pss: "If. I. was. your girlfriend. the. things. I'd. do. to. you."

this poll is going to give me the immense gift of listening to a lot of janet albums for the first time so thank you eric. like i hadn't heard "doesn't really matter" or seen the video and it instantly made my weekend so i guess it's going to be that x 100 for a few weeks if not months. yay!

the song ended! i didn't even get to come!!!

lmao "trust a try" is so fucking amazing

very aaliyah s/t-core

also i know i repped for "trust" earlier but "feels so right" may be even better. all for you: a great album

Just found out that Whoops Now didn't even get into the R&B chart in the US (was it even a single there?) and um what!?

uh i started damita jo and maybe it was a bad idea, bc now i have to figure out where "strawberry bounce" places in my already-full ballot

the fabled strawberry bounce to the top

Damita Jo is such a chilled and gorgeous album. I just listened to the whole thing and apart from the last track which really seems out of place, it sounded glorious. R&B Junkie should have been a single. I Want You, SloLove and Truly all need to be on my ballot as well. Even the opening interlude is really lush. So underrated.

Oh wow, I didn't realise the last song (Just a Little While) was actually the lead single. Weird choice.

yet it was so promptly forgotten. Fuck Justin Timberlake.

To read the Wiki on Damita Joe is depressing as fuck.

Damita Jo is such a chilled and gorgeous album. I just listened to the whole thing and apart from the last track which really seems out of place, it sounded glorious. R&B Junkie should have been a single. I Want You, SloLove and Truly all need to be on my ballot as well. Even the opening interlude is really lush. So underrated.

― kitchen person, Tuesday, 7 July 2020 23:23 (yesterday) link

the best parts of the album (i.e. the above, but also stuff like "The One" as well as "Strawberry Bounce" obv) make it seem like it could have been Janet's Last Train to Paris avant la lettre (to the extent that The Velvet Rope wasn't that already) if it was a bit more consistently in the pocket and expansive. But in particular the run of "Like You Don't Love Me" --> "Thinkin' Bout My Ex" --> "Warmth" --> "Moist" just kind of makes the horizons of the album seem smaller than perhaps they are (though lol I just realised that the "standard" version of the album excises those last two songs - was that a post-Superbowl decision?).

More generally that sense of foreclosing horizons is what puts everything post-The Velvet Rope (and pre-Unbreakable) at varying rungs below what came before. I mean most of The Velvet Rope is very bedroom-focused but stuff like the title track, "You" and "Free Xone" help to create this sense of Janet operating with a broader vision and having "something to say" (even if most of that time that something is along the lines of "your coochie gon' swell up and fall apart").

lol also "all nite (don't stop)" aka my favourite song from the album

someone to call my lover is really fun. like a better version of jordan knights give it to you but with the ventura highway sample built in.

She's one of the few artists (ahem Madonna) to use sex as a prism through which to see how her euphoria stands in opposition to or is part of other people's experiences.

After getting on so well with Damita Jo I'm wondering if it's worth bothering going back to the two albums that came after or just skipping straight ahead to Unbreakable. All three of these are albums I've probably only heard once or twice. At this point I don't really have any room on my ballot, it's just more to find another great Janet album or even just a couple more awesome tracks.

I have a theory that no pop artist's work has aged as well over the past 35 years and would welcome suggestions of competitors to that title.

Okay, time for a full relisten.

(anyone repping the s/t? i'm not sure i've ever heard it)

it's kind of amusing how some of the tracks on the s/t sound like they could fit on All 4 U or Damita Jo.

yep!

I'd say "All For You" shows a careful study of "Young Love."

and why not? Rene & Angela were contemporaries of Change.

After getting on so well with Damita Jo I'm wondering if it's worth bothering going back to the two albums that came after or just skipping straight ahead to Unbreakable. All three of these are albums I've probably only heard once or twice. At this point I don't really have any room on my ballot, it's just more to find another great Janet album or even just a couple more awesome tracks.

― kitchen person, Tuesday, July 7, 2020 6:25 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

iirc 20 yo is the only janet album i’d call... not inspired. then again maybe when i listen to it next it’ll turn out to be amazing who knows. i also remember discipline as being patchy with some all-time jams

iirc 20 yo is the only janet album i’d call... not inspired. then again maybe when i listen to it next it’ll turn out to be amazing who knows. i also remember discipline as being patchy with some all-time jams

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson)

That's how I remember feeling about those two albums. Discipline might be worth a go if I find the time but I think I'm going straight on to Unbreakable which I've only heard once. I know it had a lot of support on here.

"Feedback" is straight fire

I don't much cop to Discipline either but "Rock With U" and "Feedback" -- one of them at any rate -- will appear on my ballot.

'Truth' is such an incredible song.

The bass line!

forgot how much i love Empty

i wanna amend my earlier comment to "no other artists HITS have aged as well over the past 35 years"

first two albums were rough going but i got Say You Do and Fast Girls out of it.

"your coochie gon' swell up and fall apart"

qft

I Want You, SloLove and Truly all need to be on my ballot as well.

"truly" is a masterpiece tbh

damita jo, great concept album about fuckin on the beach

So I'm skimming the "Artistry" section of her Wikipedia page and it starts off horribly, but then along comes one Eric H. with a good quote. Could that be our dear pollrunner?

Meanwhile, I'm ready to call All for You my fave. Just unceasing awesomeness.

it really is

classic: the way janet jackson says "funky"