318. Janet Jackson, "The Velvet Rope"

 


I am again in that uncomfortable place where I feel like I don't know enough about a genre to have a really well-informed take on this album, other than to say I thought it was ok?  It had its moments, but never really grabbed me, and I'll probably never go back to it?  Let's focus on the positive, as my Mom most definitely never used to say.

The first song that grabbed my attention as I was listening was "Got 'Til It's Gone," which samples so heavily from Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" - specifically the "Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone" part - that Joni gets a performance credit, along with Q-Tip and Janet.  It's an interesting song that feels almost, or maybe entirely, trip-hop, which I was not expecting.  It's totally a trip-hop drum pattern, at least.  "Rope Burn" is a little trip-hoppy as well, and is pretty explicitly sexual, as the title might suggest.

The only song I recognized was "Together Again," a great candy-pop melody married to a pretty much straight-up disco backing track.  Oh, and the cover of Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night," on which Janet famously refused to change the pronouns, recasting it as a same-sex entreaty.  Her record company thought this was too risque for 1997 and didn't want to include it.  How quaint that seems now!

I think I intuitively understood the reason why Rhythm Nation would be on the list.  This one's a little harder.  Again, I'm kind of out of area here, but I don't really see it.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I don't think so.


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