White grew up in Los Angeles, and she started competing in beauty pageants at age five. Very early in life, Karyn White decided that she was going to be a star. “Romantic” isn’t a terrible song, but it’s a clear Janet imitation, and it’s nowhere near as memorable as the real thing. Karyn White’s other hits, the ones that don’t sound like Janet Jackson songs, have lingered much longer. (Janet Jackson herself wouldn’t start making hornier music until a couple of years later.) “Romantic” might’ve been a #1 hit, but it was the type of #1 hit that fades from collective memory immediately after its one week on top.
In fact, White didn’t just have access she was on her way to marrying Terry Lewis.īut “Romantic,” Karyn White’s sole #1 hit, mostly plays as a distant echo of the kinds of things that Janet was doing two years earlier on Rhythm Nation 1814 - a hornier generic-brand version of a Janet Jackson track. She also had access to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Janet Jackson’s primary collaborators. Karyn White was a strikingly beautiful woman and a gifted singer with a proven track record of hits. If anyone could’ve made a Janet Jackson record in 1991, then it probably would’ve been Karyn White. Something about Jackson’s whole presence just couldn’t be copied.
But other than Janet’s former choreographer Paula Abdul, nobody ever quite managed to achieve any kind of sustained success by doing Janet Jackson things. Janet Jackson was never an insanely talented singer like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey, and she had a formula - ebullient vocals over hammering dance-funk production - that should’ve been fairly replicable. It’s not easy to make a Janet Jackson record. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
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