14 DAY TRIAL // For her New Year’s resolution, Janet Jackson has, first and foremost, promised herself that 2010 will be a better, more upbeat year. After dealing with the loss of her brother Michael and the falling apart of her long-lasting romance with music producer Jermaine Dupri, Janet is looking up this year with a brand new album, a new book and several other projects, as she reveals in the latest interview with Gotham magazine.
The album, which will presumably be released by Interscope in June, will bring back the Janet fans came to know back in the day: upbeat and energetic. Of course, the experiences of the past year have not failed to leave an impression on her music, Janet explains for Gotham, but the result is clearly a very optimistic one, a material reflecting the more positive outlook she now has.
“It’s going to be a little different. The writing is about life experiences. There’s a part of me that’s craving escapism, which is a sense of wanting to keep on moving with my work but also of coming to terms with reality. So I think it will be upbeat and light,” the singer tells the magazine about the upcoming (her 11th) studio material. She wouldn’t go into more details, though, perhaps on the grounds that fans will get to hear exactly what this is all about once the album arrives in store. What she would offer, though, are details on the music she’s listening to right now.
“You know what makes me feel good right now when I hear it on the radio? ‘Empire State of Mind’ [by Jay-Z]. When I hear the chorus… it makes me smile. And I love the way Alicia [Keys] sings it. I was crazy about ‘Native New Yorker’ [by Odyssey] when I was a kid. I was visiting my brother when he was doing The Wiz and living here with my sister [La Toya]. I was on hiatus from the television show Good Times. My mother asked me what I wanted to do with my time off, and I said I wanted to go to New York and visit Mike because I missed him so much. We would go to Studio 54 when I was just this 10-year-old kid and I would hear ‘Native New Yorker’ and it made me feel so good and it never leaves your mind – that energy, that excitement, those endorphins being released within you,” Janet explains.
We were also telling you earlier today that, in the same interview, the singer also touches upon topics like what she’s learned from the tragic experience of losing Michael, how she hopes women all over the world will find the help and guidance they need (and that she did not get when growing up) in her upcoming book, and how she loves New York more than any other town.