Songoftheday 12/11/18 - How many nights I've laid in bed excited over you, I've closed my eyes and thought of us a hundred different ways...

"If" - Janet Jackson
from the album janet. (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 21

Today's song of the day is from Janet Jackson, who twenty-five years ago had spent two months at #1 on the American pop chart with the first single from her janet album, "That's The Way Love Goes". It ruled on radio and sales for so long that radio even sought out another cut from the album, "Where Are You Now", so much so that the song spent 19 weeks on Billboard magazine's pop airplay chart. Her next physical single to be released from the record three months later would be the industrial dance jam "If". Written by Janet with her Flyte Tyme producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis over a prominent sample of Diana Ross and the Supremes' Motown classic "Someday We'll Be Together", the track was even more an evolution of her sound from her Rhythm Nation days. With a hard-hitting beat anchoring a much more assertive singer, that all belies the truth behind the lyrics, which tell of someone who keeps noticing a guy at the club while fantasizing what she'd do with him, but in the end is not that person and is too scared to even approach them in the end. It's a feeling I had definitely related to at that time, and by all means still do years later. The music video, an almost ten minute MTV-bound extravaganza complete with amazing dancing and alluding to tech that wouldn't come to pass until this age of the smartphone, is simply stunning - no wonder it won two MTV Video Music Awards that year. But the most striking thing about "If" is its integration of electric guitars in the mix, in my view the best of her career and even overshadowing anything Michael did with them...

"If" became the second top ten pop hit from janet. in September of 1993. The song spent a week at #3 on Billboard's R&B chart, while the remixes from the 12" vinyl and CD single helped it take two weeks at the top of their Dance Club Play tally. Internationally, the single was a top ten hit in Canada (#3), New Zealand (#8), and the Netherlands (#10), and reached the top-40 in the UK (#14), Australia (#18), Sweden (#19), Germany (#25), Iceland (#26), and Switzerland (#27).

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There was an alternate cut of the video which focused less on the brothel setting and more on her dancing...