Consider This from NPR - BONUS: Janet Jackson Once Had 'Control' of the Charts

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

Thirty-five years ago, Janet Jackson released an album that changed the course of her career, and of pop music. Control took over radio, reinvented the playbook for Black artists crossing over into pop and ushered in a whole new sound for R&B. But after the wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, Janet's reputation took a hit, and she's yet to receive the flowers she deserves. In this episode of NPR's It's Been A Minute, host Sam Sanders wants to set the record straight. Listen to It's Been A Minute on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or NPR One.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey Consider This listeners, it's Audie Cornish and today we have an episode from our friends over at the It's Been a Minute podcast. This year marks the 35th anniversary of Janet Jackson's Control and that album was her first real commercial hit and looking back helped to redefine a lot of pop music. In the late 80s and 90s, Jackson was one of the biggest stars of our time right up there with Madonna and yet Jackson isn't always given her due. In this episode, host Sam Sanders explores why that is and how she made the album Control. And of course, about the incident that lasted all but a second that changed the course of her career. All right, folks, here we go.

What is your first Janet Jackson memory? It's a wild thing to ask me my first Janet Jackson memory because Janet and I are like the same age. Oh, wow. This is music journalist Danielle Smith. You know, it's a wonderful memory. So for my eighth birthday, my mother got me tickets to see the Jackson 5 live in concert at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. And when we got to the Circle Star Theater, there was an opening act, and that opening act was Randy Jackson and Janet Jackson.

Here's Janet and Randy, or Randy and Janet. Wow, and she's at this point around your age, which is around eight? Yeah, she was like seven or eight, yep, absolutely. How was she in that opening act performance? Well, the thing is they weren't even singing. They were like doing skits. Okay, Janet, now that you're up here,

what do you want to do? Like vaudeville. They were doing, they had jokes. You can't do that. Everybody works in this family. And one of the jokes was, and Janet is kind of known for this. You can find the shots of her dressed up kind of like Mae West and doing Mae West impressions. That's the one.

Because she has those two little buns on her head and the feather boa. Yes. And she's swinging those hips and sassing everybody at like eight, nine, ten years old. Yes. And so picture me in the audience screaming and yelling like a fool. Because my thought was, you have to understand, there was no social media. There weren't that many, like, fan magazines or black magazines for me to know that there even was a little sister to the Jackson 5. So I was screaming and hollering. I was so happy to know about her.

You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders, and this episode, Janet, Miss Jackson. It is hard to describe how much Janet Jackson means to me. I can recall the exact place I was the first time I saw several of her music videos. I remember trying to teach myself the choreography from her Pleasure Principle video and almost being seriously injured in the process. I remember thinking that I would never hear a better song in my entire life than Love Will Never Do Without You. I was right. And you know, when it comes to the Janet fandom, I am not alone. Janet Jackson means a lot to a lot of people.

So much of what she did in the 80s and the 90s and beyond, it laid the groundwork for so much that we see and hear now. Britney and Beyonce and even Taylor Swift, their styles and their approaches to the industry itself. It was all influenced by Janet Jackson. There is not a successful artist in pop today who isn't a descendant of the legacy of Janet. As we've heard already, she began early with the Jackson 5. From there, Janet had a starring role on the sitcom Good Times.

Melona, honey, I'm here to stay. A recurring role on Different Strokes. He sort of forbid me to see you anymore. What did he say? I forbid you to see him anymore. She was cast in the TV show Fame. Someday you gonna come running after me. And then she also had a music career.

Janet released two albums, the self-titled Janet Jackson and Dream Street, all by the time she was 18. And I'm going to be honest here. Those two albums, they were flops. It wasn't until Janet's third album that the world finally turned its head and took notice. This is a story about control notice when everything changed with Control. So 35 years ago this year, Janet blessed us with this iconic album. Today we're talking about the legacy of Janet Jackson and how that album, Control, it didn't just redefine her career.

