Speaker 1: Pushkin Pushkin. Hey everyone, I'm dropping in to introduce an
Speaker 1: episode from my friend Sam Sanders and pr show It's
Speaker 1: been a Minute. This year marks the thirty fifth anniversary
Speaker 1: of Janet Jackson's album Control. It was her first real
Speaker 1: commercial hit, established Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis as a
Speaker 1: production powerhouse away from Prince's artistic camp, and looking back,
Speaker 1: helped three define not just R and B, but all
Speaker 1: of pop music. In the late eighties and nineties, Janet
Speaker 1: was one of the biggest stars of our time, right
Speaker 1: up with her brother Michael and Madonna. And yet Janet
Speaker 1: isn't always given her due. In this episode, host Sam
Speaker 1: Sanders explores why that is, how she made Control, and
Speaker 1: an incident that lasted all but a second that changed
Speaker 1: the course of her career. All right, here's the episode. Enjoy.
Speaker 1: What is your first Janet Jackson memory. It's a wild
Speaker 1: thing to ask me my first Janet Jackson memory, because
Speaker 1: Janet and I are like the same age. This is
Speaker 1: music journalist Danielle Smith. You know, it's a wonderful memory.
Speaker 1: So for my eighth birthday, my mother got me tickets
Speaker 1: to see the Jackson five Live in concert at the
Speaker 1: Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. And when we
Speaker 1: got to the Circle Star Theater, there was an opening
Speaker 1: act and that opening act was Randy Jackson and Janet Jackson.
Speaker 1: Janet and Randy or Randy and Janet. Wow. And she's
Speaker 1: at this point around your age, which is around eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was like seven or eight Yepol, How was she
Speaker 1: in that opening active performance? Oh? Well, the thing is
Speaker 1: they weren't even singing. They were like doing skits. Okay, Janet,
Speaker 1: now that you have what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: Like vaudeville they were doing. They had jokes you can't
Speaker 1: do that, everybody works in this family. And one of
Speaker 1: the jokes was, and Janet is kind of known for this.
Speaker 1: You can find the shots of her dressed up kind
Speaker 1: of like May West and doing May West impressions. Honey,
Speaker 1: that's the one because she has those two little bonds
Speaker 1: on her head and the feather balls, and she in
Speaker 1: those hips and sass and everybody at like ye yes.
Speaker 1: And so picture me in the audience screaming and yelling
Speaker 1: like a fool because my because my thought was, you
Speaker 1: have to understand there was no social media there, weren't
Speaker 1: that meaning like fan magazines are black magazines. For me
Speaker 1: to know that there even was a little sister to
Speaker 1: the Jackson five, so I was screaming in hollow. I
Speaker 1: was so happy to know about her. You're listening to
Speaker 1: It's been a minute from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders and
Speaker 1: this episode Janet, miss Jackson. It is hard to describe
Speaker 1: how much Janet Jackson means to me. I can recall
Speaker 1: the exact place I was the first time I saw
Speaker 1: several of her music videos. I remember trying to teach
Speaker 1: myself the choreography from her Pleasure principal video and almost
Speaker 1: being seriously injured in the process. I remember thinking that
Speaker 1: I would never hear a better song in my entire
Speaker 1: life than will Never Do Without You. I was right,
Speaker 1: and you know, when it comes to the Janet fandom,
Speaker 1: I am not alone. Janet Jackson means a lot to
Speaker 1: a lot of people. So much of what she did
Speaker 1: in the eighties and the nineties and beyond it laid
Speaker 1: the groundwork for so much that we see and here
Speaker 1: now Brittany and Beyonce and even Taylor Swift, their styles
Speaker 1: and their approaches to the industry itself. It was all
Speaker 1: influenced by Janet Jackson. There is not a successful artist
Speaker 1: in pop today who isn't a descendant of the legacy
Speaker 1: of Janet. As we've heard already, she began early with
Speaker 1: the Jackson Five. From there, Janet had a starring role
Speaker 1: on the sitcom Good Times a Day, a recurring role
Speaker 1: on Different Strokes. He sort of forbid me to see
Speaker 1: you anymore? What did he say? I forbid you to
Speaker 1: see him? She was cast in the TV show Fame,
Speaker 1: and then she also had a music career. Janet released
Speaker 1: two albums, the self titled Janet Jackson and Dream Street
Speaker 1: All by the time she was eighteen and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest here. Those two albums, they were flops. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until Janet's third album that the world finally turned
Speaker 1: its head and took notice. This is about control. When
Speaker 1: everything changed with Control, Control, control of what I do.
