Lies
“None of Damito Jo’s singles went Top 40 in the U.S, but the lack of hits means that the album plays today as a single statement without the distraction of external cultural attachments to its songs. (It’s also a reminder that pop culture has no obligation to fairness if songs as sublime as “Truly” and “Island Life” should exist in neglect.) That Jackson’s commercial downturn happened to coincide with an album in which she was adamant about her status as a regular person who does regular-person things like fucking feels like some kind of thematic kismet. Damita Jo’s explicitly rendered humanity—in its intent and its performances—ultimately sells the sexual content of the album as part of a real human’s functions and desires, as opposed to a crass marketing angle. Between songs, on her trademark interludes, Jackson babbles about her love of humidity, Anguilla, dusk, and music, aware that life is in the details that outsiders might find extraneous. The glory and the tragedy of mortality spread across Damita Jo like the smile on Jackson’s face. Here I am, she was saying, naked as the day I was born, take it or leave it. Most people left it. That was their loss. ”