It really redefined all of pop music that came after it. For me, Control is one of those albums that you get maybe once in a generation. Singularly focused and so cohesive, and yet every song has a personality of its own. It had songwriting that pushed the envelope but also felt immediately familiar. It was music that critics and mainstream radio alike had to love. It also gave a big lesson in crossover success and that is a topic that we've been discussing in this music series we're doing. You know, Control was insanely popular with both white and black audiences and all different kinds of radio formats. Of course, Janet Jackson did not make Control by herself. In 1985, she met up with two producers who would help her shape the sound of contemporary R&B for years to come. And then we were supposed to start working with

another artist and the artist decided that she didn't want to work with us. This is Terry Lewis. So John McClain called us and said, he was the A&R person, he said, you know, who do you guys want to produce on our roster? And he sent the roster because at that time there was no fax machine and there was no email. So we got a roster in the mail. We both looked at it and said, Janet. So we called him and said, we like to produce Janet. Coming up, producers and songwriters Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and how they helped make one of the better pop albums of our time. doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com.

T's and C's apply. Before Control, Janet Jackson was doing mostly bubblegum pop, but producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, they saw something more. We've always kind of gone off people that inspire you. Like certain people can be talented, but they don't necessarily inspire you to want to write songs for them. This is Jimmy Jam. And in Janet's case, it was a simple thing for us. We both felt we could write really great songs for her.

She inspired that. We thought she had a beautiful voice, first of all. But what we thought was, we missed, when she was young, she had all this attitude. She was like, she was like Miss Attitude. Why don't you come up and sing with me sometime? What's wrong with now? Remember the buns in her hair? The feather boa?

The Mae West impressions? Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis remembered all of that. We felt the records that she had done, they were quality records with quality producers. But the thing that we were missing on those records was where was that attitude? And so our thought was, if we could work with her, we could bring a little bit of that attitude out.

So at 19 years old, Janet moved to Minneapolis to begin working with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. She was finally taking control of her career. Take me back to the first studio session y'all have with Janet in Minneapolis. What's it like? What is her vibe? What is the vibe? What do you recall from that first session? Well, really the first sessions were not recording sessions. They were more therapy sessions, I guess I would call them we spent a lot of time just hanging out together we were you know we would go to movies we would hang out at clubs we would ride around the lakes and just kind of hang out and then we'd have discussions and our discussions were not that we were trying to analyze her but we were just trying to get to

know her better and know what was important to her and what she wanted to talk about, what she wanted to sing about. And after about a week of just kind of hanging out doing that, Janet said, well, when are we going to start working? And we said, oh, we're working. And we showed her the lyrics to Control. Wait, stop it. Stop, pause. So y'all, while you're just chilling with Janet, going to the movies and driving around the lakes, you're actually like studying her and writing your first song for her in the process.

Yeah, and that's something we, we always kind of did that with the artists, but probably not quite as intense we did with Janet because a lot of the artists we had worked with before, there was a little more, I don't know, history or things we could study so we knew a little bit more about them. But we would always do that before we would write for an artist

because we always wanted to tailor make the songs specifically for them. Okay. So back in the day, I always used to say, you know, if an artist likes McDonald's, I don't want to start writing a song about Burger King. I've got my own mind I want to make my own decision Because what happens is the artist, for the rest of their lives, if you have a hit record, the artist has to sing that for the rest of their lives.

We want them to have things. Make it fit them. Yeah, make it fit. So that's the way we looked at it. So then what kind of stuff was Janet sharing with y'all that made y'all want to write a song as strong and powerful as Control? Well, mainly that she was just taking control of her life. She was moving out of her house. She was ready to go out on her own. And also,

the other piece to the puzzle here was that she was really ready to sing the first two albums that she did she did between a lot of other things and the idea of her singing wasn't really her idea was more her dad's idea so while she could sing it's like when you have a talent and somebody goes oh you're really good at that you should do that and you're kind of like yeah but i'm not really what i want to do i think that was janet's attitude the first couple of records she sang because she could not because she wanted to or that she needed to when we got around to control she was in a space where she actually wanted to be an artist uh so the work that she was willing to put into it and the fact that then when she got so excited when we showed her some of the

control lyrics and she said, well, wait a minute, this is what we've been talking about. And we said, yeah. And she said, so whatever we talk about, that's what we're going to write about. And we said, yeah. And she said, oh, then I want to talk about this and I want to talk about this. And it totally opened her up at that point. And so then she became not only Janet, the singer, she went from being Janet, the reluctant singer to Janet, I want to sing to now here's what I want to sing about. But nobody had asked her. Well, I am so glad that y'all asked her what she wanted to do because the result stands the test of time. What kind of singer was Janet Jackson like in the studio?