Speaker 1: So thirty five years ago this year, Janet blessed us
Speaker 1: with this iconic album. Today we're talking about the legacy
Speaker 1: of Janet Jackson and how that album Control, it didn't
Speaker 1: just redefine her career, it really redefined all of pop
Speaker 1: music that came after it. For me, Control was one
Speaker 1: of those albums that you get maybe once in a generation,
Speaker 1: singularly focused and so cohesive, and yet every song has
Speaker 1: a personality of its own. It had songwriting that pushed
Speaker 1: the envelope but also felt immediately familiar. It was music
Speaker 1: that critics and mainstream radio alike had to love. It
Speaker 1: also gave a big lesson in crossover success, and that
Speaker 1: is a topic that we've been discussing in this music
Speaker 1: series we're doing. You know, Control was insanely popular with
Speaker 1: both white and black audiences and all different kinds of
Speaker 1: radio formats. Of course, Janet Jackson did not make Control
Speaker 1: by herself. In nineteen eighty five, she met up with
Speaker 1: two producers who would help her shape the sound of
Speaker 1: contemporary R and B for years to come. And then
Speaker 1: we were supposed to start working with another artist, and
Speaker 1: the artist decided that she didn't want to work with us.
Speaker 1: This is Terry Lewis. So John McClain called us and
Speaker 1: said he was the A and R person. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, who do you guys want to produce on
Speaker 1: our roster? You know, he sent the roster because at
Speaker 1: that time there was no fax machine and there was
Speaker 1: no email, So we got we got a roster and
Speaker 1: the men. We both looked at it and said Janet.
Speaker 1: So we called him and said, we like produced Janet
Speaker 1: coming up producers and songwriters Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,
Speaker 1: and how they helped make one of the better pop
Speaker 1: albums of our time. Before Control, Janet Jackson was doing
Speaker 1: mostly bubblegum pop, but producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
Speaker 1: they saw something more. We've always kind of gone off
Speaker 1: people that inspire you, Like certain people can be talented,
Speaker 1: but they don't necessarily inspire you to want to write
Speaker 1: songs for them. This is Jimmy Jam and in Janet's case,
Speaker 1: it was a simple thing for us. We both felt
Speaker 1: we could write really great songs for her. She inspired that.
Speaker 1: We thought she had a beautiful voice first of all,
Speaker 1: but what we thought was we missed when she was young.
Speaker 1: She had all this attitude. She was like, she was like,
Speaker 1: miss attitude. Why don't you come up the sisode? What's
Speaker 1: wrong with not remember the bonds in her hair, the
Speaker 1: feather boa, the Maywest impressions. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
Speaker 1: remembered all of that. We felt the records that she
Speaker 1: had done They were quality records with quality producers, but
Speaker 1: the thing that we were missing on those records was
Speaker 1: where was that attitude? And so our thought was, if
Speaker 1: we could work with her, we could bring a little
Speaker 1: bit of that attitude out. So at nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: Janet moved to Mineapolis to begin working with Jimmy jam
Speaker 1: and Terry Lewis. She was finally taking control of her career.
Speaker 1: Take me back to the first studio session y'all have
Speaker 1: with Janet in Minneapolis. What's it like? What is her vibe?
Speaker 1: What is the vibe? What do you recall from that
Speaker 1: first session? Well, really, the first sessions were not recording sessions.
Speaker 1: They were more therapy sessions. I guess I would call them.
Speaker 1: We spent a lot of time just hanging out together.
Speaker 1: We you know, we would go to movies, we would
Speaker 1: hang out at clubs, we would ride around the lakes
Speaker 1: and just kind of hang out. And then we'd have discussions.
Speaker 1: And her discussions were not that we were trying to
Speaker 1: analyze her, but we were just trying to get to
Speaker 1: know her better and know what was important to her
Speaker 1: and what she wanted to talk about, what she wanted
Speaker 1: to sing about. And after about a week of just
Speaker 1: kind of hanging out doing that. Janet said, well, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna start working? And we said and we said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're working, and we showed it the lyrics to uh
Speaker 1: to control. People told me the movie Way to Stop
Speaker 1: It stops us that past. So y'all, while you're just
Speaker 1: chilling with Janet going to the movies and driving around
Speaker 1: the lakes, you're actually like studying her and writing your
Speaker 1: first song for her in the process. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: something we we always kind of did that with the artists,
Speaker 1: probably not quite as intense we did with Janet because
Speaker 1: a lot of the artists we had worked with before,
Speaker 1: there was a little more um, I don't know, history
Speaker 1: or things we could study, so we knew a little
Speaker 1: bit more about them. But we would always do that
Speaker 1: before we would write for an artist, because we always
Speaker 1: wanted to contain to make the songs specifically for them. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I and back in the day, we always we
Speaker 1: always used to say, you know, if an artist likes McDonald's,
Speaker 1: I don't want to start writing a song about burgercane
Speaker 1: because what happens is the artist for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives. If you have a hit record, the artist
Speaker 1: has to sing that for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: We want them to have things, Yeah, make it fit.
