Number Ones

iTunes Editors’ Notes

Janet Jackson’s Number Ones comprises nothing but chart toppers, save for the new tune “Make Me,” a heavy thumping dance-floor smash. Since Design of a Decade: 1986 – 1996 is her only previous hits collection, Number Ones is a welcome update assembling 33 peaking hits, covering charts from North America, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Number Ones is sequenced chronologically, so it plays with the arc of a rising star. “What Have You Done For Me Lately” opens with sassy aplomb serving as her first breakthrough hit (and as nostalgia for a time when the song became embedded in pop culture via Eddie Murphy’s 1987 film Raw). You get a sense of the dated production trends when “Nasty” follows, but Herb Alpert’s trumpet on “Diamonds” sounds timeless. She got into sampling in the 21st century, looping a riff from America’s “Ventura Highway” for the infectious “Someone to Call My Lover” (which also sampled Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1”).