Janet Jackson
All For You
(Virgin)
Like her famous brother, Janet Jackson has always been particularly unsubtle about conflating art
and commerce. This makes for uneven, overlong, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sorts of records.
All for You, like every other Janet album before it, sounds expensive, contemporary, and
specifically designed to puke out a year's worth of inconsequential radio hits. It also sounds
like Janet and producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are running out of ideas.
After the relative sales disappointment of The Velvet Rope, Janet's most idiosyncratic, personal,
and best album to date, All for You is a crass bid at wooing back the TRL crowd. The title
pretty much sums it up: Janet loves us, she really loves us, and she wants us to love her back.
To this end, All for You features Janet adopting a multitude of barely credible guises, each of
them presumably aimed at targeting different markets, each of them perversely eager to please.
We get album artwork featuring one negligee-draped glossy of Janet after another (Janet Jackson,
Pop Thrush). We get giggling, and lots of it-before songs, after songs, during songs (Janet
Jackson, America's Sweetheart). We get pissed-off, man-done-me-wrong laments (Janet Jackson,
Avenging Angel). We get "sexy" jams that position Janet as the Pamela Lee of R & B-a pliable,
plastic plaything (Janet Jackson, Sexpot).
For the past decade Janet has been honing this honeypot shtick of hers, trying to convince us
that the lass who once crooned "Let's Wait Awhile" likes nothing better than a nasty, adult,
window-foggin' snoggin'. She tries too hard to convince us of her supposedly lupine sexual
appetites. From "Would You Mind": "Baby would you mind tasting me/ It's making me feel all
juicy." From "Love Scene": "As your hands move slowly/Up my thighs/You taste the honey." From
"All for You": "Got a nice package alright/Guess I'm gonna have to ride it tonight." Taken one
after another, these songs constitute a suite of beige, somnambulant R & B. Most of these new
tracks substitute a measured grind for Janet's usual chirpy dance-floor antics, and most of them
are seriously lacking in musical dynamics. Janet's erotic playland sounds about as enticing as a
Peptol Bismol milkshake.
For better or for worse, each Janet album has a theme. Ever the gracious hostess, Jackson spells
out her themes with mawkish interludes which serve the dual purpose of making her seem more
street, as rap stars are pretty much the only musical artists that bother with between-song
banter nowadays. All for You is Janet's post-divorce "I Will Survive" record.
Surprisingly, it's her most unconvincing guise yet. We get a few songs about what bastards men
are, a few songs about what fun sex is, and -- since this is Janet and she can never get too
nasty -- we get several songs about believing in yourself. In other words, the post-divorce
Janet is exactly like the pre-divorce Janet.
The swingin' single theme, it seems, is a bust and a ruse. All for You is marked by an irritating
vagueness. It's less about liberation and more about Janet striving to be a populist goddess.
It's all over the map stylistically, which is nothing new for an album bearing the Jackson
moniker. What's most distressing is that Jackson's more experimental tendencies completely fail
her this time. On her last two records we got "If," "What About," and "Got Til It's Gone" --
surprising, avant-garde soul-pop. On All for You we get bombastic rock opera ("Trust a Try") and
an embarrassing, pants-wettingly funny rap from Carly Simon ("Son of a Gun"). That's right,
Janet has Carly Simon rap, in what will surely go down as one of the worst ideas in the history
of recorded music. It's a shame, too, because "Son of a Gun" contains the only truly memorable
lyric on the whole record. Rebuking a philandering beau, Janet snaps "I'd rather keep the trash
and throw you out."
Because of the considerable talent on board, All for You is not without its bright spots.
"Truth" is a simple, Aaliyah-ish number that samples The Five Stairsteps' "O-o-h Child" to good
effect. The title track is a huge hit and deserves to be. Featuring a loping, summery groove and
a sweet vocal, All for You was a savvy choice for a first single. Tellingly, it's also one of
the few tracks where Janet actually bothers to project her voice and enunciate. We all know she
wasn't blessed with Aretha-sized pipes, but too often on All for You Janet mumbles incoherently
or is multi-tracked halfway to oblivion. It's a curious effect: You can hear Jam and Lewis
blending about a thousand different vocal tracks together on each song, and the results are
hollow and distancing. After all of the Janets on All for You have stood up, talked dirty,
cleaned themselves off, and faded into other, vaguely different Janets, we're left with that
impersonal, computer-sweetened voice. On The Velvet Rope Janet described herself as "a work in
progress." It's a shame, then, that All for You marks a case of arrested development. Rating: 3
Joe Manera
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