Speaker 1: So that's the way we looked at it. So then
Speaker 1: what kind of stuff was Janet sharing with y'all that
Speaker 1: made y'all want to write a song is strong and
Speaker 1: powerful as Control? Well, mainly that she was just taking
Speaker 1: control of her life. She was moving out of her house.
Speaker 1: She was, you know, ready to become you know, to
Speaker 1: go out on her own. And also the other piece
Speaker 1: to the puzzle here was that she was really ready
Speaker 1: to sing. The first two albums that she did, she
Speaker 1: did between a lot of other things, and the idea
Speaker 1: of her singing wasn't really her idea was more her
Speaker 1: dad's idea. So while she could sing, it's like when
Speaker 1: you have a talent and somebody goes, oh, you're really
Speaker 1: good at that and you should do that, and you're
Speaker 1: kind of like, yeah, but I's not really what I
Speaker 1: want to do. I think that was Janet's attitude. The
Speaker 1: first couple of records she sang because she could not
Speaker 1: because she wanted to, or that she needed to. When
Speaker 1: we got around to Control, she was in a space
Speaker 1: where she actually wanted to be an artist. So the
Speaker 1: work that she was willing to put into it, and
Speaker 1: the fact that then when she got so excited when
Speaker 1: we showed her some of the control lyrics and she said, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this is what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: And said yeah, and she said, so whatever we talk about,
Speaker 1: that's what we're going to write about. And we said yeah,
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, well, then I want to talk
Speaker 1: about this and I want to talk about this, and
Speaker 1: it totally opened her up at that point, and so
Speaker 1: then she became not only Janet the singer. She went
Speaker 1: from being Janet the reluctant singer to Janet I want
Speaker 1: to sing to Now, here's what I want to sing about.
Speaker 1: But nobody had asked her. Well, I am so glad
Speaker 1: that y'all asked her what she wanted to do, because
Speaker 1: the result stands a test of time. Um, what kind
Speaker 1: of singer was Janet Jackson like in the studio? Fearless?
Speaker 1: I get, yeah, Yeah, it's a couple of words that
Speaker 1: describe her. If I had to break it down into
Speaker 1: simple words, Um, yeah, Like Jem said, fearless, relentless, beautiful
Speaker 1: like a beautiful texture, and very in control. There's something
Speaker 1: I want to tell you. A lot of people say
Speaker 1: that that Janet's not a great singer, that Janet is
Speaker 1: a great singer. But in order to be a great singer,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be the loudest singers. You just
Speaker 1: have to have control of what you like to do.
Speaker 1: And to me, style wins over by it. There you go.
Speaker 1: Job I always loved and you hear it in lots
Speaker 1: of songs that she would do. She was able to
Speaker 1: convey emotion, not just through the singing. There's so many
Speaker 1: Janet classic Gennet songs where like her laugh conveys so much,
Speaker 1: or a sigh conveys so much, or a little quip
Speaker 1: in the intro for a song conveys so much. Like
Speaker 1: you hear some of that acting training and the other
Speaker 1: things she's doing on Yell's records, besides the singing. She
Speaker 1: just knows how to convey emotion. Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: And that's but that's the things, those little elements, the breath,
Speaker 1: the size of the laughs, those things she would always
Speaker 1: do and we would just leave them in there. A
Speaker 1: lot of times it was a mistake, you know, like
Speaker 1: the oh sure, Like like the laugh on um I'm
Speaker 1: trying to oh when I think of you, but really
Speaker 1: I love that laugh. Yeah, but that's just like it's
Speaker 1: like for most people, I think that would have been
Speaker 1: an outtake, and for us, all the things that were
Speaker 1: outtakes were always the pieces that we always tried to
Speaker 1: make sure it was in there because that was the
Speaker 1: personality of her, you know, And if it was a
Speaker 1: happy song and she was laughing about it, then we
Speaker 1: wanted people to feel that when they were listening to
Speaker 1: this song. And even in our production technique, we would
Speaker 1: say to her if she was singing a song like that.
Speaker 1: A lot of times we wouldn't be looking at her
Speaker 1: because the lights would all be out in the studio,
Speaker 1: but I would say, are you smiling, because this is
Speaker 1: a happy song. You gotta smile when you sing this song.
Speaker 1: And she goes, oh, okay, okay, And you could tell
Speaker 1: the difference because when you're smiling, even when you're talking
Speaker 1: to somebody, when you're smiling as you're talking to him
Speaker 1: as a different thing. So little things like that, little
Speaker 1: nuances like that, we thought was really important. And also
Speaker 1: about her size and her breaths that she takes. One
Speaker 1: of the things she shared with Michael was that rhythmic breathing.
