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The Velvet Rope turns 25: why Janet Jackson’s boldest album is also her best
In public, Janet Jackson was on top of the world in 1996. She has just released a greatest-hits platinum album, celebrating the first decade of her illustrious career in music, and has signed an unprecedented $ 80 million deal to renew a record deal.
But privately, the then 29-year-old superstar was struggling with an attack of depression so devastating that she escaped in tears from multiple recording sessions for her next album.
“[I] sometimes she couldn’t get up, she later said Newsweek. “There were times when I felt very hopeless and helpless, and I felt the walls closing in on me.”
Jackson’s studio crashes were so frequent that it took her six months to complete the album she was working on – a lifetime compared to her breakthrough in 1986, Control, which she recorded in just two months.
“I had to take a lot of breaks because it was too overwhelming at times,” she admitted.
Blues, however, resulted in one of the boldest – and best – albums not only in Jackson’s discography but also in music history: The Velvet Rope, which was released 25 years ago on October 7, 1997.
Jackson had already started dipping her toes into sex symbolism with her 1993 album Janet, but she really let her quirky flag waving on The Velvet Rope, bringing up taboos such as same-sex relationships, masturbation, BDSM, violence home and family trauma. The King of Pop’s younger sister, the one who made her name for herself in sitcoms like Good Times and Diff’rent Strokes, vanished, and there was a 31-year-old woman with a bold vision and an implacable attitude.
“I do not think so [my fans] I expected it at all because it was completely different from what I had done in the past ” said the New Zealand Herald controversial concept album. “I think it really surprised them, but … it’s something I really had to do for me.”
The Velvet Rope was such a border-shifting departure from Jackson’s largely radio-friendly catalog that it was met with rapid opposition overseas. Officials in Singapore banned stores from selling the CD due to suggestive lyrics, and one British newspaper denounced a homoerotic cover of Rod Stewart’s 1976 song “Tonight’s the Night” by Jackson as “a bizarre reinterpretation of lesbians.”
Jackson quickly replied noting in an interview with MTV News that people didn’t “have to listen” to her latest project.
“Not everyone will like me and not everyone will like it, and I understand it,” she said.
And yet people were still buying the album, with the instantly iconic Ellen von Unwerth cover, in which Jackson with his head bowed highlights the beauty of her natural curls against a dark red background. It debuted at number one in the United States and sold over 4 million copies worldwide (an astonishing number in the pre-streaming era) – all before the new year.
The Velvet Rope, however, was too forward-looking for some music critics. All the music Lamented the 75-minute playback time, voicing his opinion in a two-and-a-half-star review that it was “hard to be patient to find” “good moments” on a CD, while Chicago Tribune he dismissed Jackson’s deeply personal lines, telling his readers to “concentrate on the intelligent rhythms of the street” instead.
However New York Times hailed “The Velvet Rope” as Jackson’s “boldest, most sophisticated and brilliant album”, and Billboard went so far as to proclaim it “America’s Best Album of the Year.”
Fans ate the album too, praising Jackson for fearlessly shedding light on the AIDS epidemic with top house single Together Again, uplifting survivors of the breakout hard-rock favorite, What About, normalizing periods of desolation with the rhythm of R&B “I Get Lonely” and the celebration of bisexuality with the funky “Free Xone”.
“I think it’s important for others to know about some of the things you may have experienced in your life that they are not alone, and that you understand what they are going through and that they can go through it,” told MTV of the inspiration behind the album without limits.
Jackson’s defenselessness has certainly paid off.
In the “Velvet Rope” era, Maya Angelou and Prince Albert II of Monaco presented the singer with Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Lady Soul Train Awards and World Music Awards, respectively. She also cemented her status as a gay icon with a GLAAD award and won a Grammy for her music video for the apartheid-themed “Got ‘Til It’s Gone”, Joni Mitchell’s bold sampling lead single.
What began as a remedy for Jackson has become the touchstone of culture. The Velvet Rope paved the way for artists such as Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Pink and Usher, the latter of whom had their big breakthrough on Jackson’s 1998 tour.
A quarter of a century later, the pioneering album continues to make its presence felt, gaining the coveted spot Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All Time and inspiring countless thoughts. It has shattered glass ceilings for both Jackson and her fans, allowing them to embrace their true self – even as the velvet ropes try to hold them back.