The last time Janet Jackson visited Chicago in 2017, she was as fun and sweet as always, but she didn’t feel quite the same. Her costumes were more subdued, the dance routines — while beautiful — were restrictive. It was a good performance but a different Janet.
But the Janet Jackson of 2023 is a woman who has returned to her best form. Her movements were fluid, sexy and familiar. For audiences who may have missed the more provocative and cheeky performer of years past, the Together Again tour, which made a stop in Tinley Park Saturday night at the Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, is a perfect trip down memory lane.
Rarely taking a breath between songs, Jackson glided across the stage, commanding the room as only a true professional could. Songs seamlessly blended into each other and dance moves fluidly emanated through her limbs. Being a performer, a showstopper, a true delight is not just what Janet Jackson does. It is who she is. And now, at the age of 57, she seems to be a performer who knows who she is, and what she means to her loving and diverse abundance of fans.
Wrapped in a majestic and deep purple cape, Jackson first took to the stage solo before donning a gold, sparkly bodysuit and dancing with a group of four backup dancers. Rather than simply sticking to the hits, Jackson initially slipped into underrated tracks like “Feedback” from the album “Discipline” and “Damita Jo” off her 2004 album of the same name, a record that slipped through the cracks due to the fallout of her controversial Super Bowl performance earlier that year.
The inclusion of such songs spoke to the overall theme throughout the night. While this was very much the Janet Jackson fans had come to know and love throughout the years, it was also a performer here to give overdue love to the stickier years in her career.
In a set that clocked in at more than an hour and a half, and featured multiple costume changes and four acts, Jackson also ran through a bevy of her greatest hits, taking it all the way back to her mid-’80s breakout with songs like “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “When I Think of You.” Fan favorites from her critically acclaimed 1989 album “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814″ like the album’s title track, “Miss You Much” and “Alright” kept the audience enraptured and singing along from start to finish.
During a downtempo section of the evening, Jackson appeared solo on the stage again to sit and perform slow songs like “Let’s Wait Awhile” and “Together Again,” which she slowed down and transformed into a sensual-sounding ditty through Jimmy Jam’s “Deeper” remix. “Again,” another fan-favorite, was largely performed by the audience when Jackson turned the microphone to the crowd and sat back to bask in the love from her fans.
But I was most excited by the medley of tracks she deemed some of her personal favorites that she never got the chance to perform live. That includes songs like “Throb” from the 1993 album “janet” and the 1999 Blackstreet single “Girlfriend/Boyfriend,” for which Janet was a featured vocalist. The song, a minor hit for Blackstreet (it only reached number 47 on the Billboard Hot 100) fits in well with Jackson’s eclectic body of work.
Its inclusion here as part of her Together Again tour speaks to the breadth of Jackson’s career. She is not just a pop and R&B star. Her work in genres like house and rock (as heard in songs like “If” and “Black Cat,” both of which were heard last night) shows her taste is rich and a rarity in the mainstream music world.
After, she performed another deep cut, “Make Me,” a song Jackson hadn’t performed live in more than a decade. It was a rapturous and lovely moment. While the “Together Again” tour was certainly a trip down memory lane for both casual and die-hard fans, it’s clear the show was also a chance for Jackson to revel in the breadth of her success and to have fun diving into the deep body of work encompassing her career.
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.