Speaker 1: I call it where her breath before she starts singing
Speaker 1: is on a beat, and when she sings, even the
Speaker 1: way she ends her sense when she sang it wasn't
Speaker 1: like she would hit the last word. She hit the
Speaker 1: last word, but then there'd be like a little Those
Speaker 1: are the things that we loved because those became literally
Speaker 1: part of the funkiness of the songs, and so we
Speaker 1: were very aware of that, and we loved that about Wow,
Speaker 1: y'all can't see me right now, but I'm geeking out
Speaker 1: so hard getting this inside Baseball. It's just incredible to me. Incredible.
Speaker 1: Oh all right, So I want to talk more about
Speaker 1: When I Think of You, because that is the song
Speaker 1: from Control that becomes I believe, her first number one
Speaker 1: hit on the Billboard one hundred and I have replayed
Speaker 1: that video so much. I was watching again yesterday a
Speaker 1: few times, and what I noticed most about that song
Speaker 1: and that video, besides the video being done in almost
Speaker 1: just one single shot, it's very much a bb gumpop
Speaker 1: song with bubble gumpop visuals, and it sounds and it
Speaker 1: looks like it is supposed to be a crossover, like
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be played on white radio and black
Speaker 1: radio just the same. And I'm wondering with that song
Speaker 1: and even with the album Control, we're y'all thinking of
Speaker 1: that as you were making it success in different formats
Speaker 1: and with folks from all kinds of backgrounds. Because this song,
Speaker 1: it really seems like it was made for that. I
Speaker 1: would I would say, no, we weren't thinking about that.
Speaker 1: What we were thinking about I'll tell you what we
Speaker 1: were thinking about that was we wanted the album. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when we were living in la we were living
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood that, you know, we will say that
Speaker 1: it's not like the well most people would say, not
Speaker 1: the best neighborhood. And what we loved about that area
Speaker 1: because growing up in Minneapolis, first of all, we grew
Speaker 1: up in a very white town and so we were
Speaker 1: very aware. I mean, I grew up listening to nothing
Speaker 1: but pop music pretty much growing up, so I guess
Speaker 1: we had the sensibility about what it was. But with
Speaker 1: Janet's record, we were trying to make the record that
Speaker 1: when we would walk down the streets of that neighborhood
Speaker 1: there would be music blasting out of everybody's house. And
Speaker 1: with Control, we said, we want our album to be
Speaker 1: that album that everybody's blasting out their house in that
Speaker 1: neighborhood movie show. So we were going for the blackest,
Speaker 1: funkiest album we could make without any consideration of trying
Speaker 1: to crossover or anything like that. Despite not intending for
Speaker 1: Control to crossover, it did, and then some Control was
Speaker 1: Janet's first commercial hit. Five of the songs on that
Speaker 1: album became top five hits on the Billboard Hot one
Speaker 1: hundred singles chart, and when I Think of You it
Speaker 1: hit number one. Terry mentioned his name earlier. I mentioned
Speaker 1: his name again, John McClain, who was the A and
Speaker 1: R person who was the one that hooked us up
Speaker 1: with Janet. He was the one that sent us list
Speaker 1: of who do you want to work with at A
Speaker 1: and M, and I remember he was the person as
Speaker 1: we when he heard Control, when we were done with it,
Speaker 1: he was the one that said this is double platinum.
Speaker 1: And we're like going, m no, I mean we're thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll go gold with it. That'd be great. He
Speaker 1: said it's double platinum, and then he went back to
Speaker 1: A and M and told everybody that really, like I mean,
Speaker 1: the story is worried. He would literally jump on people's
Speaker 1: desks like literally and go, you don't know what this is.
Speaker 1: This is a double platinum record. He had everybody so
Speaker 1: hyped but intimidated at the same time, like, oh shoot,
Speaker 1: we better go get to his record. Control went on
Speaker 1: to sell five million copies in the US and millions
Speaker 1: more globally. It's spent more than ninety weeks on the
Speaker 1: Billboard charts. This album also earned multiple Grammy nominations, including
Speaker 1: one for Album of the Year. Janet Jackson album produces
Speaker 1: Jimmy jam and Kevin Knew It. We cannot forget the
Speaker 1: music videos Pleasure, Principal, Nasty when I think of you.
