Robbed hit of the week 9/23/24 - Janet Jackson's "In A Little While"...

 

 

"Just A Little While" - Janet Jackson

from the album Damita Jo (2004)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45 (two weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from pop legend Janet Jackson, who started out the new millennium in a very good place, with her 2001 album All For You spinning off one of the biggest hits of her career with the title track "All For You", which topped Billboard magazine's Hot 100 for seven week. It was followed by another top tenner, the America-sampling "Someone To Call My Lover" and another that hit the top-40 with the Carly Simon-assisted "Son Of A Gun (Betcha Think This Song Is About You)". (The latter included P. Diddy in the mix, making today quite the day on the bloggie.) In the autumn of the following year Janet guested on reggae star Beenie Man's "Feel It Boy", giving enough bounce to make the top-40. 

Jackson was intending to release her next album on Virgin Records in 2003, but delayed it when it was announced that she would be headlining the halftime show at the following year's Super Bowl. Meant to be a huge promotion perk for the new set, expectations were high, and a promo single, the "Janet Megamix 04", which included six of her recent hits mashed together, went to #3 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart at the beginning of the year. The lead single to her eighth studio album, Damita Jo (her two middle names), was primed for release the day after her gig on one of the largest-watched television programs of all time.

And then it happened.

 

During the halftime show, Janet performed "Rock Your Body" with that song's singer, Justin Timberlake, who proceeded to take off a breastplate from her outfit, also taking part of her bra in the process, exposing her bedazzled nipple to millions of viewers. It was really just a second if that before she covered it, but I remember being at a Super Bowl party of all gay men there mostly to see her and we all gasped in disbelief. However the backlash from that was as overdone as misogynistically hypocritical, as Justin totally got away with it with a simple apology, as Janet would soon find herself banished from the culture. Mind you, in the same show was P Diddy himself as well as future McMansion fascist Kid Rock, who desecrated the American flag by wearing it as a poncho with his head sticking out.

 

Which brings us back to that single, "Just A Little While",  which wasn't even one of the song she sang in the show (which is a choice). Written by Jackson with producer Dallas Austin, the song veers from the smooth R&B from her last set to an attempt at a pop-rock production. The song is all about the sexy times (maybe that's why it was nixed from the halftime show), with her prodding her lover for canoodling times, but even saying if he's busy "So maybe I'll just lay around, play by myself while touching on my favorite fruit". Oh my. The production from Austin concentrated on the rhythm guitar which gives the record a punch approximating the pop-punk of the time. The music video has Janet proto-FaceTiming her beau in future times (seemingly using DVDs?) before having a kiki with her friends...

While "Just A Little While" has the start of a hit, climbing to #17 on Billboard's Mainstream Top-40 radio chart, a boycott led by CBS head Les Moonves (a real dick of a man who hasn't received all his karma yet) made it stall there and get dropped by radio like a lead balloon, causing the song to stall under the top 40 on the Hot 100 in February of 2004. On the radio, the song didn't even make the R&B Singles or Airplay lists, and snuck on to the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list at #38. The gay community though didn't let Janet down completely though, with the club remixes from Peter Rauhofer among others helping it to top the Dance Club Play chart for a week and get to #17 on the Dance Airplay list (again, a victim of that boycott). Internationally, the single managed to reach the top ten in Canada (#3 Sales), Spain (#6), and Hungary (#10), and made the top-40 in the United Kingdom (#15), Italy (#16), Denmark (#17), Australia (#20), Ireland (#32), Greece (#30), and Switzerland (#37). The Damita Jo album, released in March of that year, spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and getting to #2 on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies (still, a disappointment for her). At the Grammy Awards in 2005, Damita Jo was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album, which Usher took home for his Confessions (ahem). 

The second offering from the album was the lush soul ballad of "I Want You", which she produced with longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis as well as an up and coming Kanye West (lord there's a lot of peripheral douchebags in this post). However the boycott led by Moonves was still in effect, and the song never made the pop airplay lists (it snuck on to the Mainstream R&B Airplay chart at #28), making it stop short at #57 on the Hot 100 and #18 on the R&B Singles chart. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in 2005, losing (rightfully) to Alicia Keys' "If I Ain't Got You". The third single from Damita Jo, "All Nite (Don't Stop)", which brought Janet back to the club with some neo-funk grooves. The single topped the Dance Club Play chart for a week, and peaked at #8 on the Dance Airplay list, but while it popped on to the Mainstream Top-40 radio chart at #33, it stalled at #90 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart, and only "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #119. 

(5/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's the remix from the late Peter Rauhofer that helped the song top Billboard's Dance Club Play chart...

Next up, her appearance on Britain's Top Of The Pops...

and lastly, for the BBC...

(Ed Note: this post was planned months ahead, and just by luck shows up on the week that Janet made that totally tone-deaf and racist statement about Kamala Harris. There was an "apology" which was subsquently called unauthorized, and it illustrates the insulation of the criminally rich people of today and what they feel is perfectly fine to say in public. I still feel she has been given the short end of the stick for decades, and willing to let slide but man, man man.)