Janet Jackson

“UNBREAKABLE”

Rhythm Nation Records / BMG

Meet a sweeter, more chaste Janet Jackson. “Unbreakable,” her first album in seven years, arrives after two major events: the 2009 death of her brother Michael and her 2012 marriage to a Qatari businessman, Wissam Al Mana. Through 17 songs, Jackson sings about love, loyalty and compassion, and about memories as well as anticipation. The word “sex” never appears in the lyrics.

Jackson, 49, is returning at a pop moment she has fomented since the mid-1980s. Beyoncé’s phalanx of feminist dancers and Janelle Monáe’s sci-fi swing are updates of “Rhythm Nation”; the whispery, slow-motion enticements of FKA twigs extrapolate from albums like “The Velvet Rope.”

A few tracks reach cautiously toward the contemporary, with hints of trap bass and percussion in “Dammn Baby” and a four-on-the-floor chorus in an oddly melancholy save-the-world song, “Shoulda Known Better.” The title song of “Unbreakable” loops a sweet-soul sample through the verses like an early Kanye West production. But the melodies lack the invincible catchiness of Jackson’s best songs.

The tribute to Michael Jackson turns out to be unexpectedly upbeat. With breezy vocal harmonies, “Broken Hearts Heal” reminisces about a childhood full of singing and laughing together. The chorus determinedly looks forward from where Jackson stands now: “Our love ain’t no material thing/Inshallah see you in the next life.” “Inshallah” means “God willing.”

ON TOUR: Jan. 12, 2016 — Moda Center, Portland; www.ticketmaster.com.

— Jon Pareles,

New York Times