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Janet Jackson Reached Her 1993 Peak With janet. and Poetic Justice on Greatest Pop Stars
Greatest Pop Stars revisits Janet Jackson's 1993 peak, from janet. and Poetic Justice to classic videos and performances.
Janet Jackson is the focus of the next stop in Greatest Pop Stars’ Vintage Pop Stardom week, this time landing on 1993, the year she was firmly at the center of both pop music and pop culture with janet. and Poetic Justice.
To mark her upcoming 60th birthday this Saturday, May 16, the podcast is spending May 11-15 revisiting five peak years in Jackson’s career: 1986, 1990, 1993, 1998 and 2001. The series is built around the records, singles, videos, dance routines, tours, performances, fashion statements, social and political moments, and other major points that made her presence in those years hard to miss.
This episode moves from the 1990s transition point into what was arguably Jackson’s commercial and cultural high-water mark. Host Andrew Unterberger is joined by NYU professor and pop culture expert Naima Cochrane to revisit a year that brought classic singles, classic videos, major performances, standout looks, and one of the most famous magazine covers in the medium’s history.
The discussion takes in the major questions around Jackson’s 1993 run: how much of a reinvention was needed after 1990 to stay ahead in a different pop landscape, whether the dance from the “If” video ever got fully absorbed by viewers, and how Poetic Justice is remembered now in relation to the chemistry between Jackson and Tupac Shakur on screen and the tension between them off it. The episode also looks at whether “Any Time, Any Place” qualifies as an early neo-soul hit, whether “You Want This” foreshadowed a later late-’90s smash, and how Jackson’s peak was complicated by scandals she did not cause. The bigger question is left open too: was this the strongest pop peak of the first half of the ’90s?
Watch the episode above, along with a YouTube playlist of Jackson’s biggest 1993 moments, all discussed in the show. Greatest Pop Stars will continue its Janet coverage all week, with 1998 set to follow tomorrow. The podcast is also available on Apple Music or Spotify, with new weekly episodes every Thursday.
As always, the show is also pointing listeners toward a set of trans rights organizations for those able to donate:
Transgender Law Center
Trans Lifeline
Destination Tomorrow
Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Human Rights Campaign In Your Area
