Janet wows Manila

A month after hearing about it, my boyfriend and I were finally on our way to see one of the greatest artists of our generation: Janet Jackson. Technically, we can’t really say she’s from our generation since she started in the late 80s and continued to make new music until today, so she belongs to all the people who grew up listening to her from then until now. Although, since she’s doing a 35-song all-hits tour, does that mean she’ll be going on an indefinite break? I hope not. It was better for us that we were going to watch that kind of show instead of an album promo tour, in that we’d have a much better chance to hear our favorite songs. She was going to sing more than three albums worth of hits, who would want to miss that?

On the way to the PICC, the traffic was so awful! Our tickets said the show would start at 8 p.m. It was past eight and we weren’t even close! We were getting worried that it would be halfway finished by the time we parked the car! When we arrived, there were two long lines of people waiting to get in, and lots of cars on both sides of the street. The concert couldn’t have possibly started with so many people outside, we thought. As expected, we weren't able to find a nearby parking spot, so we ended up leaving my car at Sofitel. It was quite the walk back to the convention center so I decided to trade the heels I originally planned to go in with flats. They weren’t nearly as stylish but I’d pick that over aching feet anytime, plus I knew I wouldn’t be sitting down when the show started. When we got in, we saw the crowd: some really old people were there, and some were barely in their teens. Talk about age gap.

The tricky thing was that my boyfriend and I had different tickets. He bought the very last P5,000 ticket on the morning of the concert and even waited for the Ticket World outlet in Greenbelt 1 to open; good thing his office was a just short walk away. It sucks that we wouldn’t be sitting next to each other but he assured me he’d be okay, so long as we got to watch Janet. We were sitting at opposite ends of the concert hall. I was at the front right and he was by the left rear. Later on I found out that he didn’t stay in his seat because right next to him was a big guy who had an elbow all over the place, and he somehow got upgraded to an P8,000 seat where he could see me from. Good for him!

After a long wait, they finally dimmed the lights. A video message from Janet and her music video “Go Deep” from The Velvet Rope album played on the screen. We saw the dark stage slowly being filled with her live band, which was at the top platform of a three level set. Then the music started. We started hearing Janet Jackson, singing “Pleasure Principle!” But for less than a minute we couldn’t see her at all! Then suddenly, lights shone on our part of the theater. She was right behind us! Janet entered from the side, and we were so close!

She was guided to the stage while singing the first part of her routine, a long medley of some of her 80’s dance hits. And she danced through the whole first set! I mean it probably wasn’t the most exhausting choreography in the world (come on she’s 40-plus) but to go that long and keep with the time while singing is amazing. All those dance steps in a nearly two-hour concert – I have no idea how she does it. The thought that she might just be lip-syncing crossed my mind since her voice still sounded so perfect despite all those moves. But I could almost tell she wasn’t, especially when she changed how she sang some of the songs a bit. My boyfriend told me later on that it wasn’t all lip-sync, if ever there was, she probably had a backing track and some vocal enhancer to help make the sound a bit better, plus she had backup singers. She switched between wireless lapel and handheld mics when she didn’t need to move so much, especially on the second set when she sang her slow jams, including “Let’s Wait A While.”

The whole night was all about me singing along to most of the songs, and jumping and dancing around when I couldn’t help it. I even saw that some people even memorized and did entire sets of choreography along with Janet and her dancers! It didn’t help that I wasn’t with my date and he said he had the same dilemma. I loved it when she did “Miss You Much,” “Escapade” and “Doesn’t Really Matter.” But her showstoppers were “Rhythm Nation,” with a backing video that made it look like there were ten times as many dancers onstage, and of course, “Scream,” her duet with the late great Michael Jackson, with an edited version of their music video playing in the background. It looked like we were watching them both live! Her finale, “Together Again” was actually a tribute to her older brother. I couldn’t help getting a bit emotional at that part.

It was a real shame that when some of us counted how many songs were there, she only did at most 25. We were thinking maybe her other ten hits were collaborations with other artists and she couldn’t perform them on her own, or some other “management-related” issues. Most of the songs we didn’t hear, sadly, were her mid-90’s songs, our childhood to teenage favorites! It still was a great night though, and until now I’m having Janet Jackson fever, so I’m stocking my iPod with all her songs I could find.