Full Transcript Below:
0:10
“Someone To Call My Lover” features two iconic samples. First, this lead instrumental melody: a slightly-slowed version of the guitar riff from the 1972 hit “Ventura Highway” by the folk band America.
0:30
According to Jackson, producer Jimmy Jam showed her “Ventura Highway” during a studio session, and she “felt bad” for not immediately recognizing it.
0:50
The second sample occurs in the chorus. The ascending and descending keyboard line is a sped-up version of the central motif in Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No.1,” made famous by Claude Debussy.
1:10
Jackson first heard “Gymnopédie No.1” in a commercial as a child, and the melody stuck with her. “My son loves it,” she told SiriusXM. “He falls asleep to that song.”
1:30
In 2024, “Someone To Call My Lover” started to regain popularity on TikTok, so much so that Jackson included it in the encore section of her tour setlist that year. Between 2002 and 2017, she rarely performed the song.
1:50
Thanks to the popularity of social media fan edits, daily streams for “Someone To Call My Lover” surged over 600% in a four-week span in early 2025.
2:10
“Lyrically speaking, it’s really about the next person you want to be with, and call yours,” Jackson has said.
2:30
Janet first sang the vocal melody “over the phone to Jimmy,” who urged her to come to Minneapolis to record the track.
2:50
“Someone To Call My Lover” is from Jackson’s seventh studio album ‘All For You.’ Its title track was the best-performing single on the Billboard charts in 2021.
3:10
Jackson once said that the album contains “songs that feel right, that feel good. That you could see you’re in the car, the top down, you’re cruising, it’s summertime.”
