Song 31:
"Again" by Janet Jackson
Peak: 1
Year: 1993
Year end position: 12
Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/28
Chronological Songs by Artist: 17/28
Video?: Yes
Spotify?: Yes
I was doing some background research on today's song title,
and what I came with was that "Again" is technically an adverb as it
modifies when some kind of action happens.
I was curious as to whether my favorite prepositional phrases were
adverbs as well, but I guess they can be, but don't necessarily have to
be. Today's song is a little slow in
pace, but there is plenty of action in it, and all of that action happens
"again".
If you remember back to "Adult Education" by Hall
& Oates, I made a bit of a big deal about the fact that they were the biggest act we had heard up until that point in the blog. Well, today is the first time they get
surpassed. Hall & Oates were tied
for 27th in number of songs to hit the top 20, but today's artist is the first
time we see someone in the top 10. Janet
Jackson is currently tied at #10 with Chicago with 28 top 20 songs. That's about 1.25 songs per year over the
course of her chart history (23 years)(1986-2008). The closest equivalent I could find was
Marvin Gaye, with about the same rate only over 20 years.
This song was the 7th #1 song of Janet Jackson's
career. To put that into some
perspective, only 17 acts have had more than 7 #1 songs. She finished with a total of 10 #1 songs,
putting her currently in a tie with Rihanna for 9th place all time. That's some pretty exclusive company.
At this point in Janet Jackson's career, she was about as
popular as she would ever be. She had
just gotten off the release of the Rhythm Nation album, which yielded 7 top 20
hits. It was then that she decided to
return to acting and was cast as the lead in the movie "Poetic Justice"
by John Singleton. She plays the title
role of Justice who writes poetry. From
what I could find, the poems that were quoted in the movie were written by none
other than Maya Angelou, who also stars in the film. Her love interest is played by 2Pac, whose
songs we will also get to later in this blog.
Apparently, Ice Cube was initially offered the role, but didn't feel as
though he was at a point in his career that he could play a romantic lead. The movie met with moderate success, but it
did garner an Oscar nomination for this song in the Best Original Song category. It eventually lost to Bruce Springsteen's
"Streets of Philadelphia".
Let's get into the lyrics of the song. The song seems to span quite a bit of time,
as each verse seems to be about a specific time period. The overarching theme is that one of Janet's
exes has come back into the picture somehow.
You don't know much about the relationship, other than it left Janet
heartbroken. The first verse shows her
initially getting the news of the ex, and it has to remind herself that she has
made a deal with herself to never fall in love with the ex again. That makes me think that there was a lot of
history between these two.
In the second verse, Janet is singing about all the pain
she's been through and how she knows that if she gets back together with this
guy, she's probably going to go through it all over again. I'm not so sure at this point whether she's
just reciting these facts, or she is trying to convince herself of something.
The reason I say that is that the third verse seems to fast
forward a little bit. She starts off
saying that they made love. Not only did
they make love, but "It felt so good / and oh so right". That seems a bit at odds with her early
proclamations that she would "never fall again". She seems pretty vulnerable at this point,
and also still seems to be clinging to her original idea, since the last line
again is: "Never fall again".
It's in the last verse where she gives up all pretense that
she isn't falling in love with this guy.
She more or less tells him that she's falling in love with him and that
he better not hurt her again. In the
last part of the song she is asking him to hold her and tell her that he loves
her. It's a pretty vulnerable position
to be in, but the song finishes with her telling him that she loves him
again. You hope for the best after that,
I guess.
There is a video for this song. In the video, it looks like Janet is sharing
a passionate day with her man. It
doesn't really follow the storyline in the song. The couple seem perfectly happy throughout
the video. There is one scene that is
memorable. There's a scene where Janet
is laying on her back, and the guy reaches down and unbuttons her pants. He then reaches his hand down into the
pants... and pulls out a belly chain. It
seems pretty racy for the early 90s.
Honestly, given the song and the times, I'm not really sure what the
purpose was for that particular scene, but it was the one I remember some 20
odd years later.
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