Janet in a jam: Wachovia headliner's career is rapidly losing steam

THERE WILL COME a moment, late in Janet Jackson's slam-bang, 34-song "Rock Witchu" concert extravaganza at the Wachovia Center on Thursday, when the pop diva will finally take a breath and just stand there.

After 2 1/2 hours of constant go-go action, she'll be done with the Broadway-style production numbers (replete with big dance troupe and multiple costume changes). The techs will turn off the videos and unplug the dazzling fireworks as Jackson pauses to bask in the fans' cheers and, if the mood hits her (which it often does), she'll shed a few tears.

This is when the guarded, hard-nosed (but secretly shy and self-doubting) Jackson lets the real woman out. When she shows gratitude for the fans who've stuck by her through thick and thin - who still love her, really love her.

Jackson is 42 now, though you'd never suspect. She looks great, except maybe for that odd nu-Mohawk hairdo she's been sporting on stage in the show. To meet the rigors of her all-singing/all-dancing performance, Jackson recently shed major poundage (like 60) and is planning to tell how in a diet book. Still, there are storm clouds over her head - reasons she probably put on extra weight in the first place and may still feel weary of the chase.

As the youngest of the (in)famous Jackson performing clan, show business is the only business (and life) she's ever known.

Jackson has allowed in interviews that she's dreamed at times of other career paths, like becoming an attorney. But she's been a trouper and family breadwinner since she was 7, when her ever-zealous father/manager (he told her to call him Joseph to keep things "professional") pushed her out on stage in Las Vegas to do impressions with her brothers Michael, Jermaine, Tito, Randy and Marlon.

Three years later, Jackson joined the cast of the TV sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes." After that came a season on "Fame" and then the dawning of her music career at the ripe old age of 16, with her A&M Records' debut album "Janet Jackson."

For a while, Jackson's career skyrocketed. Everything she touched turned to gold. Much more than Britney and before Beyonce, she really was the IT girl. According to Billboard magazine, Jackson was the second most successful recording artist of the 1990s, with worldwide sales of more than 100 million albums.

Yet even the biggest of stars eventually peak and decline in popularity. One tell-tale sign came a few years ago, when Virgin Records let this longtime money machine fly the coup.

This year, it seems as if the bloom is really off the rose. Just a few months after "Discipline," her February debut album release for Island/Def Jam, failed to go gold in the U.S. (signifying sales of 500,000 copies), Jackson split from that label, too, citing disagreements in how the album had - or hadn't - been marketed.

Ironically, her six-years-younger boyfriend and the album's producer Jermaine Dupri is an executive of the label, so you'd think she would have gotten whatever grease necessary.

Now a rumor's floating that Jackson and Dupri will soon land as a team at a new recording company that Jay-Z is setting up with Norwegian producers Stargate and possible backing by the concert mega promoter Live Nation.

But the latter has to be wondering what she's worth in this depressed economy. A scan of Billboard's current Top 200 Albums chart finds Jackson MIA, even though big arena tours like hers are supposed to boost sales of both new and catalog discs. And while Jackson has enjoyed concert sellouts here in the past, there are still seats available for the Philly show in all but the priciest ($250) categories.

Not helping matters, Jackson has been off the road for seven years. In this world of short attention spans, that's two pop career lifetimes.

She attempted an alternate course to stay visible, appearing last year in Tyler Perry's film comedy "Why Did I Get Married?" Earlier, she worked with Eddie Murphy in "Nutty Professor II - The Klumps," which earned her a reported $2 million payday, though it failed to achieve the success of its predecessor.

But Jackson's worst career move was clearly her very public unveiling before 100 million viewers at the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show.

That infamous "wardrobe malfunction" probably tarnished her rep (especially with parental units) as badly as John Lennon's offhand remark that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus."

In initial post-Nipplegate interviews with the likes of nighttime talk show host David Letterman, Jackson claimed that the incident was just an accident. Nowadays, she simply refuses to talk about it, pretending not to hear the question when it's tossed her way.

Nor will she dish about brother Michael, claiming, "I've been talking about him all my life, and I'm done with that."

Michael Jackson - and the aura of controversy that he and Jackson share - remains the un-ignorable, two-ton elephant rampaging around the room.

For better and worse, he's the role model on whom Jackson has largely based her career, with lots of crossover of fans (and probably haters, too).

At her brother's trial on child molestation charges three years ago, this supportive sister underscored the point by wearing a T-shirt that flaunted, "I'm a pervert too."

More telling, the talent and her album producers have always copped bits of the signature MJ sound. While her voice has grown deeper and fuller, Jackson's singing is still full of warbly, Michael-like trills and breathy recitations.

Her music, like his, remains a study in percolating techno-pop thrills, designed for mass consumption while keeping an ear cocked for the latest thing.

And - as with Michael - her stage act has always been as much about dancing as singing. OK, in her case, maybe even more about the dancing.

Most critically, she's followed his path of artistic split-personality in song impressions: now innocent child, now commanding adult; now angel, now nasty she-devil.

The multi-identity thing gives her (as it did him) more options for emoting, for role-playing. And it keeps us guessing "Which [if any] is the real Jackson?"

When Justin Timberlake briefly let Jackson's breast out to play, this writer believes they were sending a message that Jackson's bad-girl persona had triumphed, that the one-time innocent child was all grown up and taking charge of her life, especially in the bedroom.

Since then, Jackson has happily given interviews devoted strictly to analysis of her sexual desires and the many songs she's sung on the subject.

Her three most recent albums have been especially obsessed with the topic, with "Discipline" most vividly exploring the kinky, S&M side of a love life on songs such as the android-in-heat "Feedback"; the synthy, sexy vamp "The 1" (featuring Missy Elliot); and especially the title track, in which Jackson announces herself to her lover as someone who's been very, very bad and in need of a good spanking, or whatever:

"I touched myself . . . I disobeyed you. Now I want you to come punish me."

Of course, as in tours past, Jackson plays out a sexual fantasy on stage, too. Each night, she's strapping a willing victim (ostensibly from the audience) into a bondage chair so she can have her way with him.

While this red-blooded guy is all in favor of empowered women and, um, self-expression, too, the truth is that this Nasty Girl thang has grown stale.

Jackson probably thought she was changing things, switching production duties to Dupri from longtime associates Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who had flavored her past hits with a mix of Prince-ly and King of Pop flourishes.

But maybe someone less smitten with the singer ("Jermaine loves me any way I am," sez Jackson) could have worked a more effective overhaul on her persona and career.

Here's one unsolicited suggestion: Follow your heart and go south, way south, Janet!

In a recent chat, Jackson declared that Brazilian pop is her favorite kind of music. And she's clearly knowledgeable about the stuff, citing great talents from Gilberto Gil to Maria Bethania.

So why not engage them in a new kind of musical mash-up, create a fresh sort of sweet-'n'-sultry, rhythm-based music that could make listeners at both ends of the Americas sit up and take notice?

For the moment, the good news for concertgoers is that Jackson will hit you up at the Wachovia Center with all her big hits, a thanks for the memories thing. But if she wants you to come 'round next time, the woman does need to find a new attitude. *

Janet Jackson "Rock Witchu" Tour, with LL Cool J, Wachovia Center, 3601 S. Broad St., 7:30 p.m. Thursday, $39.75-$125.75, 215-298-4200, www.comcasttix.com.