Love Will Never Do: Loved, Remembered, Appreciated
By Ashutosh
20 years ago, Love Will Never Do (Without You) was released as the seventh and final single off Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814. The album had already achieved sales of over 12 million worldwide, 6 top 5 singles in the US (3 of which were #1s) and Janet was considered an unstoppable force.
Her videos had been hugely popular and mostly depicted Janet in black. Her outfits were always long sleeved, covering her arms and showing minimal skin. Finally, this video showed Janet taking it off. Not literally of course, since she's always been a classy chick. She wore nothing but a black tank top and a pair of jeans and the theme of the entire video was simplicity. The video was received to a positive response from critics and quickly found itself on "All Time Videos" lists, including Rolling Stone's The 100 Top Music Videos (#13), VH1's 100 Greatest Videos (#72), and MTV's 100 Greatest Videos Ever Made (#88). It went on to win the 1991 Video Music Award for Best Female Video.
The song too quickly became popular and ended up being Rhythm Nation 1814's 4th #1 single, overtaking Madonna's Justify My Love in early 1991. It stayed atop the chart for only a week but was 1991's 19th biggest song according to Billboard.
Internationally, the song was moderately received, hitting the top 20 in majority of music markets. However, despite it's less than spectacular success, it has become one of Janet's iconic songs, perhaps as iconic as her breakthrough What Have You Done For Me Lately. It signified an important transition in her life, giving us a glimpse of what was to come. Gone were the days of the military-inspired Rhythm Nation and the girl who wanted to wait awhile. Janet Jackson the woman had arrived.
