In that song and “The Great Forever,” which starts with trip-hoppish electronics, Jackson considers how cruelly the world treats people who are kind and idealistic.
The highlight “After You Fall” isn’t much more than a minimal piano and a hushed vocal that proves how big a small voice can be. “No Sleeep,” Unbreakable’s first single, continues the sex-positive theme that has been her mainstay since 1997’s The Velvet Rope, but it’s an outlier - unlike Damita Jo, this album isn’t slicked by massage oil.
There’s nothing like a sure hit here, just expert adult-contemporary R&B, front to back. Which means that for Unbreakable, her first studio album since 2008, she brought back Jam and Lewis not to regain the glory of 1986, but to work with the people who know her best. But none of those songs was a hit in European countries less ashamed of the body either, so maybe it wasn’t just the “wardrobe malfunction.” She’s 49, and even if she wanted to cadge a visit with the Kardashians, pop culture has left her behind. She hasn’t had a top 10 single in the United States since 2001.
Jackson stands now: “Our love ain’t no material thing/Inshallah see you in the next life.” “Inshallah” means “God willing.But the albums she has released since the 2004 Super Bowl, where she exposed her breast during the halftime show and ignited a shitstorm, turned her career sales chart into a bell curve: It inspired the invention of YouTube and boosted TiVo sales but buried her own, as TV and radio seemed to blacklist her. Then the chorus determinedly looks forward from where Ms. With breezy vocal harmonies, “Broken Hearts Heal” reminisces about a childhood full of singing and laughing together. The tribute to Michael Jackson turns out to be unexpectedly upbeat. And “Lessons Learned” builds a folky refuge in a song about an abused, codependent woman. “Take Me Away” laces together plinking Minimalist marimbas and gleaming Fleetwood Mac guitars in a plea for escape that’s both wishful and optimistic. “Black Eagle” is a two-part song that sets its mysticism and self-help to modal phrases and quiet finger snaps. Jackson’s best songs.Įxperiments - and better tunes - are tucked away in the second half of the album. But the melodies lack the invincible catchiness of Ms. A few tracks reach cautiously toward the contemporary, with hints of trap bass and percussion in “Dammn Baby” and a four-on-the-floor chorus in an oddly melancholy save-the-world song, “Shoulda Known Better.” The title song of “Unbreakable” loops a sweet-soul sample through the verses like an early Kanye West production.
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