I like to think the soundtrack of my life would be a multi-genre epic: all the music I swallowed whole as a child (before I realised what my ears actually liked), plus everything I’ve chosen to listen to since. There are few artists that sit in both circles of the Venn diagram, and even fewer greater than Janet Jackson. Miss Jackson, if you’re nasty.
Jackson ruled my world for years. I listened to her on my Walkman in the 80s, and replicated the What Have You Done For Me Lately video at countless birthday parties. Aged 14, I co-choreographed a routine to her 1993 hit If with my school mates. At 16, I sent off a cassette of my rendition of her 1997 song Together Again for my Stars In Their Eyes application (don’t laugh).
She was everything: a big sister (and a younger one, to superstar Michael), a glamourpuss, a cutie pie, a vixen, a feminist (before I knew what one was).
The politics of her fourth album, Rhythm Nation 1814, cut through its incredible music; the sensuality of her follow-up, Janet, made me blush; and the vulnerability of her sixth album, The Velvet Rope, made me cry (and, years later, inspired me to colour my hair red). Her ever-changing aesthetic exemplified the Carefree Black Girl life I wanted to be living. The voice itself is like an extended sigh, capable of high drama and baser human emotions. Her own dramas – divorce, that Superbowl incident, her marriage to a Qatari billionaire – are all footnotes to a career that has left me breathless.
On her 49th birthday last month, when she announced a new album and world tour, I screamed aloud. I have never been so ready in my life.
