While Janet Jackson’s new album, All for You, is expected to top next week’s Billboard 200, the title track is still holding strong as the #1 song in the country.
Like most of Janet’s album, the song is produced by the singer/songwriter with the Flyte Tyme team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and it includes an inventive sample – from Change’s 1980 disco cut “The Glow of Love,” which featured Luther Vandross on lead vocals.
“It was Jimmy’s idea,” Janet told MTV Europe of the sample. “I hadn’t heard the song before. He thought that he was going to take me back by playing me this song, but I didn’t recognize it. Where I was and what I was doing at that point in my life [when ‘The Glow of Love’ was released], I have no clue. It totally passed me by. But I loved it, though. I told Jimmy, ‘We gotta do this.’ ”
Janet also wasn’t familiar with America’s 1972 hit “Ventura Highway,” which was sampled for her next single, “Someone to Call My Lover.” The singer is trying lock down plans for the video with Francis Lawrence – “He’s grown so much in such a short amount of time,” she said of the director – and she hopes to shoot the clip in either Hawaii or Los Angeles sometime in May.
One new song close to Jackson’s heart is “China Love,” and her story behind the song has a very “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” genesis.
“I was told that in my past life, I was the daughter of an emperor,” Janet began. “I was very much in love with a warrior, and we never had the relationship we really wanted to, because I was to marry into royalty. And [I was told that] in some point in my [current] life I would possibly meet up with this person. So I started wondering, ‘Where is he? Is he here now? Have I met him before?’ That’s where ‘China Love’ comes from.”
The track is one she’s likely to perform when she hits venues across the country this summer. Fans should expect something new on the tour, her first since her 1998 Velvet Rope outing.
“It’s a completely different show,” Janet said. “A different stage, five new dancers, different musicians. We’ve put it together for the most part, [now] it’s a matter of learning choreography and rehearsing the whole thing, really. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it.”
Jackson is also is looking forward to returning to the silver screen, but she says that for now, acting will have to take a backseat to her concert series. “It all depends on whether I extend [the tour] or not,” said Janet, who hopes to take her show overseas this winter. “It’s gonna be a little while, though. I read a few scripts before finishing the album. We’ll see what happens.”