Janet Jackson’s first performance in Britain for 13 years, as part of her cumbersomely named Number Ones: Up Close and Personal world tour, took place in the grand but reduced surroundings of the Albert Hall. Compared with the arena spectaculars that used to be her stock in trade, the show was an exercise in discreet downsizing while keeping sense of triumphalist celebration.
Jackson was here to promote a greatest-hits compilation called Number Ones — or # 1’s as it was rendered on the huge scrim in front of the stage — although she has had few hits of any description, let alone chart-toppers, in this country in recent times. She began by dedicating a screening of the video of her 1986 hit Nasty to “the beautiful people of London”, a backhanded compliment.
The 45-year-old singer, who then arrived in person in a white jacket and trousers that seemed to have been moulded onto her frame, was a far more sleek and slender vision than the teenage girl in the video. She embarked on the first of many slickly choreographed dance routines as in short order she whipped through a string of hits from the 1980s including The Pleasure Principle, Control and What Have You Done for me Lately.
As an exercise in nostalgia it was all very well. But having blazed a trail for a generation of aggressively empowered performers such as Beyoncé and Rihanna, Jackson has since been overtaken by them. She was accompanied by six nondescript dancers whose cheerful routines were staid by modern standards, while her brand of pneumatic, dancefloor music seemed out of place in a seated concert hall. It was, nevertheless, better than the string of torpid ballads with which she ended the first half.
The second began with a long slideshow of images from Jackson’s photograph album, while the band noodled away in her absence. But things finally picked up as she hit a rich seam of her best dance grooves including If and a superlative spin through That’s the Way Love Goes. Her late brother Michael appeared in footage from Scream, and everyone in the audience was up on their feet by the time she marched purposefully towards the finishing line with the militaristic stomp of Rhythm Nation.