Virgin 87825
Producers: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
Track listing: Morning / That’s the Way Love Goes / You Know… / You Want This / Be a Good Boy? / If / Back / This Time / Go On Miss Janet / Throb / What’ll I Do / The Lounge / Funky Big Band Racism / New Agenda / Love Pt. 2 Because of Love / Wind / Again / Another Lover / Where Are You Now / Hold on Baby / The Body That Loves You / Rain /Any Time, Any Place / Are You Still Up / Sweet Dreams
June 5, 1993
6 weeks
Following the landmark success of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, the singer was wooed away from A&M Records by Virgin. On March 11, 1991, the label announced that Jackson had been signed to a $32 million, three-album contract. The mega-deal could have put pressure on Jackson and producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, but Jam says it was pretty much business as usual when the trio went to work on janet.
Although Jam and Lewis refused to let A&M executives hear Rhythm Nation prior to its completion, Virgin Records co-presidents Jeff Ayeroff and Jordan Harris were invited to get an early taste of janet. “Normally we wouldn’t do something like that, but we had a lot of respect for them.” Jam says. He had worked with Harris before on a Human League project, “so it wasn’t so much like record company people coming out — they were creative people. We were about two or three weeks into the project.” Three tracks were completed at the time of the visit: “Because Move,” “If,” and “Again.” Says Jam, “We played them those three songs and we never saw them again, so I think they were happy. They thought we were doing okay.”
Although Rhythm Nation was mixed at Jam and Lewis’s new Flyte Tyme studios, it was recorded at the duo’s first studio, which went by the same name. janet. was the first full-album project completed at the new complex, which included a rehearsal space with a dance room. “As we were recording the album, Janet’s choreographer Tina Landon was in town. As we were getting the songs done, we would make her a cassette and she started working out routines for the songs. Literally when Janet wasn’t singing, she would go to the back room and work out routines,” Jam says. “It was interesting to watch the videos and the stage show come alive as the record was being made.”
On ianet., Jackson once again showed significant artistic growth. “She was older, more mature, and much more confident as a songwriter and a producer,” says Jam. “Our collaboration was at the point where there were no punches being pulled at all.” Jackson wrote her thoughts about what the album should be about in her Powerbook, while Jam and Lewis jotted down notes on paper. “When we compared notes we were about 95 percent on,” Jam says. The artist and the producers had some lofty ambitions. “History will tell us whether we deserve to even be mentioned in the same breath, but we felt like Rhythm Nation was like What’s Going On and janet. was Let’s Get It On,” Jam says. “We felt we wanted to do the same thing that Marvin Gaye did by going from a social consciousness-type album to a love album.”
The love theme made perfect sense. “Terry had been recently married, I was engaged, and Janet had been with her boyfriend Rene for about five years,” Jam adds. “It was a very lovey-dovey period in all of our lives.”
Jackson was also influenced by her role in the John Singleton film Poetic Justice. “She felt very confident and very womanly,” Jam says. “Our job was just to make that happen musically. So janet. has a very seductive feel to it.”
And janet. seduced the public, becoming Jackson’s first album to debut in the pole position and eventually spawning seven top 10 singles, including the back-to-back Number Ones “That’s the Way Love Goes” and “Again.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of June 5, 1993
1. janet., Janet Jackson
2. The Bodyguard, Soundtrack
3. Get a Grip, Aerosmith
4. A Pocket Full of Kryptonite, Spin Doctors
5. Breathless, Kenny G