Fearless. Yeah, there's a couple words that describe her, if I had to break it down into simple words. Like Jem said, fearless, relentless, beautiful, like a beautiful texture, and very in control. There's something I want to tell you. and very in control. A lot of people say that Janet's not a great singer, but Janet is a great singer. But in order to be a great singer,

you don't have to be the loudest singer. You just have to have control of what you like to do. And to me, style wins over volume. There you go. I always loved, and you hear it in lots of songs that she would do, she was able to convey emotion, not just through the singing. There's so many Janet, classic Janet songs, where her laugh conveys so much, or a sigh conveys so much or a little quip in the intro for a song conveys so much. Like you hear some of that acting training and the other things she's doing on y'all's records besides the singing.

She just knows how to convey emotion. Yeah, I totally agree. And that's but that's the things those little elements, the breaths, the sighs, the laughs, those things she would always do. And we would just leave them in there. A lot of times it was a mistake. You know, like the oh, sure. Like like the laugh on. I'm trying to. Oh, when I think of you. Wait, really? I love that laugh. Yeah, but that's just like it's like for most people, I think that would have been an outtake. And for us, all the things that were outtakes were always the pieces that we always tried to make sure was in there because that was the personality of her. You know, and if it was a happy song and she was laughing about it, then we wanted people to feel that when they were listening to this song. And even in our production technique, we would say to her, if she was singing a song like that,

a lot of times we wouldn't be looking at her because the lights would all be out in the studio. But I would say, are you smiling? Because this is a happy song. You got to smile when you sing this song. And she'd go, oh, okay, okay. And you could tell the difference because when you're smiling,

even when you're talking to somebody, when you're smiling as you're talking to them, it's a different thing. So little things like that, little nuances like that, we thought was really important. And also about her size and her breaths that she takes. One of the things she shared with Michael was that rhythmic breathing, I call it,

where her breath before she starts singing is on a beat. Huh. And when she sings, even the way she ends her sentences when she sang, it wasn't like she would hit the last word. She'd hit the last word, but then there'd be like a little, uh. Mm-hmm. Ooh, baby, all I think about is love. Those are the things that we loved because those became literally part of the funkiness of the songs. And so we were very aware of that, and we loved that about it.

Wow. Y'all can't see me right now, but I'm geeking out so hard getting this inside baseball. It's just incredible to me. Incredible. All right. so i want to talk more about when i think of you because that is the song from control that becomes i believe her first number one hit on the billboard 100 and i have replayed that video so much. I was watching it again yesterday a few times. And what I noticed most about that song and that video, besides the video being done in almost just one single shot, it's very much a bubblegum pop song with bubblegum pop visuals. And it sounds and it looks like it is supposed to be a crossover, like it's supposed to be played on white radio and black radio just the same. And I'm wondering, with that song, and even with the album Control, were y'all thinking of that as you were

making it? Success in different formats and with folks from all kinds of backgrounds? Because this song, it really seems like it was made for that. I would say, no, we weren't thinking about that. What we were thinking about, I'll tell you what we were thinking about, was we wanted the album, okay, so when we were living in L.A., we were living in a neighborhood that, you know, we will say that it's not like the, well, most people would say not the best neighborhood. And what we loved about that area, because growing up in Minneapolis,

first of all, we grew up in a very white town. And so we were very aware. I mean, I grew up listening to nothing but pop music pretty much growing up. So I guess we had the sensibility about what it was. But with Janet's record, we were trying to make the record that when we would walk down the streets of that neighborhood, there would be music blasting out of everybody's house.