Speaker 1: They are all peak culture with the Capitol c. If
Speaker 1: you go back and watch those videos right now, you
Speaker 1: can see that some of those moves, the kids are
Speaker 1: still doing them today in their music videos today. So
Speaker 1: after Control, Dannet released another hit album, Rhythm Nation. That
Speaker 1: album went platinum six times. When the Rhythm Nation tour
Speaker 1: was announced, it sold out arenas in minutes. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, Ebony magazine named Janet and Michael Quote the
Speaker 1: biggest brother sister stars in show business history. I think
Speaker 1: those albums ended up changing the way that music sounded
Speaker 1: because it changed the way that radio sounded. And so
Speaker 1: I think the influence later on with the not only
Speaker 1: the album, but the visuals with the albums affected the
Speaker 1: way pop music, what pop music became. I mean, all
Speaker 1: the great pop music came out of Sweden at a
Speaker 1: certain point. You know, you had Max Martin, You had
Speaker 1: from everywhere from Backstreet Boys to Britney Spears to all
Speaker 1: of those records, and they were all to me based
Speaker 1: on what control and what rhythm nation was. And if
Speaker 1: you talk to them they will tell you. I mean
Speaker 1: Max Martin. We went to the songwriters all of Fame
Speaker 1: the same year he did, and he said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: well we were making those records. We were just basically
Speaker 1: trying to do what you guys were doing in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Janet Jackson just kept going. In ninety three, she had
Speaker 1: another hit with a song that seemed to be everywhere
Speaker 1: for months, like a month. It was a lead single
Speaker 1: from her self titled Albums a Little Diddy called That's
Speaker 1: the Way Love Goes. That's the Way he Love Goes
Speaker 1: was number one on the Billboard charts for eight weeks.
Speaker 1: But Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis, they told me. At first,
Speaker 1: Janet didn't like the song. Her dancers had to convince
Speaker 1: her that it could be a hit. And what happened
Speaker 1: was is very much what happened in the video, which
Speaker 1: was she put the cassette on a both the tracks
Speaker 1: we were working on, and when that track came on,
Speaker 1: and she was with all her dancers and all her friends,
Speaker 1: and in the video, one of them is j Loo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. But she was with all her friends on vacation.
Speaker 1: They were in Anguilla, as a matter of fact, and
Speaker 1: she said when that song came on, everybody was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: what is that? That's the one right there, And so
Speaker 1: it made her hear it differently because of the way
Speaker 1: her friends and dancers were hearing it. And when she
Speaker 1: got back, that was the song. I think we all
Speaker 1: realize one that she was here to stay again. Music
Speaker 1: journalist Danielle Smith that there was no flashing the pan
Speaker 1: thing happening with her. That she was committed to the look,
Speaker 1: she was committed to the music, she was committed to
Speaker 1: the work, to the choreography, to everything. So Janet was
Speaker 1: now in the same league as her brother Michael and Madonna.
Speaker 1: And then some ways Tina Turner, please forward, but then
Speaker 1: congratulations and welcome to Super Bowl thirty eight. The Super
Speaker 1: Bowl happened. Carolina has been designated the visiting team today.
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, the way I remember is it
Speaker 1: was violent coming up, we go back to that moment
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four and why it looks and
Speaker 1: feels so different in today's rearview mirror justice for Janet
Speaker 1: after the break. I think it's hard to like talk
Speaker 1: about her omnipresence. Like I remember that video for That's
Speaker 1: the Way Love Goes. I felt like it was played
Speaker 1: on MTV every five minutes. You could not turn on
Speaker 1: your radio on any kind of station and not hear
Speaker 1: that song. She was on the cover of all the magazines.
Speaker 1: Like when you compare what she was doing in that
Speaker 1: moment and how everywhere she was to I don't know
Speaker 1: a Taylor Swift or a Beyonce today, how does it
Speaker 1: compare the level? I mean, you can compare it, But
Speaker 1: then my thing is can you Because the thing is
Speaker 1: that's something that I because I've interviewed Janet any number
Speaker 1: of times, and in one of our conversations, you know,
Speaker 1: she just acknowledged the fact that she kind of created herself,
Speaker 1: like I think the Beyonce would be the first person
Speaker 1: to say that without the influence of Yes, definitely Tina
Speaker 1: Turner and I always want to add Donna Summer when
Speaker 1: I think about Beyonce. But if there was not a
Speaker 1: Janet Jackson, especially with regard to singing and dancing at
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, Beyonce pulls from all of that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and then Taylor with regard to just being
Speaker 1: everywhere and singing the feelings of youth at that moment.
