Janet Jackson is the youngest of the ten children of Joe and Katherine Jackson. Growing up in that showbiz family, she appeared on stage at an early age and began acting soon after. At the age of sixteen, she reluctantly started a recording career at her father's urging, simultaneously recording her self-titled debut album while her brother Michael recorded his album, Thriller, across town. Janet's second album, Street Dreams, was released in 1984. Janet soon made a few major changes in her life, moving out of the family compound into an apartment of her own, firing her father as her manager, and having her marriage to James DeBarge annulled. Following the advice of her new manager, Janet decamped to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to work with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in their studio on her third album, Control. The influential album celebrated its 40th anniversary on February 4, 2026.
🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧
Released January 13, 1986
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 4
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 1
Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary peak: 38
Billboard Hot Dance/Disco Club Play peak: 2
Billboard Hot Dance/Disco Club Sales peak: 1
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 8
The Gavin Report Top 40 peak: 10
Blender's Top 500 Songs Since You Were Born (2005): 341
Dave Marsh's 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made (1989): 770
Released February 4, 1986
Billboard Top 200 peak: 1
Billboard Top Black Albums peak: 1
Billboard Top Pop Compact Discs: 11
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Play peak: 18 (all cuts)
Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Albums of The Eighties (1990): 28
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2020): 111
Spin's 300 Best Albums 1985-2015: 234
Released April 4, 1986
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 3
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 1
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Play peak: 2
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Sales: 6
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 5
The Gavin Report Top 40 peak: 7
Rolling Stone/MTV's 100 Greatest Pop Songs Since The Beatles (2000): 79
VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the Past 25 Years (2003): 30
Released July 28, 1986
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 1
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 3
Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary peak: 10
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Play peak: 1
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Sales: 3
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 1
The Gavin Report Top 40 peak: 2
Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1980s (2015): 48
Released October 17, 1986
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 5
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 1
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Play peak: 1
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Sales: 2
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 5
The Gavin Report Top 40 peak: 6
Released January 6, 1987
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 2
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 1
Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary peak: 2
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 3
The Gavin Report Top 40 peak: 4
Released May 12, 1987
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 14
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 1
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Play peak: 1
Billboard Top Dance/Disco Club Sales peak: 8
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 11
The Gavin Report Top 40 peak: 18
Released November 2, 1987
Airplay only - no physical single release in the US
Shoulda Wouldas
Released October 11, 1985
1984 Dream Street outtake
on initial Japanese pressings of Control as track 5
released in August 1986 (?)
Released March 14, 1987
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 5
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 1
Billboard Top Dance/Disco - Club Play peak: 1
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 6
The Gavin Report Top 40 peak: 6
Released July 20, 1987
Billboard Hot 100 peak: 35
Billboard Hot Black Singles peak: 7
Radio & Records Contemporary Hit Radio peak: 36
🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧
My future wife and I first heard "What Have You Done For Me Lately" on the community radio mixshow while driving home one Saturday night in late January 1986. Within a few days, I had bought the twelve-inch single of the song for her. Another week later, while we were driving home from our day after Valentine's dinner (we both had to work on the 14th that year), she surprised me by popping in the cassette of Control in her Alpine deck, and we listened to the entirety of Side One before she dropped me off at my apartment. (She recalls it being a clear tape like the one pictured below.)
As each single was released from Control, I picked up the accompanying twelve-inch single. Six singles were released to eager music buyers as Janet bested her brother Jermaine as well as sisters Rebbie and LaToya on the 1986 charts. Brother Michael did not release the first single from his follow-up to the mega-selling Thriller until July 1987, around the same time that Janet's final single from the Control era was released.
In the early Nineties, an import-only CD store opened in the mall. It was called CD International or something like that. The discs were kept in locked glass display cases or behind the counter – no browsing in the bins. Each disc was about $10-$20 more than the typical retail CD at the time, and the store barely lasted a few months before closing. During its brief run, I picked up three discs I had never come across before there: Art Of Noise's Daft, Bronski Beat's Hundreds and Thousands, and Janet Jackson's Control – The Remixes. By that time, Janet's follow-up album to Control was out and spinning singles off at an even faster pace, and I still have all of the twelve-inch singles from then. My favorite remixes from Control are "Control (The Video Mix)" and the Cool Summer Mix - Part One of "Nasty", which reminds me of Herb Alpert playing with the Art of Noise.
No comments:
Post a Comment