Madonna like Janet drew the ire of the "Murrca!!! f**k yeah!!" crowd (the people who troll every single FB post Bruce Springsteen makes) when the AL video was announced. Even though she quickly went to the drawing board and did the awful flag video, the powers that be had already decided it was too controversial and blacklisted the album and American radio has never treated her the same again. Hung Up only went top 10 because of heavy itunes sales, it only reached #41 or #42 on airplay alone. Madonna however was 45 compared to Janet's 37
Why would radio have had no choice but to play her? Programmers control what gets on radio--not the audience. Yes, she was already in commercial decline, but Nipplegate made her career come to a screeching halt. I think Janet was the unfortunate victim of racism and sexism. Justin Timberlake became an even bigger star Nipplegate and even performed at the Super Bowl again last year, even though he was just as responsible for Nipplegate as Janet was.
Radio plays what programmers tell them. I remember the articles about Madonna in 2005-2006 about how Confessions was selling well and Hung Up had been a #1 single on itunes and even Sorry had been a hit on MTV/TRL where it was #1 and everything, but stations wouldn't budge because programmers told them that she's too old for the demographics and they were afraid of losing listeners if some 13 year old kid has to listen to somebody older than her mom.
There is a lot of goodwill towards her from her "old" fanbase, and a lot of people who would buy her record if it consisted of her farting into a tin can and kicking it around the studio for 3 mins, perhaps with a rap during the bridge. I used to be like this for lots of my old favourite artists, but the further they went along releasing records I tried hard to like, the less it worked until I eventually stopped being a collector of their music. Like I have with Madonna. I still do listen to their new records to see if they can get me back aboard. Like I have with Madame X.
This is what I mean; spending time with a record TRYING to like it. That's not something we'd do with a record from an artist we didn't know or were ambivalent about, and at the other extreme we (I anyway) will not give artists I do not like any time at all with their new records, over time my dislike will fade and I might go back and revisit some of their old and new music. Springsteen is a recent case in point for me.
LoL. I'm not going to go THAT far. I will always maintain Janet did her best work from 1986-1997, but "Damita Jo" deserved better than it received. I think "Unbreakable" is the closet Janet has come to reaching her classic period.
Yes to all of it. Unbreakable was classic Janet and easily the best thing she'd done since Clinton was in office. I'm someone who likes everything though, even the pre-Control albums and can find gems off 20 Y.O. and Discipline.
Or maybe - just maybe - because Madonna made an album fans really liked. I don't think Janet did that. I've been a Janet fan almost as long as I've liked Madonna, and I didn't bail on Janet after the Super Bowl. Still bought her albums, still saw her live. I never have any interest in replaying the 2004 to date albums. They didn't sound very good to me when new and I've not figured out any reason to change that attitude. Like I said: if Janet put out strong material and got snubbed, then I'll cop to a conspiracy. But she didn't. She put out mediocre material that would've struggled to sell without the "taint". If Janet produced an album as good as "Confessions" - and a single as irresistible as "Hung Up" - I suspect she would've done well, taint or not...
There is definitely an excellent album to be found within all of the Rebel Heart material. I feel like some of the best tracks were relegated to the deluxe and super deluxe editions of the album, which suggests that Madonna's not always the best judge of her own material these days. If you take the 12-14 best tracks spread over the various editions of the album, you'd easily have one of her strongest post-Ray of Light albums.
To some degree, but if programmers got the sense that audiences would want to hear the songs, they wouldn't boycott her... How can you say her career came to a "screeching halt" when "DJ" still sold 1 million copies in the US and made #2 on the charts? That's the myth here: that Janet couldn't attract flies after the 2004 Super Bowl. "DJ": #2, went platinum. "20YO": #2, went platinum. That's a dead career?
That's a legendarily bad appearance! Though IIRC, she had more than one "controversial" Letterman appearance. I think there's one she did as billed, and another where Sandra Bernhard was the guest and Madonna palled along...