Speaker 1: Like when I think about my niece's relationship to Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift and how my niece had to tell me again
Speaker 1: I get the age of nine or ten that if
Speaker 1: I was going to understand my job, excuse you, Parker
Speaker 1: threw Williams, that I needed to listen to Taylor to
Speaker 1: understand her generation. Yeah. I mean, there are just many
Speaker 1: of us that say, if you want to understand, especially
Speaker 1: black women and really just women, to understand what it
Speaker 1: felt like to be in love, to come into your
Speaker 1: own as a twenty year old, twenty five year old,
Speaker 1: because Janet takes us on all the beats. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know so. But Janets has sung our life
Speaker 1: to US. In the run up to the super Bowl
Speaker 1: halftime show, Janet was still on top. Her last album
Speaker 1: before that performance, All for You. It had come out
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one with another number one single
Speaker 1: called All for You. So of course Janet was asked
Speaker 1: to headline the super Bowl because what kind of musicians
Speaker 1: do you ask to headline the super Bowl halftime show?
Speaker 1: The heavy hitters. She's like the biggest star in the world,
Speaker 1: and even in two thousand and four from a royal
Speaker 1: musical family. So okay, super Bowl performance. We have come
Speaker 1: to the end of the first half of super Bowl
Speaker 1: thirty eight. It was Sunday, February first, two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: The Carolina Panthers were taken on the New England Patriots
Speaker 1: in Houston, Texas. At halftime, it was Janet singing Rhythm
Speaker 1: Nation and All for You. The other performers were a
Speaker 1: Pe Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock talk About a Moment
Speaker 1: in time. And then to close out the show, it
Speaker 1: was Janet again, but this time she was joined by
Speaker 1: Justin Timberlake on his song rock Your Body. That's All.
Speaker 1: I'm in the kitchen in Los Angeles. It's super Bowl Sunday.
Speaker 1: Who cares about the game. I'm here for the food,
Speaker 1: so so I'm literally doing something in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: I hear there's a bunch of people at my parents' house,
Speaker 1: and I hear gasps and screams, oh wow. And I
Speaker 1: walk in, and I promise you, I feel like everybody
Speaker 1: that was over, male and female, had their hand over
Speaker 1: their mouth. And of course I'm like, what happened? And
Speaker 1: there somebody said, you know, somebody snatched off Janet's top,
Speaker 1: and then you know, everything unfolds. Like Janet Jackson is
Speaker 1: apologizing for her flashdance. The singer calls the bodice ripping
Speaker 1: move by fellow entertainer Justin Timberlake during the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: halftime show a last minute stopped that went too far.
Speaker 1: Viewers watched as Timberlake grabbed Jackson's outfit and ripped it
Speaker 1: open during a live broadcast on CBS. Timberlake called it
Speaker 1: a wardrobe malfunctions. You guys are getting pretty hot and
Speaker 1: see me up. Hey man, I love giving y'all something
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But Janet Jackson says, it was
Speaker 1: not my intention that it goes as far as we
Speaker 1: could do a whole other episode on the phrase wardrobe malfunction.
Speaker 1: This phrase eventually became so ubiquitous that it was nominated
Speaker 1: by the American Dialect Society is two thousand four's Word
Speaker 1: of the Year. It also got a nomination for most Euphemistic.
Speaker 1: The phrase wardrobe malfunction was defined as quote an unanticipated
Speaker 1: exposure of bodily parts. This phrase lost on both counts
Speaker 1: a true snub if you ask me, and yes, in
Speaker 1: this moment, a big, loud part of America was definitely
Speaker 1: offended or at least pretending to be offended by that
Speaker 1: quote unanticipated exposure of bodily parts. Following the halftime show
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, the Federal Communications Commission announced
Speaker 1: that it had received a record five hundred and forty
Speaker 1: thousand complaints about the incident, and they find CBS a
Speaker 1: little more than half a million dollars on an indecency violation.
Speaker 1: If you were too young to recall of this, trust
Speaker 1: me when I say there was a whole lot of
Speaker 1: pearl clutching going on. My son seemed to think that
Speaker 1: they should sue Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake because they
Speaker 1: were the ones who did it, and it was really nasty.
Speaker 1: If the fourth grade boys at a public elementary school
Speaker 1: can tell right from wrong. We need to ask ourselves
Speaker 1: where you corporate CEOs lost your way. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When I was watching the halftime show back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four when it happened, I didn't notice. For me,
Speaker 1: it was until the next day in my music beery
Speaker 1: class that all my classmates were talking about it and
Speaker 1: watching clips of what happened over and over again. At
Speaker 1: the time, TiVo announced that it was the most replayed
Speaker 1: moment in the company's history, and one of the co
Speaker 1: founders of YouTube he Is cited this exact moment and
Speaker 1: the difficulty in finding that video as inspiration for the
Speaker 1: creation of YouTube. Also, if you really think about it,
Speaker 1: it's and maybe that's why. To me, it just reminds
Speaker 1: me of violence. It's a similar thing to me of
Speaker 1: how we have to keep seeing the black people getting
Speaker 1: beat up by the cops over and over again, or
Speaker 1: seeing the child gets shot by the law enforcement, and
Speaker 1: we have to keep seeing it over and over again.
