Music Review/Album: 11 Mar 2008
Patrick Freyne

Discipline

"Seriously, Ms Jackson, I invite you around for high tea and you turn up leather clad, groaning, and hollering about touching yourself. Mrs Wilberforce didn’t know where to look and the vicar was most upset."

Janet Jackson must feel we know each other very well. I mean, she clearly wants me to call her by her first name (it’s still Mr Freyne to you Janet) and she’s incredibly forthcoming with her Carry On-style ‘sex’ lyrics. On ‘Feedback’ she groans: “Strum me like a guitar/Blow out my amplifier/When you hear my feedback/Keep going higher.” Initially I thought, “How unusual, Janet is giving guitar lessons”. However, when I heard the song’s refrain of “sexy, sexy, sexy” I was abashed. She’s talking about SEX.

Ooer missus!

Of course Discipline is actually about as “sexy” as anyone huskily hollering the words “sexy, sexy, sexy” can be (there’s a mad old guy who says things like this on my bus route and the effect is kind of the same). And many of the songs contain ludicrously overblown metaphors for ‘sex’ and lots of panting and sterile modernist production. But as the album proceeds, it moves from the type of beatz that sounded cutting edge in 2003, and gives way to a good section in the middle featuring the more old fashioned style of pop song that makes her sound a lot like her brother (particularly on tracks like ‘2nite’ and ‘Can’t B Good’). Michael may have been a lousy babysitter, but he was a fantastic pop star, so Janet can get a few points out of me for sounding like him.

Of course towards the end of the album the cutting edge (i.e. not very cutting edge) beatz come back and there are ruminations on philosophical hot potatoes such as penis length and masturbation.

Sigh.

Seriously, Ms Jackson, I invite you around for high tea and you turn up leather clad, groaning, and hollering about touching yourself. Mrs Wilberforce didn’t know where to look and the vicar was most upset.