Janet Jackson - ‘Together Again’

It was the time where you could buy single CDs, and I didn’t have the money to buy full albums. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon her, but again I was not inside the culture. So I’m pretty sure I got this because I Ioved the cover. It looked demented. I just like beats, so to hear a girl singing on such a fast beat that was so pop was very inspiring. It was pretty life changing for me. Most of the things I was hearing on the radio at the time were more like slow-jams, romantic jams, white girls with guitars being sad – which obviously I also got into. But I think the beat was always where it was at for me, and ‘Together Again’ is probably one of the first songs I heard with such an incredible rhythm, but also the actual song! It stuck with me for sure. I didn’t know what it was about at the time – there are so many examples of songs you connect with as a kid without knowing the depth of the intention on the side of the artist. But maybe you feel that still as a kid or a teenager or whatever: you hear something about what the intention of the artist is. In this case it’s a pretty heavy subject. I read recently it was supposed to be a ballad but she decided to make it into a celebratory song. For someone who never really belonged anywhere, it was liberating to see things that were like a mish-mash that didn’t have a clear place of belonging.