Press Release from Virgin Records:
Shes one of the true superstar elite, she teased us with
a taste of her new sound last year via the keynote song in one of 2000s
biggest movies, and now Janet Jackson is ready for the world again.
Heres a sequence to make your mouth water. March: a brand
new Janet single. April: her first new album since 1997s multi-million-selling
The Velvet Rope. July: the start of a world tour, with the same spectacular
production values that have set the arena benchmark since her famous Rhythm
Nation debut tour of 1990.
April 23/24 sees the worldwide release of Janets new album
All For You, a tip of the hat to timeless soul and dance grooves and
a glorious celebration of her 1980s roots. The set was recorded at Flyte
Tyme Studios in Minneapolis with co-production by the mighty Jimmy Jam and Terry
Lewis, her longtime songwriting and studio collaborators, and additional production
by hot name on the block Rockwilder. The albums melodic, upbeat and fresh
sound is echoed by the title track, due as a single in March.
Concurrent with her new music, Janet will be honoured at the
inaugural mtvICON show March 13 in recognition of her place as one of
the most influential and beloved tastemakers in contemporary pop and R&B. The
spectacular accompanying show will eloquently demonstrate the impact that Janet
has had not only on her multi-million world-wide audience, but also on a generation
of fellow performers, as Destinys Child, Macy Gray, OutKast and N
Sync head the bill paying tribute by covering her songs. Janet herself will
perform at the climax of the show.
The new single, album and tour follow Janets world-wide
smash last summer with Doesnt Really Matter from the soundtrack
of Nutty Professor 2, in which she starred with Eddie Murphy and which
took $175 million at the world-wide box office. The song was an instant global
hit, spending three weeks at No.1 on Billboards Hot 100 in August and
September to take her total of US chart-toppers to nine, a run stretching back
to When I Think Of You in 1986.
Doesnt Really Matter is included on All
For You, an album of upbeat soul flavours that overflows with pure Janet
joie de vivre and will also feature such songs as Someone To Call My Lover,
New Beginning, Come On Get Up, Trust A Try
and the tantalising When We Ooh. It s the latest landmark
in an eclectic, audacious career that has touched audiences in pop, rock, R&B
and hip-hop without ever compromising.
Then, in the summer, Janet launches the long-anticipated sequel
to the Velvet Rope tour, which packed arenas and knocked out audiences
everywhere it went. The album itself produced three top ten singles in the UK
alone, all of them co-written by Janet: the genre-busting Got Til
Its Gone, the platinum-selling Together Again (which
spent 19 weeks on the British singles chart) and I Get Lonely.
That success took her world-wide career sales total to almost
60 million but its never been just about the numbers for Janet Damita
Jo Jackson, born May 16, 1966 in the Jackson family hometown of Gary, Indiana.
My parents taught us that you never give up, she says, and
its been a personal coda since she made her stage debut at seven.
Janet went on to star in the CBS TV sitcom Good Times,
and more high-profile television work soon followed in Different Strokes
and Fame. There were two teenage albums, a self-titled 1982 set and Dream
Street two years later, but it was 1986s Control that signalled
a new day in her career. Travelling from her Los Angles home to Minneapolis,
she began the association with Jam and Lewis that continues to this day, found
herself as a songwriter and reinvented herself as a person.
Control exploded showcasing Janets supple voice,
warm humour and feisty attitude in a series of indelible hit singles and innovative
videos shaped by Janet herself. Control was something that Janet extended
to her entire life, becoming an astute businesswoman in the process. She makes
the final decisions regarding every aspect of her multi-faceted career.
1989 brought the watershed album Rhythm Nation 1814,
a record reflecting real life and my real concerns, as he
put it, wrapped up in a high-voltage funk-dance sound. It spent four weeks at
No.1 in America and, a few months later, led to the Rhythm Nation World Tour
1990, which became the most successful debut tour in history, watched by over
two million fans.
Rhythm Nation contained my views about what
was going on in the world and the problems we have trying to educate kids,
she says. The idea was to give them some hope. Janet remains
a passionate spokeswoman on childrens, civil and human rights, education
and AIDS research. Indeed last year, she received the Commitment To Life Award
from the AIDS Project Los Angeles.
In 1991, in her mid twenties, Jackson negotiated a multi-million
dollar record deal with Virgin, and soon after rekindling her acting career
in 1993 in John Singletons compelling Poetic Justice, unveiled
the spectacular janet album, which overflowed with contagious grooves
such as Thats The Way Love Goes (No.1 for an incredible eight
weeks in the US), If, Again and the sultry ballad Any
Time Any Place, which logged ten weeks atop Billboards R&B chart.
The album became her third in a row to sell more than five million copies in
America alone.
In 1995 Janet joined brother Michael for the massive hit single
Scream, featuring a stunning glam sci-fi video clip. The following
year brought Janets first retrospective, Janet Jackson 1986-1996 Design
Of A Decade. It offered up her 16th gold certified single Runaway
and another memorable video, in which she danced her way around the globe. In
1997, The Velvet Rope took her audience closer to Janet than ever before,
as she bared her soul on the most intimate record of her career.
In 2001, to borrow from her famous song titles, weve missed
her much, but shes back to take her rhythm nation on a new escapade, fuelled
by a familiar passion. The one thing we all have in common is music,
says Janet, and music moves me.
© 2001 Virgin Records America, Inc.
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