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She's the youngest of nine children
born to Joe and Katherine Jackson- including
Michael, Tito, Marlon, LaToya, and Jermaine. She was
always a tomboy as a child - a little chubby, and
given to roughhousing. Janet became aware of the
performance early on. Since the Jackson 5 were
already stars by the time Janet was an adolescent,
it may never have occurred to her that it was
possible to fail in show business. She had an
experience of life completely different from what
her oldest brothers and sisters may have known as a
poor Indiana family. She was perhaps the most
protected child in the family, as the youngest often
is.
As she grew, her interests branched in several
directions- dancing, acting, singing. She was
clearly a performer, but of what kind? She first
appeared on stage in her brothers' show in 1973- at
the age of seven. In 1977, Norman Lear offered her a
job on the CBS hit as Penny Gordon Woods on
"Good Times." After that, she appeared on
a few shows, "Diffrent Strokes" and
"A New Kind of Family" among them. She was
doing sitcom acting: not terribly challenging, but
highly paid, with good exposure. And as a Jackson
child, how could one not draw exposure? Brother
Michael was already solo and tearing up the charts
with Off the Wall.
In 1982, she released her first album, Janet
Jackson. It wasn't bad for a first effort,
especially for a sixteen-year-old, but it played it
very safe. Janet had yet to find a voice, a style,
or an audience. She toured the country, performing
in high schools and encouraging the kids there to
stay in school. During the tour, she went with her
mother to see The Time perform. Two members of the
band- Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis- would become major
figures in her career. In 1983, she got a role on
"Fame." The show, no longer on a network,
remained one of the most critically praised shows on
TV- and one which somehow had maintained itself as a
showcase for singing and dancing, as well as acting
and writing. Anachronistic though a musical format
may have seemed, the show was much like the high
school it portrayed: encouraging talented performers
to stay a while and learn before moving on. During
her time at "Fame," she remained protected
(not surprising, considering she was still a minor
at the start of the season) an
d her parents were often on the set. In 1984, Janet,
age 18, eloped with James DeBarge and married him.
Pressures from a number of different directions
intervened- her record company, the demands of her
schedule, her youth. By the following March, she
moved back in with her parents and had the marriage
annulled.
Also in 1984, Janet released her second album, Dream
Street. Inflected by the dance-pop of the time (it
was produced with help from Giorgio Moroder, of
Flashdance fame), it was little more than a
statement of musical presence on Janet's part: I'm
here, I'm making music, heads up. It was not
well-received.
The album peaked at #147 on the charts and Janet
retreated to think about her next album. She
listened to other songs, worked intensively with
songwriters and producers, and cultivated a coherent
sound which had been lacking the previous effort.
This sound is still recognizable in Janet's music: a
blending of the sharp opening phrases and commanding
bass lines of funk with the melodic sense of soul,
and the rhythm backing of 80s dance-pop and, later,
rap.
The album that pulled these things together was
1986's Control. It was her first album with Jimmy
Jam and Terry Lewis. It transformed all of their
careers. It hit number one, putting six singles on
various charts. Among the charts that Janet
simultaneously occupied the #1 position on were
dance, black and pop- which describe the meld the
album achieved. It took the hard beat background and
laid a funk-riff melody over it, with Janet not
always so much singing as keeping a vocal rhythm.
The album was aggressive, in tone and melody. It was
a clear stepping out from behind her parents'- and
brothers'- coattails. "What Have You Done For
Me Lately" is the voice of a woman taking
control of her voice and her man,
"Control" (the title track) being what the
album is all about. The album was all about Janet-
and who she wanted to be. It was sexier than any
past album- enough to disturb her mother a bit.
Janet knew it would, but weighed her need to get out
of the nest against that- and that need won.The
singles from the album just kept coming: five of the
tracks from the album became top 5 pop hits. Janet
spent most of 1986 and 1987 supporting the album and
remixing the songs into dance versions. (Many of
these versions were released as Control- The
Remixes.)
Rolling Stone reviewer Rob Hoerburger called Control
"a better album than Diana Ross has made in
five years." Ms. magazine named the album one
of the musical landmarks of the past 20 years. By
1989, Janet released her next album, Rhythm Nation
1814. What exactly did 1814 mean? Well, R and N are
the 18th and 14th letters of the alphabet,
respectively... but that wasn't quite it. If, as
People reviewer Ralph Novak claimed, Janet was
"making a strident declaration of
independence" with Control, Rhythm Nation was a
few years down the road. 1814 refers to the year
that Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled
Banner," and the album was about some of the
troubles of this Rhythm Nation. She said at the
time, "Control was about my life; Rhythm Nation
is about what's going on in the world around
us."
Rhythm Nation was accompanied by a long-form video
project, encompassing a number of the songs from the
album, in a conceptually coherent form. It's a
morality play featuring two young shoeshine boys,
which director Dominic Sena tried to film in the
style of a vintage musical. The tour that followed
was as much of a production: huge, expensive, and
theatrical.
If some tracks on Control and Rhythm Nation 1814
were hard for mother Katherine to take, janet, her
1993 follow-up, should, as Michael Odell put it,
"turn her to the bottle... she really puts the
bedsprings through their paces." The album
retains the assertiveness of Control, the political
awareness of Rhythm Nation, and adds a frank sexual
tone. The British publication VOX said that
"Musically, she touches all bases; lyrically,
she hardly gets out of the sack."
Around the same time janet was released, she starred
in John Singleton's Poetic Justice. The film, about
the meaning of poetry in an urban setting, gained
Janet some respect for her acting. Oddly enough, she
had attended the same junior high school as John
Singleton- "I remember his as this little kid
with 'Coke bottle glasses,' who had all these
books," Janet said. "After [meeting on the
set of Steven Spielberg's] Hook, we got together and
it all just happened from there."
Since then, she's spent time building her acting
skills, writing songs, and maintaining
relationships. She remains close with Michael still-
as kids they'd play piano together. She still talks
to him mornings, supported him in public during his
roughest times. The key she wears on an earring is a
gift from him- it was to the cage of a baby deer
they took care of as kids. One day, he attached it
to the earring- and she has left it there. The two
siblings joined forces on Michael's video (currently
the most expensive music video ever made)
"Scream."
With the release of her seventh album, Behind The
Velvet Rope, Janet joined longtime collaborators
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on a project that set out
to tackle social issues like domestic violence and
the AIDS crisis. The first single from the album,
"Got "Til It's Gone," features a
sample from an artist accustomed to speaking out
through music - Joni Mitchell (trivia: the sample
comes from Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi"
1970). According to Janet, "It's kind of like
therapy...In the past, I've always found a way to
not have to face the pain I've experienced growing
up; I would brush it aside and keep going," she
says. "But I'm at a point now where
self-discovery has become important, and this album
is kind of like a self-examination."
And like "Got 'Til It's Gone's" recurring
chorus, "Joni Mitchell never lies," Janet
assimilates the statement to a new level in her own
career, "I've always had this need, when I
discover a truth, to share it musically,"
Jackson said. "A lot of times when I've felt
alone, music has helped me get through it. Maybe
this album will strike a chord with some people out
there when they're going through difficult
times."
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