If asked to picture Janet Jackson, one of three images likely comes to mind: “Rhythm Nation 1814” Janet, a revolutionary in a black uniform and cap, cutting the air with drill sergeant precision.
There’s the Rolling Stone cover, where she poses topless except for her husband’s hands covering her breasts. And there’s the 2004 Super Bowl Janet, wearing shiny onyx with a bustier. Justin Timberlake was supposed to rip away one of its cups to reveal a red lace underlay. Instead, the wardrobe infamously “malfunctioned,” exposing her breast.
The sight of those women generated so much chatter that many forgot the independence-minded 19-year-old who came before them.
Forty years ago in February, Jackson wriggled free of her father Joe Jackson’s stifling management with the release of “Control.” It was her third album, and the first to establish her as a groundbreaking performer on par with her more famous brother, Michael.
Today, Jackson holds five Grammy awards and a slew of other industry accolades. Billboard ranks her among history’s highest-charting musicians, naming her 1990’s Greatest Pop Star. None of that would have been achieved if she hadn’t made “Control.”
“Control” eventually peaked at the top of the Billboard 200, generating Jackson’s first round of massive hits. Songs like “When I Think of You” and the ballad “Let’s Wait Awhile” bring to mind the Janet who grew up in front of America on sitcoms like “Good Times” and “Diff’rent Strokes” — the Jackson family’s cutie. But it’s the songs that talk about brushing off stifling, trifling men, including the title track and “What Have You Done For Me Lately,” that have the most staying power.
(Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance via Getty Images) Janet Jackson, 1986
Among those, the album’s second single, “Nasty,” is particularly durable, having played a special role in restoring her legacy.
In 2016, she received her first nomination for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — although that nod was a decade late, since she’d been eligible since 2007. You can thank 2004’s Nipplegate for that unwarranted delay.
It took two more nominations for Jackson to finally be inducted in 2019, the same year that she launched a Las Vegas residency. At that ceremony, Janelle Monae introduced her as the queen of Black Girl Magic, and rightly so. Three years after that, Lifetime dedicated a four-hour, fully authorized series to celebrate her life and career after her fans demanded #JusticeForJanet.
We take Jackson’s place among the pop greats for granted today. What we will never know is whether the massive energy demanding that she receive her due would have ignited if Donald Trump hadn’t sneered, “Such a nasty woman,” at Hillary Clinton at their final debate before the 2016 election.
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In response, streams and downloads of Jackson’s “Nasty” spiked more at any time that year than on the 30th anniversary of its April 4, 1986, release. “Nasty” inspired the Democrats to reclaim the insult as a meme, with Clinton supporters repeating some of the song’s most quotable lyrics to thumb their noses at the Orange Menace: “Nasty boys don’t mean a thing/oh you nasty boys/ don’t mean a thing to me.”
None of that meant a thing to Clinton’s election odds either, although her loss did nothing to dim the womanist fury embedded in Jackson’s song. To this day, spotting a faded “Nasty Woman” T-shirt out in the wild — yes, it happens from time to time — takes me right back to the video’s movie show that she commandeers for her safety and peace.
What is often misperceived as sexual heat is, in fact, hot-faced frustration.
Honestly, though, it doesn’t take that much. “Nasty” never entirely left the stage. If anything, it faded into the background with everything else on ‘80s playlists and shopping soundtracks. Along the way, as that 2016 election episode proves, its meaning has blurred, reduced to the single line that became a rallying cry for ‘80s girls: “No, my first name ain’t baby, It’s Janet — Miss Jackson if you’re nasty!”
Removed from the circumstances that informed the meaning of “Control,” Jackson’s “Nasty” can be easily misinterpreted as a raunchy come-on. Blame or, better yet, credit Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ music production for that. Their electronic, beat-heavy back-up melody strafes Jackson’s vocals with a third-rail electricity that feels like something between dancefloor frottage and a rug burn earned by way of a sweaty throwdown.
But what is often misperceived as sexual heat is, in fact, hot-faced frustration. In 1993, Jackson told Rolling Stone interviewer David Ritz that “Nasty” and “What Have You Done for Me Lately” were born out of a sense of self-defense.
The Janet Jackson that “Control” unleashed on the world was a teenager shaking off the dust of two forgettable pop albums and a misguided elopement with another pop star, James DeBarge, when she was 18. Their marriage was annulled the following November, months before “Control” was released.
But, as she told Ritz, when she joined Jimmy Jam and Lewis in Minneapolis, she was coming out of a very sheltered life. “The danger hit home when a couple of guys started stalking me on the street. They were emotionally abusive. Sexually threatening,” she said. “Instead of running to Jimmy or Terry for protection, I took a stand. I backed them down.”
Jam and Lewis’ singular sound on “Control” has been credited for ushering in the New Jack Swing subgenre of R&B, but it’s the pugnacious, metallic scratch in the synth line on “Nasty” that echoes most often in its biggest hits.
Jackson’s image overhaul, meanwhile, came courtesy of the videos accompanying the album, marked by Paula Abdul’s award-winning choreography and infused by Jackson’s pavement-shaking attitude. The “Nasty” video’s feminist empowerment pageant makes it stand out, as it begins with Jackson and Abdul squeezing past a crowd of catcallers to enter a movie theater.
When the men follow them to their seats to continue the harassment, the singer puts it to a halt with a confrontational, “Stop! . . . Gimme a beat!” Soon, she’s not just dancing with a corps of male dancers, she’s dominating them with a groove of her making, letting a few get close to her as she dances, if only to let them know her skin has toughened into armor.
“Nasty” has been called a feminist anthem, planting a flag for a woman’s right to self-determination. Jackson herself hasn’t always lived up to the ideal of sisterhood solidarity, as seen in 2024 when a Guardian reporter asked what she thought about the possibility of Kamala Harris becoming the first Black woman president, and Jackson responded that she wasn’t Black. That this parroted one of Trump’s race-baiting statements during a 2024 panel at the National Association of Black Journalists’ conference might not have been accidental; in any event, Jackson did not apologize.
Personal peccadillos notwithstanding, every major artist who emerged onto the scene after “Control” looks to what Jackson achieved on “Nasty” as seminal inspiration — including Britney Spears, who was known to cover the track and repeat snippets of its lyrics in some of her biggest hits.
“Control” may be a complete body of work and an act of artistic self-realization, but “Nasty” warned the world Miss Jackson, and anyone dancing to her rhythm, will accept nothing less than this: “I’m not a prude,” she says, “I just want some respect. So close the door if you want me to respond. ‘Cause privacy is my middle name, my last name is control.” And we all know her first name, because she made sure we’d never forget.
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