And with Control, we said, we want our album to be that album that everybody's blasting out's house. And with Control, we said, we want our album to be that album that everybody's blasting out their house in that neighborhood. So we were going for the blackest, funkiest album we could make without any consideration of trying to cross over or

anything like that. Despite not intending for Control to cross over, it did, and then some. Control was Janet's first commercial hit. Five of the songs on that album became top five hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. And when i think of you it hit number one terry mentioned his name earlier i'll mention his name again john mcclain who was the anr person who was the one that hooked us up with janet he was the one that sent us the list of who do you want to work with at a and m and uh i remember he was the person as we when he heard control when we were done with it he was the one that said, this is double platinum. And we're like going, no.

I mean, we're thinking, yeah, maybe we'll go gold with it. That'd be great. He said it's double platinum. And then he went back to A&M and told everybody that. Really? I mean, the stories were he would literally jump on people's desks, like literally, and go, you don't know what this is. This is a double platinum record. He had everybody so hyped but intimidated at the same time, like, oh shoot, we better go

get this record. Control went on to sell five million copies in the U.S. and millions more globally. It spent more than 90 weeks on the Billboard charts. This album also earned multiple Grammy nominations, including one for Album of the Year. And we cannot forget the music videos. Pleasure Principle, Nasty, When I Think of You. They are all peak culture with a capital C. If you go back and watch those videos right now, you can see that some of those moves, the kids are still doing them today, in their music videos today. So after Control, Janet released another hit album, Rhythm Nation. That album went platinum six times. When the Rhythm Nation tour was announced, it sold out arenas in minutes.

In 1991, Ebony magazine named Janet and Michael, quote, the biggest brother-sister stars in show business history. I think those albums ended up changing the way that music sounded because it changed the way that radio sounded. And so I think the influence later on, not only the album, but the visuals that went with the albums, affected the way pop music, what pop music became. I mean, all the great pop music came out of Sweden at a certain point.

You know, you had Max Martin, you had from everywhere from Backstreet Boys to Britney Spears to all of those records. And they were all to me based on what control and what Rhythm Nation was. And if you talk to them, they will tell you. I mean, Max Martin, we went to the Songwriters Hall of Fame the same year he did. And he said, hey, man, when we were making those records, we were just basically trying to do what you guys were doing. In the 90s, Janet Jackson just kept going. In 93, she had another hit with a song that seemed to be everywhere for months. Like a moth to a flame burned by the fire. It was a lead single from her self-titled album, a little ditty called That's The Way Love Goes.

That's the Way Love Goes. That's the Way Love Goes was number one on the Billboard charts for eight weeks. But Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, they told me at first, Janet didn't like the song. Her dancers had to convince her that it could be a hit. And what happened was very much what happened in the video, which was she put the cassette on of the tracks we were working on. And when that track came on, she was with all her dancers and all her friends. And in the video, one of them is J-Lo. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But she was with all her friends on vacation. They were in Anguilla, as a matter of fact. And she said when that song came on, everybody was just like, oh, what is that?

That's the one right there. And so it made her hear it differently because of the way her friends and dancers were hearing it. And when she got back, that she was here to stay. Again, music journalist Danielle Smith. That there was no flash-in-the-pan thing happening with her. That she was committed to the look. She was committed to the music. She was committed to the work, to the choreography, to everything.

So Janet was now in the same league as her brother Michael and Madonna. And in some ways, Tina Turner. Please come forward. But then. Congratulations and welcome to Super Bowl 38. The Super Bowl happened. Carolina has been designated the visiting Bowl happened. I mean, to me, the way I remember it is it was violent.

Coming up, we go back to that moment in 2004 and why it looks and feels so different in today's Rearview Mirror. Justice for Janet, after the break i think it's hard to like talk about her omnipresence. Like, I remember that video for That's The Way Love Goes. I felt like it was played on MTV every five minutes. You could not turn on your radio on any kind of station and not hear that song. She was on the cover of all the magazines.