I think the general consensus was that Janet's 2000s albums were forgettable, but that Unbreakable was the best thing she'd done since the 90s and that it was a very solid return to form. Problem being she was closing in on 50 so any shot at a "hit" was pretty moot at that point especially since the target audience radio caters to was an infant when All For You was a smash so they never really had any strong bonds to her. But Unbreakable was the artistic comeback fans had waited patiently for and I'd rank it above Madonna's albums this decade. That album received a lot of strong goodwill from critics and fans alike.
"Unbreakable" did go to #1. Granted, that means it sold about 72 copies, as it takes nothing to be #1, but still, it was a #1! From "Control" to date, every Janet album hit #1 or #2 in the US - this is why I think her "career death" is overstated. Maybe you can argue that only the diehards bought the 2004 to date albums and she lost the ability to attract a more general audience, but damn, that's pretty much every "legacy" artist. Not a lot of artists still finding new fans after 20 years!
with streaming its harder to attain a #1 than in the pre-2015 era after BB changed the rules to allow streams and YouTube to help boost album positions. Rebel Heart being the perfect case of this as on sales it was the #1 album of the week, but the Empire soundtrack came out the same week and destroyed RH on streams (because youth doesn't stream "old people" unless its Queen or somebody) so Empire came in #1 while RH settled for #2.
Céline's an interesting case in her own right. She temporarily "retired" in 1999 to have her first child and spend time on family, which is partly why she disappeared from radio after having a goodbye hit with That's The Way It Is from her to-this-point greatest hits release. Then she came back strong in 2002 with her "comeback" album and single A New Day Has Come before announcing her first Vegas residency. (Seriously, Céline's career is a masterclass in PR and image management - so many artists take 3-4 years between albums with no fanfare, but for her it was a retirement to focus on family followed by a comeback, with all the associated image burnishment that came with all that coverage!) She made $150MM+ from four years of the first Vegas show, had one home base for her family, and essentially stopping touring for years. She still released albums during that time and had a few lesser hits in the early years, but she was no longer a chart force post-2004 or so. That said, she's acknowledged as breathing life into Las Vegas and making it a legitimate residency destination for current and successful acts - just look at who plays there these days. Lady Gaga established her current residency right in the middle of all the acclaim she received for A Star Is Born and her Oscar nomination. That would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. And Céline made another few hundred million with her second residency show. Now she's about to embark on a world tour with a new album release in November, and a further enhanced image after all her tragedy (I don't mean to make light of all she's been through because it's completely legit and sad, but again, masterclass in image management). She may not be a chart force, but she's doing damn well... Of course, all that only applies when it comes to her English-language markets. Céline's career is still on fire in French-language territories and has never really dipped, but then she also has far more credible music in French vs. the schmaltz that has always been the core of her English-language material. This is such a perfect summation of Madonna's image over the past 20 years! American Life definitely deserves a reappraisal in the public eye - it's a surprisingly good album (with some very cringe-worthy lyrics thrown in along the way) that suffered from a botched launch with a single that was polarizing at best and a video debacle that disappointed fans and non-fans alike. (I'm a fan, and I was really disappointed in her unwillingness to stick by her original video - that's not the Madonna I thought we knew.) But get past that initial problem and there's some great material to discover. Totally agree. Where we'd all start disagreeing is in defining what those strongest tracks are...
I like the album. However not enough to impulse buy. I will wait 5 or more years after she releases another album or two so i can put this album into context. I did the same thing with ray of light. didnt buy it until 15 years later. It is the only non 80s madonna album I own. I like madame x but i need to see if it has staying power. How its looked at by other madonna fans. And i need to see if the albums she releases after are better or worse.
I watched that show, Letterman had become a control freak and was wrong-footed the moment Madonna tore up his 10 best list. She really didn't do anything controversial except purposely push his buttons by taking control. I wish she was on Craig Ferguson
It was stilted and clunky, and there definitely seemed to be some frost between her and SIr Ian McKellen. Luckily no-one mentioned Eurovision, or things could have got rather awkward.
