Missing Janet Jackson

Sam Sanders, the ebullient host of NPR's broadcast-podcast It's Been a Minute always ends his show asking us to send him a message about the best thing that happened all week. The best thing that happened to me was that he programmed a whole hour on Janet Jackson (October 9) introducing me 35 years late to her album Control. Since then, her music has added a swagger to my step wherever I've gone. I feel 27 again.

Sam interviewed Jackson's producers James Harris III ("Jimmy Jam") and Terry Lewis. They chose the assignment to record an album with Janet Jackson because they saw in her TV sitcom performances an "attitude" that didn't show in her two lackluster pop albums. They thought that she would be interesting to write songs for.

Their collaboration started with "therapy," just hanging out with her at restaurants and movies, asking her questions. After a week of that, she asked when they were going to start work. They presented her these lyrics from "Control":

When I was seventeen,
I did what people told me.
Did what my father said
and let my mother mold me.
But that was long ago.
I'm in control...

Other verses were about regaining control after losing it over first love -- "I didn't know what hit me" -- and her determination to take control of her career. Incredulous, she asked, "Do you mean that you're going to make songs from everything we talk about?" Yes. She said, "Then I want to talk to you about this and this...!"

The songs that resulted are all different in character, "but they hang together," Sanders says. From taking control, kicking back against "nasty boys" and the lout who hasn't done anything for her lately, she looks for someone better. She surrenders some control when she finds someone who gives her joy. She warns, "Let's wait awhile / before we go too far," but undercuts that message when she ends the album with a make-out song "Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)."

Listening to the album for the first time, I hear what makes Harris and Lewis call her "fearless, relentless, beautiful." Hers is a supple voice capable of both piercing high notes and of a low whisper so sensuous in the last song that my mouth goes dry. The one song that I recognized as hers before this week is "Nasty Boys," more growled than sung, but I marvel now at how she draws the word "boys" out to four expressive syllables.

Janet's work with Harris and Lewis shares some qualities that I'd loved in Michael Jackson's work with Quincy Jones. In their songs, you get some bright colors, a layered texture with some fast-moving parts, some over-arching slow melodies, and unexpected bits of punctuation from brass or percussion. Other 80s acts used this layered approach -- and so does Mozart! -- but I hear more care for variety and surprise in these early works by Michael and Janet. Also, these dancers' voices dance: breaths, cries, and segmentation of some phrases amount to a solo rhythm track like a tapper's tattoos.

Sam's radio show moved on to the incident that halted Janet Jackson's career in 2004. Sam plays a clip of Justin Timberlake's admission that their "stunt that went too far" was a 50-50 mistake, but, he said, "I'm only getting 10 percent of the blame."

I hear that Janet's doing well in Europe and winning awards for previous work. I'm planning to catch up with her. Only 34 years of music to go.