Janet Jackson is the perennial cause célèbre. Wherever she goes a smokescreen of controversy and outrage follows. Historically, she’s been the victim of misogynoir – a rabid, unforgiving press engine censoring her “bawdy” or “hardcore” songs about sex and bodily autonomy, and effectively blacklisting the singer from the industry after a televised slip-up at the Superbowl .
Jackson arrives at London’s O2 in a different kind of quagmire, having made some baffling comments about Vice President Harris’ mixed heritage , and mourning the death of her brother Tito Jackson mere weeks ago. If anyone can handle a media circus, it’s Jackson. The press-averse icon has opted to let her music and videography do the heavy lifting, and tonight’s show at London’s O2 Arena is a showcase in that steely resilience and intensity.
Jackson arrives in the capital with her first full-scale, headline performance in thirteen years, and it’s an opportunity to reexamine every era in a career that is synonymous with the great pop pantheon. ‘ Together Again ‘, is a callback to Jackson’s ‘Velvet Rope’-era international hit – her most-streamed song on Spotify – a much-needed communion with her fans, many of whom have experienced exile or estrangement in their own lives. — — Jackson enters the stage with her homage to the ballroom; the queer fiefdoms that inspired the sweaty club-centric experiments of ‘Janet.
’ and follow-up ‘Velvet Rope’, evident in the o.
