“This is a story about control. My control. Control of what I say. Control of what I do. And this time, I’m gonna do it my way.”
The opening monologue of Janet Jackson’s 1986 hit “Control” was more than just a lyric. It was a mission statement. Before this point, the public mostly regarded her as the baby sister of the Jackson 5. Even as she was already gaining notoriety with TV roles and her first two albums, Janet’s career and image were carefully crafted in her family’s cookie-cutter image.
Then she decided to grab her career (and her life) into her own hands.
For many female artists, Janet Jackson serves as the blueprint for how to navigate the business. As a singer, songwriter, producer, actress and all-around entertainer, she has paved the way for the generations that followed her, even as she continues to earn her stripes herself.
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Making Her Own Decisions
Jackson’s independence in her career was a long time coming, especially since it was a career that, she admitted, wasn’t her first choice. As she explained in an interview with BBC News, it was never really her choice to join the family business. As she made her television debut alongside her brother Randy on the Carol Burnett Show, she admitted, “I don’t ever remember being asked. I just remembered doing it.”
The same was said about her music career, as her late father, Joe, told her that she was going to sing after discovering a recording of her first song, “Fantasy,” that she wrote out of boredom at the age of nine.
“I was so embarrassed. The studio door was open and Mike was listening to it,” she says, referring to her brother Michael.
“I think Randy was listening to it, my father was listening.
“Then my father said, ‘You’re gonna sing’.
“I said, ‘No, no, no, I want to go to the college and study business law.’”
But when Joe Jackson told his children what to do, they fell in line.
“It was kind of hard [to argue] because, look at where he led my brothers,” she says.
“So I said, ‘OK, I’ll give it a go.’”
After her first two albums failed to sell, it was clear that things needed to shift for her. Ditching her father’s preferred producers in favor of revered Minneapolis production duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, her third studio album, Control, was a landmark project that changed the trajectory of her career and the music industry as a whole.
From that moment on, Jackson was her own woman.
Changing The Game
In the years that followed, Jackson became a history-making entertainer who continued to evolve sonically as she grew into her womanhood. Pushing the boundaries in a variety of ways, she was fearless on wax and on stage. From the politically-charged Rhythm Nation 1814 to the sensuality of Janet. and The Velvet Rope, she has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, has the most consecutive top-ten entries on the Billboard Hot 100 by a female artist (18) and is the only artist in history to have seven singles from a single album (Rhythm Nation 1814) peak within the top 5 of the Hot 100. And she did it all in the face of several challenges and pushback from the often male-dominated industry.
Even as her career was threatened following the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at Super Bowl XXXVIII and the subsequent backlash, she continued to move forward on her own terms, putting out 11 studio albums while also maintaining her acting career in films such as Poetic Justice, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married, Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps, and Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls.
Today, Jackson has been in the game for nearly 50 years and shows no signs of slowing down. Now at the tail end of her 2nd Vegas residency, her decision to have full autonomy of her career, image, and life has paid off, inspiring the new wave of female musicians to follow in her footsteps. Her career is proof that to have longevity in the fickle music industry, it is perhaps best to take…well… control.