IN "CONTROL": Janet Jackson to open her concert tour in Canada!

R&B superstar JANET JACKSON has announced she will be hitting the road to tour the U.S. and Canada - for the first time in seven years. The Control hitmaker will open her Rock Witchu tour in Vancouver, British Columbia on 7 September (08), followed by dates in New York and Washington, D.C. And the singer, who released her latest LP Discipline earlier this year (08), says she "can't wait" to perform to arena audiences, claiming she was all set to tour on the back of her 2006 record 20 Y.O., but was advised against it by her record company despite being mid-way through preparing the shows.

She explains, "I was supposed to go on tour with the last album. We were actually in full-blown tour rehearsals at that point... learning numbers, getting everything together, set designs, I had to kind of shut everything down and go into the studio." According to concert promoter Live Nation, who are organising Jackson's upcoming tour, the full itinerary of shows will be announced shortly. Meanwhile she looked like one of those women in the Utah cult with this outfit on her 42nd birthday.