Control – Janet Jackson (1986)

January 2, 2026

As the youngest member of the Jackson family, there were two things that were going to be automatically true about Janet – she was going to be a supreme, natural talent; and she was going to be thrust into the public spotlight by her father whether she liked it or not. As a child, she began her career as an actor in her family’s variety show, The Jacksons, and would go on to star in a number of other hit TV series, including Good Times, A New Kind of Family, and Diff’rent Strokes. But when she turned 15, her dad made sure that she would become a part of the real family business and begin recording albums as a solo artist – releasing her self-titled debut in 1982 and Dream Street in 1984. Both records were stereotypical bubblegum pop targeted at teenage girls, and despite the baked-in name recognition, neither album performed particularly well (charting at #63 and #147 on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively). And on top of an increasingly strained relationship with her father and a lack of commercial success in her career, Janet would secretly elope with R&B singer, James DeBarge, in 1984 – only to have the marriage annulled a little over a year later.

A young Janet in her days as an actress

By 1985, Jackson was ready to go out on her own and remove herself from her domineering father, her drug-addicted ex-husband, and the shadow of being a member of the most famous family in America. So she officially terminated business relations with her dad and decided to team up with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who were former Prince associates and members of the funk rock band, the Time. Aside from the fact that Jam and Lewis had obvious musical chops, they wisely knew exactly what they had in Janet and precisely what to do with her. The duo encouraged her to make music that would appeal equally to both black and white audiences by mixing a variety of genres, including pop, funk, disco, R&B, and hip-hop. Aptly titled Control for the newly emancipated Janet – who was finally calling her own shots and doing the work that she wanted to do – the album was an absolute sensation. Aside from shooting to #1 on the Billboard 200, her third release would contain five top five hits – “When I Think of You” (#1), “Let’s Wait Awhile” (#2), “Nasty” (#3), “What Have You Done for Me Lately” (#4), and “Control” (#5) – making her the first ever female artist to have five singles from the same album reach the top five. 

The music on Control – most of which was performed by Jam and Lewis – is fantastic and very much a successor to the Minneapolis sound that Prince had created a few years prior. The tracklist is not only danceable and catchy (in the vein of other pop stars of the era like Madonna and Cyndi Lauper), but it is a legitimately excellent genre-blending work that rivals even Janet’s own brother’s 1982 magnum opus. The lyrics throughout the album drip with resentment and anger towards her father’s parental overreach, but never more so than on the title track, on which she sings, “When I was seventeen, I did what people told me. I did what my father said, and let my mother mold me. But that was long ago, I’m in control.” Janet also takes some shots at her ex-husband with “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “The Pleasure Principle” – both of which detail a relationship that started off as exciting and fun, but quickly went in the wrong direction. But on top of the score settling with the men in her life – which was praised for its encouragement of female empowerment and independence – she also uses her newly liberated voice to deliver a couple other public service announcements with her true story of standing up to sexual harassment on “Nasty” and her timely promotion of safe sex amid the AIDS epidemic on “Let’s Wait Awhile.” 

Janet on stage

With her third album (and in many ways her true debut as an independent artist), Janet Jackson proved that she was a force to be reckoned with and one of the preeminent female faces of pop music. It is nothing short of extraordinary that she had the courage and good judgement to remove herself from her father’s clutches and trust her own musical instincts, and she deserves to be commended not only for the quality of the work, but also for the self-confidence it took to pursue it. With Control – along with all of the other number one records that she would release throughout the thirty years that followed – she put herself firmly on the map as one of the great pop stars of all time. And despite the fact that her brother generally receives all of the flowers in terms of legacy and acclaim for pop greatness, it’s a notable feat that Janet’s seven career number one albums actually edges out Michael’s six. But in her breakthrough success with this record, she was able to prove that she wasn’t just someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, or someone’s ex-wife – she was a bona fide pop sensation, an undeniable musical talent, and completely in control.