Control
Her breakthrough and reinvention with Jam & Lewis — a foundational new-jack-swing record, 5× platinum, and a #1 album.
Photo: Rich Esteban · CC BY-SA 4.0
The family · his youngest sister
Janet Jackson
The tenth and youngest Jackson child built a career as singular as her brother's — a string of culture-shaping albums, a record of chart dominance few have matched, and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction all her own. This is Janet on her own terms.
0Records soldest.; some tallies far higher
0Hot 100 #1 singles1986–2001
0Grammy Awards+ 8 Guinness records
0Rock & Roll Hall of Fameinducted, solo
Before the music
A child star, then a reinvention
Born May 16, 1966 in Gary, Indiana, Janet was the baby of the family — and a working actress before she was a pop star, with roles on Good Times, Diff'rent Strokes, and Fame. Her first two albums (1982, 1984) came while she was still under family and label direction.
Everything changed with 1986's Control. Breaking from her father's management — "I just wanted to get out from under my father" — she partnered with Minneapolis producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and defined a new sound. The album topped the Billboard 200 and made her a star independent of the Jackson name.
The catalogue
The albums that defined eras
Rhythm Nation 1814
A socially conscious concept album — the only album in history to produce seven top-5 Hot 100 singles, with #1 hits across three different calendar years.
janet.
A bold reinvention after a landmark Virgin deal; the first album by a female artist to debut at #1 in the SoundScan era. "That's the Way Love Goes" spent eight weeks atop the Hot 100.
The Velvet Rope
Her most confessional record — belonging, depression, identity — and another #1 debut.
All for You
Its title track became her tenth and final Hot 100 #1, seven weeks at the top.
Unbreakable
A reunion with Jam & Lewis that debuted at #1 — giving her #1 albums across four different decades.
By the records
Chart dominance
Janet holds an 18-song streak of consecutive Hot 100 top-10 hits (1989–1998) — a record for a female artist — and her ten #1 singles include "When I Think of You," "Miss You Much," "Escapade," "That's the Way Love Goes," "Together Again," and "All for You." She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, introduced by Janelle Monáe: "Quite simply, there is only one Janet."
A note on the numbersCareer sales are most often cited as "over 100 million," but the figure is genuinely disputed and methodology-dependent — her label has promoted higher tallies; analysts estimate lower. We use the widely-repeated "over 100 million."
2004
The Super Bowl halftime show
During the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show on February 1, 2004, Justin Timberlake tore part of Janet's costume during "Rock Your Body," briefly exposing her on live television to ~140–150 million viewers. The moment — which coined the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" — brought an FCC fine against CBS (later voided on appeal) and, by many accounts, an industry blacklisting that fell overwhelmingly on Janet, not Timberlake. Janet maintained it was an accident; the episode is now widely reassessed as a stark double standard, and Timberlake later publicly apologized.
The bond
Janet & Michael
As the two youngest, Janet and Michael were especially close. Their bond produced one of pop's most celebrated collaborations: "Scream" (1995), a defiant answer to the media scrutiny of Michael. It debuted at #5 — then the highest debut in Hot 100 history — and its Mark Romanek video was, for years, the most expensive ever made.
After Michael's death in 2009, Janet delivered an emotional tribute at the MTV Video Music Awards, dancing in unison with archival footage of her brother. In January 2017 she had her son, Eissa, with then-husband Wissam Al Mana. Hear "Scream" & the catalogue →
Little-known
Did you know
- The 2004 Super Bowl incident became, per Guinness, the most-searched event in internet history at the time — and is often credited as a catalyst for the creation of YouTube the next year.
- At 18 she secretly married singer James DeBarge (1984); it was annulled the next year.
- Her reported 1996 Virgin contract (~$80 million) made her the world's highest-paid recording artist — exceeding her brother Michael's deal of the era.