Songoftheday 5/6/22 -It doesn't matter if they won't accept you, I'm accepting of you and the things that you do...

 

 

"Doesn't Really Matter" - Janet Jackson

from the albums Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (Original Soundtrack) (2000) and All For You (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 20

 

Today's song comes from Janet Jackson, whose sixth studio album The Velvet Rope had scored a #1 Billboard Hot 100 hit at the beginning of 1998 with "Together Again", made the top ten with "I Get Lonely", and reached the pop radio top-40 with "Got 'Til It's Gone" and "Go Deep". In the next year she appeared as a featured artists on a few high-profile singles, some of which were big hits like rapper Busta Rhymes' "What's It Gonna Be?" and some that were perilous flops like "Boyfriend/Girlfriend" with R&B group Blackstreet. 

In 2000, Janet (she was billing her music recordings as just "Janet" at the time) returned to acting with her first big movie role since 1993's Poetic Justice, when she starred opposite Eddie Murphy in the second in his reboot of the Nutty Professor franchise subtitled The Klumps. And just like her musical moment in the earlier movie with "Again", she contributed the song "Doesn't Really Matter" to The Klumps, which was released as a single. Written and produced by Janet with longtime collaborators Jimmy "Jam" Harris and Terry Lewis, the song is neither the delicate pop ballad of "Again" nor the organic soul of The Velvet Rope, but a futuristic R&B song that layers her harmonizing vocals on top of a skittish beat, with tempo shifts and a key change that keeps your attention on the song with rather straightforwardly simple lyrics about loving the inner person (which was ostensibly the message of the film farce). It works really well with her cooing but on-point voice, and doesn't sound dated at all today. What really worked is how good the music video is. I know, there's the dated special effects of the turn of the millennium, with the shape-shifting gimmick in full effect, but her dancing put on the CGI tilting stage is just genius. With interspersed scenes from the movie put in for promotion in this unidentified Asian-centric city of the future, Janet goes on her own little sunny Blade Runner adventure...

Just like "Again", "Doesn't Really Matter" climbed all the way to the top of Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in August of 2000. The song also spent two weeks at #3 on their R&B Singles chart, while getting to #2 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic radio format list. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Canada (#2), Poland (#2), the UK (#5), Spain (#9), Denmark (#9), and Italy (#10), and reached the top-40 in Belgium (#13W/#28F), Norway (#13), Sweden (#14), the Netherlands (#15), Switzerland (#17), Ireland (#21), Germany (#23), Iceland (#25), New Zealand (#27), Australia (#28), and France (#40). The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps soundtrack, which came out in July of that year, also sported a version of Sisqo's #1 hit "Thong Song", and included two future top-40 hits with Musiq's "Just Friends (Sunny)" and Case's "Missing You" which will be in this series, but as cuts from those artist's albums. Another track from the record, the Timbaland-produced "Hey Papi" from Jay-Z featuring Amil and Memphis Bleek, was only on this soundtrack, and rose to #16 on Billboard's R&B chart and #76 on the pop Hot 100. The soundtrack album went to #4 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, beating the high from the first movie, and went on to sell over a million copies. Janet also included "Doesn't Really Matter" on her next studio album All For You, and she will be back to the series.

(8/10)

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Here's Janet performing "Doesn't Really Matter" at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, opening the show in spectacular fashion...

Next up, in concert in Hawaii in 2002...

and lastly, a fan shot from her State Of The World tour in 2018...

Up tomorrow: Two G-funk powerhouses take another step.