“Control” by Janet Jackson

One of the most important pop albums of the 1980s turns 40 (!).

This album review celebrates the 40th anniversary of one of R&B and hip-hop’s most enduring influences.

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Genre: R&B, Pop, New Jack Swing

Label: A&M

Release Date: February 4, 1986

Vibe: 💯

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👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

Let’s get my hot take out of the way first.

Are you ready? Are you sitting down for this one?

Okay, here it goes: Janet Jackson’s Control is more important to (and has had a bigger influence on) modern pop music than Thriller.

Longtime subscribers will know how big a fan I am of Ms. Jackson’s work and how underappreciated she still is in the annals of pop culture history. Blame it on inescapable family reputations, JanetGate, or, as I put it in my Rhythm Nation review, run-of-the-mill misogyny. Take your pick. It doesn’t change the fact that she changed the course of several genres simultaneously, setting the templates for thousands of artists who realized their mainstream potential by emulating her irresistible hybrid of pop, R&B, hip-hop, and New Jack Swing. Five years after Control made her a superstar overnight, Michael tried his hand at making a Janet Jackson album and, eventually, got himself a hit single by glomming onto her aesthetic. It’s not just him, either. Plenty of contemporary pop songs still wear this record proudly as an influence. Names like Britney Spears and Mariah Carey are near the top of that list, but more recent hitmakers like Tinashe, Rihanna, and Beyoncé wouldn’t be where they are without Control blazing a certain kind of trail for them.

What’s been memory-holed over time is how many people didn’t want to make this album. Or, more specifically, this kind of album. After inking a contract with A&M in 1982, at age 15, Janet’s first two full-length projects, her self-titled debut LP and 1984’s Dream Street, were not positive experiences for her. “I was coming off of a TV show that I absolutely hated doing, Fame. I didn’t want to do [the first record]. I wanted to go to college. But I did it for my father,” she explained in a mid-90s interview. She’d later fire her father as her manager and hire John McClain, though the Jackson patriarch wouldn’t go quietly. He gave multiple quotes that made it seem like McClain and others were conspiring to tear his family apart. “The problem comes, though, when others come in behind you and try to steal [your family] away,” he said at the time. “The wheels have already been set for Janet Jackson. Anyone who jumps on now will be getting a free ride.”

McClain introduced Janet to James “Jimmy Jam” Harris III and Terry Lewis, a creative partnership that would last for decades and yield some of the most popular songs of the 20th century. At the time, however, Jam & Lewis weren’t household names. They were only a couple of years removed from being fired from the Time after Prince found out they were producing material for the S.O.S. Band on the side. But after one of their songs, “Just Be Good to Me,” blew up, they snagged gigs opening for acts like Change, Cherrelle, Alexander O’Neal, and Thelma Houston. Crucially, they were pioneers in using the Roland TR-808 drum machine, a technology that paved the way for the beefy, sample-friendly grooves that, over time, came to dominate hip-hop, R&B, and pop. You can debate whether the actual watershed moment for the 808 was in 1981 (Kraftwerk’s “Numbers”), 1982 (”Planet Rock, “Sexual Healing”), 1983 (”Blue Monday,” “Sucker M.C.’s”), but I’d posit that Control cemented its staying power. The beats became more layered, more textural, and, most importantly, more personality-driven.

Think about how the album starts. The opening seconds of the title track play like a ghostly dirge rather than anything else, with Janet stating, matter-of-factly, that she’s done with people telling her what to say and do. “This time, I’m gonna do it my way,” she asserts, right before the beat kicks in and makes you bolt upright in your chair. There’s a lot going on in that groove: a sawtoothed bass synth, a cowbell loop that sounds like it’s trying to escape its captors, and just enough lift in the mids and top end to give the track the levity it needs to not sound like a slog. It’s a middle-fingers-in-the-air statement of independence, one that’s so natural and unfiltered because that’s more or less what the writing process was like. As Jimmy Jam tells it, the producing duo spent nearly a week doing nothing but chatting with Janet and getting to know her. Little did she know they were also capturing unvarnished sentiment:

“About five days in she said, ‘When are we actually going to start working?’ We said, ‘Oh we been working,’ and we showed her the lyrics to ‘Control.’ She started reading the lyrics, and she said, ‘Well wait this is what we been talking about.’ We said, ‘Exactly.’ She said, ‘So whatever we talk about that’s what we’re going to write about?’ Like, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Oh OK.’ It was like a light bulb went off in her head because nobody had ever asked her what she wanted to write about, or sing about.”

Song after song, earworm after earworm, Control paints a deft, sometimes painfully accurate portrait of what it’s like to break away from your support system and try and navigate the world as a young woman. “Nasty,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1986, was written as a response to sexual harassment Janet experienced during a break in recording. “A couple of guys started stalking me on the street. They were emotionally abusive. Sexually threatening,” she said in a later interview. “Instead of running to Jimmy or Terry for protection, I took a stand. I backed them down.” She takes a similar stance on “What Have You Done For Me Lately,” refusing to give in to ambivalence and neglect in the central romantic relationship. Fueled by the aftermath of her annulled marriage to James DeBarge, the bridge towards the end of the song has always struck me as a brilliant, deeply human piece of writing, one that encapsulates exactly how thoroughly resentment can seep into a love that isn’t nurtured. As the saying goes, the grass is always greener where it’s watered.

I never ask for more than I deserve You know it’s the truth You seem to think you’re God’s gift to this Earth I’m telling you, no way You ought to be thankful for the little things But little things are all you seem to give You’re always putting off what we can do today Soap opera says, you’ve got one life to live Who’s right, who’s wrong?

Other highlights include “The Pleasure Principle,” a rant against soulless materialism written and produced by Monte Moir, “When I Think of You,” which would become Janet’s first Billboard No. 1 single, and “He Doesn’t Know I’m Alive,” which bends and vibrates like some of the best mid-80s electro-funk gems. You also have “Let’s Wait Awhile,” a pro-abstinence ballad about, well, taking it slower. The song ended up being co-opted by educators and politicians of the era who were grappling with the burgeoning AIDS crisis. Misinterpreted as preachy by some and a social conscious rebirth by others, I don’t think its legacy needs to be overcomplicated by campaign messaging. At its core, like the rest of Control, it’s a calm, confident reminder that Janet makes the rules of her own life. She wants to wait until the right moment? Great. She wants to accelerate the timeline for physical intimacy, as she does in the Rhythm Nation 1814 direct sequel “Someday is Tonight?” Also great. As she’s proved time and again throughout her career, you should judge or underestimate Ms. Jackson at your own peril. She’ll prove you wrong in the slyest of ways, reminding men in particular that they’re living in her world, not the other way around.

To assume differently would be … how did I put it earlier? Oh yeah: run-of-the-mill misogyny.