The full feature is published in the December 2022 issue of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
By the mid-1990s, Janet Jackson had established herself as a bonafide superstar, taking the reins on her career and epitomising everything an icon should be.
Her classic 1987 album ‘Control’ proved groundbreaking, while follow-up ‘Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814’ (1989) was a socially conscious piece that addressed numerous issues plaguing the world and rendered her a role model to young people.
The singer-songwriter’s next release ‘janet.’ saw the youngest Jackson sibling embrace her sexuality and earned her ‘sex symbol’ status, but inside she was feeling the burden of extraordinary fame – rivalling that of her brother Michael – which left her feeling diassociated with herself and struggling mentally with the responsibilities of her success and a sense of imposter syndrome dating back to her youth.
Turning to music, with the help of then-husband René Elizondo, Jr. and regular collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, she set about writing and recording ‘The Velvet Rope’ (1997) – an invitation into her private world and innermost thoughts, and an album that helped secure her position as one of the best-selling artists of the decade.
TWISTED ELEGANCE
Co-written and co-produced by Jackson, along with Jam and Lewis, ‘The Velvet Rope’ served as the follow-up to her 1995 singles collection ‘Design of a Decade: 1986-1996’ and saw the superstar look inwards, working through a period of poor mental health that led to an emotional breakdown while on tour via her musical output.
While her previous studio album ‘janet.’ dealt with themes of female sexuality, the concept for ‘The Velvet Rope’ draws on its title; using the image of the barriers used at film premieres and award shows as a metaphor for the emotional barricade preventing others from revealing their innermost thoughts. ‘We have a special need / To feel that we belong / Come with me inside / Inside my velvet rope,’ she sings on the album opener and title track, and at the time said of the LP: “We’ve all driven by premieres or nightclubs, and seen the rope separating those who can enter and those who can’t. Well, there’s also a velvet rope we have inside us, keeping others from knowing our feelings.
“In ‘The Velvet Rope’, I’m trying to expose and explore those feelings. I’m inviting you inside my velvet rope,” she added of the record, which was inspired by the impact those experiences had on her life over the two years prior.
“There were times when I cried all day,” she candidly told chat show host Oprah Winfrey in 1997, admitting an overwhelming sense of “guilt” at the magnitude of her career and a feeling of “inadequacy” that, according to the performer, dated back to her childhood. She remembered one specific incident: “A teacher really embarrassed me in front of the entire class and I never let go of that. To solve this equation – and it hurt me deeply,” Janet shared. “She said, ‘Come on Jackson, think. You can do this. Anybody in this room can do this.’ And I couldn’t think about the equation for thinking how stupid I was. That’s the way I felt at the time. You hear a couple of kids in the background that can solve it and are waiting to get up to the board, and she just leaves me there knowing that I’m having trouble. That never left me.”
Insisting she “didn’t run home and tell my mother, or any of my brothers or sisters,” Janet admitted the feelings took their toll, tracing the sensations back to her childhood fame.
“It’s very difficult being in this business at such a young age and you really pay the price. It’s not that I //didn’t// want it; I don’t remember someone ever asking me, really. I was just in it. And I didn’t mind being in it. I never said I wanted out,” she confessed. “I do remember times when I was at my school and following a friend home and seeing the Girl Scouts – this group of girls in their uniform – and thinking, ‘I want to be a part of this’. But knowing so deep inside that I couldn’t because in three days I have to go out on the road for I don’t know how long.”
On the impact it had on her friendship circle, she mused: “It’s very difficult finding true friends. It’s very hard. Who’s there for you because they love you and aren’t interested in what’s going on with your family?”
With her previous album, Janet dropped her surname in an apparent attempt to disassociate herself from her famous siblings; despite a decade of mega-success, she was still being referenced as the sister of Michael Jackson and interviewers were always preoccupied with getting the latest gossip on his whereabouts. But on ‘The Velvet Rope’, which draws on a plethora of musical influences, incorporating elements of hip-hop, funk, R&B, pop, jazz and electronica, for what stands out as the most varied collection of her decades-spanning career, it’s all about Janet. And when it comes to the songs themselves, it’s not long before the superstar lays her mission bare, with You containing some of her most pointed lyrics to date.
‘Here I am in your face / Tellin’ truths and not your old lies,’ she sings over trip-hop inspired beats. ‘Learned to survive in your fictitious world. Does what they think of you determine your worth? / If special’s what you feel when you’re with them / Taken away, you feel ‘less than’ again.’
Read the full feature in the December 2022 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