Speaker 1: It does two things. It one grinds it into your brain,
Speaker 1: but it also can be numbing. Right, But in either case,
Speaker 1: it's almost like, why why is this violent? Moment, this
Speaker 1: being shown to us over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And also, of course, the main question then is why
Speaker 1: did it do so much damage to Janet's reputation without
Speaker 1: doing similar damage to justice. It It was as if
Speaker 1: that piece of fabric that was ripped from her clothing
Speaker 1: was replaced with some big scarlet letter. It was just
Speaker 1: as if the world said we're done with you now
Speaker 1: because of this. This was a moment that lasted all
Speaker 1: but a second, and yet it essentially stopped a thirty
Speaker 1: plus year career in its tracks. After that halftime show,
Speaker 1: Janet was blacklisted, MTV refused to play her music videos,
Speaker 1: station stopped playing her songs, and Janet didn't appear at
Speaker 1: the Grammy Awards just a few days later. Her invitation
Speaker 1: was conditional on her apology, but Justin went and apologized,
Speaker 1: and he took home two awards that night, one for
Speaker 1: Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and another for Best Pop
Speaker 1: Vocal Album. Listen. I know it's been a rough week
Speaker 1: on everybody, and what curd was unintentional, completely regrettable, and
Speaker 1: I apologize if you guys are offended. This has been
Speaker 1: a dream of mine. Don't I already got enough? Don't
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, Janet sat down with Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey for what she said at the time was the
Speaker 1: final word on the issue. Do you think in any
Speaker 1: way that Justin Timberlake left you hanging out there? I
Speaker 1: am speaking to miss Jackson. Do you well all the
Speaker 1: emphasis was put on me, not on Justin. And that
Speaker 1: same year, Justin told MTV that if you consider what
Speaker 1: happened back then fifty fifty, he only got ten percent
Speaker 1: of the blame. I think that says something about society,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that America's harsh wrong women, and
Speaker 1: I think that America, because you know, unfairly harsh on
Speaker 1: ethnic people. We reached out to Janet's publicity team and
Speaker 1: we were told that she has no comment. Justin Timberlake
Speaker 1: also had no comment. But earlier this year, Justin did
Speaker 1: post an apology on Instagram to both Janet and Britney Spears.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, I am deeply sorry for the times
Speaker 1: in my life where my actions contributed to the problem,
Speaker 1: where I spoke out of turn or did not speak
Speaker 1: up for what was right. The fact is after the
Speaker 1: halftime show, Janet's career suffered, while Justin's thrived so much
Speaker 1: so that. In twenty eighteen, Justin was invited back to
Speaker 1: perform at the Super Bowl halftime show, this time solo.
Speaker 1: I used the word criminal a lot when I talk
Speaker 1: about black people in music, and specifically you know me talk.
Speaker 1: We're talking about black women in music not receiving the
Speaker 1: credit that they're due. I really think that it's criminal
Speaker 1: that we, as you started this conversation, that we forget
Speaker 1: the impact that Janet Jackson has had on music. It's
Speaker 1: bloody and it's criminal. What do you think is the
Speaker 1: biggest lesson or takeaway about the music industry, about American
Speaker 1: celebrity culture, about the way black women are treated in music.
Speaker 1: What's the biggest takeaway for any of those things from
Speaker 1: the super Bowl incident? I mean, the biggest takeaway from
Speaker 1: Janet not receiving the credit that is due to her
Speaker 1: in this world of culture that we all live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is to me how little has changed since the days
Speaker 1: when like Rainy and Stuff we're making music, The days
Speaker 1: when people like Leon Team Price we're having to fight,
Speaker 1: you know, to be on stage as some of the
Speaker 1: best opera houses around the world, When Marion Anderson can't
Speaker 1: sleep in hotels, you know, in the cities where she's
Speaker 1: playing to pack houses of black and non black audiences.
Speaker 1: When you think about how hard Motown had to fight
Speaker 1: to get black music played on pop stations, the same
Speaker 1: battle that are just like Whitney Houston, Gladys Night, Tony Braxton,
Speaker 1: the fights they still had to fight to get played
Speaker 1: on pop radio. And this is when pop radio mattered
Speaker 1: in the pre streaming era. These were real fights. And
Speaker 1: then we have to be in this situation where Janet
Speaker 1: is to me victimize on Super Bowl Sunday and she
Speaker 1: takes the blame for it. Yeah. Yeah, the takeaway is, Wow,
Speaker 1: it hasn't changed that much. That's the takeaway that times change,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's more magazine covers and maybe there's more
Speaker 1: sales and more streaming, but it hasn't changed that much. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, in the last year, there has been a
Speaker 1: new kind of conversation around the way women in pop
Speaker 1: music are treated, and a lot of that conversation was
Speaker 1: started by what's happening with Britney Spears. You know, she's
Speaker 1: been in this conservatorship for years. She has had very
Speaker 1: public mental health issues and as she has been arguing
Speaker 1: to get out of that conservatorship, there's a new conversation
Speaker 1: about whether or not our society is nice enough to
Speaker 1: women like Brittany or Janet or Beyonce, and whether the
Speaker 1: machine of celebrity choose them up and then spits them out.
