Six Degrees of Janet Jackson’s Control
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.
The Album
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"When I was 17, I did what people told me," Janet Jackson sings at the outset of her third solo album a repudiation of a past that seems much less recent than it actually was, thanks to Control being a fully-realized, tightly-edited statement of artistic purpose from a 19-year-old woman who appeared to be fully in control of her artistic destiny. There was a lot of turmoil going on in Jackson's life;... she'd fired her father as her manager and annulled her marriage to James DeBarge. The album wound up addressing the turmoil in her life head-on, and audiences responded ridiculously well to its blend of female empowerment and ridiculously catchy R&B-infused pop it wound up sending five singles (of its nine tracks) to the top five of Billboard's Hot 100, and established Jackson as one of the MTV era's dominant female stars. Control was the first of many collaborations between Jackson and the production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, whose techniques relied heavily on machine-generated beats and spare instrumentation. Yet for all their lack of ornamentation, they still pack a punch. "Nasty" shows Jackson demanding respect from the males in the audience over a beat that seems to underscore her potential for confrontation; "What Have You Done For Me Lately?" and "The Pleasure Principle" provide similarly themed rebukes, only with messages more personally directed toward suitors who haven't been showing her the requisite amount of adoration. That's not to say all the songs on the album are about Jackson harnessing her post-emancipation anger; in fact, "When I Think Of You" might be the most buoyant ode to love the modern pop era has to offer, its peppy beat propelled along by Jackson's unfettered emotion.
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The Older Brother
The Collaborators
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The first two records by the Minneapolis funk-rock outfit The Time are often referred to as Prince records that had Morris Day as a lead singer. But they're important to the lineage of Control, since on those two albums the band boasted Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the musicians who would go on to coax out Jackson's best work (even the blippy "Doesn't Really Matter," her joyful contribution to the... soundtrack for 2000's Nutty Professor II, had a Jam/Lewis assist). The six tracks on What Time Is It? are loose-limbed funk-pop jams, with most of them stretching out way past the six-minute mark; the extended arrangements are spare and nervy, with space-age synthesizers assisting Day in the ringleader role. Only "Onedayi'mgonnabesomebody," a taut jam that sounds like it somehow fathered the Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance" before screeching to a halt and declaring, "We don't like New Wave," clocks in at pop-song length.
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The Emancipated Hit Machine
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George Michael's first solo album came out in the year following the release of Control, and it too doubles as a statement of purpose by a singer who wanted to reinvent himself. The British singer, seen as something of a lightweight because of his past life as chief heartthrob of the pop duo Wham!, attempted to establish his pop-genius bona fides by writing and producing nearly everything on the album, and playing... a slew of instruments for good measure � and it worked, with six of the tracks from the 11-song Faith going on to reach the Billboard Hot 100's top five, and four of them peaking at that chart's summit. Faith starts off with a somewhat solemn church-organ version of the Wham! chestnut "Freedom" before leaping into the title track, a taut, soulful repudiation of a woman more interested in sex than love; from there, Michael spins out hit after hit, from the fiery "Hard Day" to the mournful look at lost intimacy "Father Figure" to the bitterly catchy "Monkey." And then there was the controversial "I Want Your Sex," Michael's chart-topping ode to primal urges that got as much press for its frank talk about getting down as it did attention for its hip-shaking beat.
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The Disciples
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The sound put forth by Jam and Lewis on Control set the table for one of R&B's prominent subgenres of the late '80s and early '90s: New Jack Swing, in which the techniques and styles of hip-hop, dance-pop, and R&B were slammed together and turned into enduring pop staples. This collection has a couple of Jam and Lewis' most iconic productions Johnny Gill's ebullient ode to getting down "Rub You The... Right Way," Ralph Tresvant's sweetly seductive "Sensitivity" as well as radio staples like Johnny Kemp's celebratory "Just Got Paid" and Keith Sweat's pleading "I Want Her." There are only two contributions from women on this particular compilation, but both of them count big; En Vogue's defiant debut single "Hold On" is a spiritual heir to Control's "The Pleasure Principle" and a punchy song to boot, while SWV's "Anything" is a joyful, horn-sampling romp that's just as infatuation-filled as "When I Think Of You."
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The Robot
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The Atlanta singer Janelle Mone's debut effort has a high concept, high-profile guest stars, and high-quality jams like the fierce-footwork-inspiring "Tightrope." At the center of it all is one of the most exciting female pop stars to emerge in the 21st century, a woman who's not only devoted to her steel-hearted persona but who can break hearts with her beautiful version of the Charlie Chaplin standard "Smile." The ArchAndroid works within those... contradictions throughout the course of its Metropolis-inspired narrative, which centers on a society that's out to eradicate love; that the music is so generous in spirit throughout is a sign both that Mone is very serious about her underlying message of spreading good cheer, and that she possesses a crystal-clear artistic vision.
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