As featured artist of the month, Billboard.com are running a series of articles about Janet and her upcoming album 20 Y.O. The following, entitled Janet’s Juggernaut, looks at how the album took shape.
Don’t call it a comeback.
Janet Jackson conceived her new Virgin Records release, “20 Y.O.” (due Sept. 26), as a celebration of the joyful liberation and history-making musical style of her 1986 breakthrough album, “Control.”
That album has sold more than 5 million copies in the United States alone, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Jackson’s musical declaration of independence launched a string of hits, an indelible production sound and an enduring image cemented by groundbreaking video choreography and imagery that pop vocalists still emulate.
Jackson reunited with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and was joined by Jermaine Dupri to craft a musical reflection of who she is today and how the artistic promise of “Control” has been fulfilled some two decades later.
Creating a project with such lofty goals was a relatively smooth process, Harris and Dupri say. Conversations that began before Christmas 2005 between Jackson and the producers narrowed down the theme early, and songwriting and recording began in earnest in February.
The discussion turned to how Jackson was feeling at the time “Control” was recorded (when, incidentally, Dupri was just 13).
“I started asking questions like, ‘What was the feeling of life when you were 20?’ I was so intrigued with what was going on in her life then that I just thought her album should be called that,” Dupri says.
Harris adds, “It made sense as a concept because, obviously, the 20 years since the ‘Control’ album, but it also means — for her — a sense of rejuvenation. A sense of that excitement that you have when you are 20 years old, when your life is beginning and you’re striking out on your own. She has that same sense of hunger and excitement.”