Speaker 1: And when those conversations began, I said, Okay, this is good.
Speaker 1: But I began to notice over time that the conversation
Speaker 1: seemed to focus and crept me here if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: It seemed to focus more on white women in pop
Speaker 1: than on Black women in pop. Because you think about
Speaker 1: Janet and Brittany, there's a direct through line there. You know,
Speaker 1: Janet did so much of what we see in Brittany's
Speaker 1: work first, and both of them were connected for a
Speaker 1: while to Justin Timberlake. And yet this conversation around the
Speaker 1: way we treated Brittany and the way that Justin treated Brittany,
Speaker 1: it felt like it didn't extend to the way that
Speaker 1: Justin treated Janet or the way that the industry treated Janet. One.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's correct to say? And to what's
Speaker 1: up with that? I mean, yeah, I mean it's like
Speaker 1: a thing about being a black woman, of which I'm one.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that people so often think that
Speaker 1: whatever it is we can manage it that somehow. You know,
Speaker 1: we're just like stronger in particular then white ladies, white girls,
Speaker 1: that we just can take it emotionally, we can take
Speaker 1: it physically. You know, we can just plow through because
Speaker 1: you know we're strong. We're a strong black woman. As
Speaker 1: the saying goes, you know, we're so strong. You know
Speaker 1: we can just push it, pull it lifted, deal with it. Management. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what that's lies. I think that is the
Speaker 1: important conversation that's come out of it for our part
Speaker 1: is that, no, I don't think that black women are
Speaker 1: being extended as much grace, you know, as it's being
Speaker 1: extended to Brittany. And I think it should all be
Speaker 1: extended to Brittany, but that black girls need that same
Speaker 1: generosity of spirit coming from people. Yeah. Let me go
Speaker 1: on ahead and quote Karen White. She said, I'm not
Speaker 1: your super woman. I'm not your super woman. I'm not
Speaker 1: the kind of girl that you can let down and
Speaker 1: think that everything is okay. Boy, I am only human.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's go, let's go, let's let that be,
Speaker 1: let's bring that anthem back. Kenley. Thanks again to journalists
Speaker 1: and podcaster Danielle Smith. All of you right now go
Speaker 1: check out her podcast. It's called Black Girl Songbook. And
Speaker 1: thanks of course to the legendary producing and songwriting duo
Speaker 1: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Danny West with help from Liam McBain and Sam yellow
Speaker 1: Horse Kessler. Thanks also to Kimberly Sullivan and Sarah at Night.
Speaker 1: Our editor for this one was Jordana Hochman, who fun
Speaker 1: fact revealed to me in the taping of this episode
Speaker 1: that at one point she learned some choreography to the
Speaker 1: Janna Jackson song. If all right, listeners, there is one
Speaker 1: more episode in this special music series, all about Crossover.
Speaker 1: Next week we examined the so called Latin Explosion of
Speaker 1: the late nineties, you know, Ricky Martin and Shakira and
Speaker 1: j Loo and Mark Anthony and the rigue I Glessius.
Speaker 1: We'll ask whether it worked, who it was for, and
Speaker 1: why if you look back on it now twenty years later,
Speaker 1: it all feels kind of offensive. All right, till next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Sam Sanders. Be good to yourselves, Go play some Janet,
Speaker 1: dance it out. We'll talk soon. Well. I hope that
Speaker 1: all of us give Janet her flowers and keep doing
Speaker 1: so because the body of work, it just keeps on giving,
Speaker 1: It just keeps on giving. So to to be like
Speaker 1: a Janet Jackson fan, like it just feels good. It does. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you aren't already on board, get on board, Get
Speaker 1: on this Janet bandwagon. It's not too late. She's still here,
Speaker 1: the music is still here forever. Thanks again to Sam
Speaker 1: Sanders and her friends at NPRS It's been The team
Speaker 1: has a music series in their feed right now that
Speaker 1: explores the idea of crossover and pop music across three decades.
Speaker 1: They're breaking down specific moments in music history and asking
Speaker 1: who was it really for Head over to Itspentiminute feed
Speaker 1: to hear other episodes in the series.