Like, when you compare what she was doing in that moment and how everywhere she was to, I don't know, a Taylor Swift or a Beyonce today, how does it compare? The level? I mean, you can compare it, but then my thing is, can you? Because the thing is, that's something that I, because I've interviewed Janet any number of times and in one of our conversations, you know, she just acknowledged the fact that she kind of created herself. Like, I think that Beyonce would be the first person to say that without the influence of, yes, definitely Tina Turner. And I

always want to add Donna Summer when I think about Beyonce. But if there was not a Janet Jackson, especially with regard to singing and dancing at the same time, you know, Beyonce pulls from all of that. Oh, yeah. And then Taylor with regard to just being everywhere and singing the feelings of youth at that moment. Like when I think about my niece's relationship to Taylor Swift and how my niece had to tell me, again, like at the age of nine or 10, that if I was going to understand my job, excuse you, Parker Drew Williams, that I needed to listen to Taylor to understand her generation. Oh, yeah. I mean, there are just many of us that say,

if you want to understand, especially Black women and really just women, to understand what it felt like to be in love, to come into your own as a 20-year-old, a 25-year-old, because Janet takes us on all the beats. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, but Janet has sung our life to us. In the run-up to the Super Bowl halftime show, Janet was still on top. Her last album before that performance, All For You, it had come out in 2001 with another number one single called All For You. So, of course, Janet was asked to headline the Super Bowl. Because what kind of musicians do you ask to headline the Super Bowl. Because what kind of musicians do you ask to headline the Super Bowl halftime show? The heavy hitters. She's like the biggest

star in the world. And even in 2004, like from a royal musical family. So okay, Super Bowl performance. We have come to the end of the first half of Super Bowl 38. There's our score. It was Sunday, February 1st, 2004. The Carolina Panthers were taking on the New England Patriots in Houston, Texas. At halftime, it was Janet singing Rhythm Nation and All For You. All my girls have a party, look at that body. Shaking that thing like you never did see.

Got a nice back to show it. The other performers were P. Diddy, Nelly, and Kid Rock. Talk about a moment in time. And then to close out the show, it was Janet again. But this time she was joined by Justin Timberlake on his song, Rock Your Body. Rock Your Body. I'm in the kitchen in Los Angeles. It's Super Bowl Sunday. Who cares about the game?

I'm here for the food. So, so I'm literally doing something in the kitchen and I hear, there's a bunch of people at my parents' house, and I hear gasps and screams. Oh, wow. And I walk in and I promise you, I feel like everybody that was over, male and female, had their hand over their mouth. Huh. And I'm like, what? Happened. And then somebody said, you know, somebody snatched off Janet's top.

And then, you know, everything unfolds. Tonight, Janet Jackson is apologizing for her flash dance. The singer calls the bodice-ripping move by fellow entertainer Justin Timberlake during the Super Bowl halftime show a last-minute stunt that went too far. Viewers watched as Timberlake grabbed Jackson's outfit and ripped it open during a live broadcast on CBS. Timberlake called it a wardrobe malfunction. You guys are getting pretty hot and steamy up there. Hey, man.

I love giving y'all something to talk about. But Janet Jackson says it was not my intention that it go as far as it did. We could do a whole nother episode on the phrase wardrobe malfunction. This phrase eventually became so ubiquitous that it was nominated by the American Dialect Society as 2004's Word of the Year. It also got a nomination for most euphemistic. The phrase wardrobe malfunction was defined as, quote, an unanticipated exposure of bodily parts. This phrase lost on both counts a true snub, if you ask me.

And yes, in this moment, a big, loud part of America was definitely offended, or at least pretending to be offended, by that, quote, unanticipated exposure of bodily parts. Following the halftime show in 2004, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it had received

a record 540,000 complaints about the incident. And they fined CBS a little more than half a million dollars on an indecency violation. If you were too young to recall all of this, trust me when I say there was a whole lot of pearl clutching going on. My son seemed to think that they should sue Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake because they were the ones who did it, and it was really nasty. If the fourth grade boys at a public elementary school can tell right from wrong, we need to ask ourselves, where you corporate CEOs lost your way? But here's the thing. When I was watching the Halftime Show back in 2004, when it happened, I didn't notice. For me, it wasn't until the next day in my music theory class that all my classmates were talking about it and watching clips of what happened over and over again. At the time, TiVo announced that it was the most replayed moment

in the company's history. And one of the co-founders of YouTube, he has cited this exact moment and the difficulty in finding that video as inspiration for the creation of YouTube. Also, if you really think about it, and maybe that's why to me it just reminds me of violence. It's a similar thing to me of how we have to keep seeing the black people getting beat up by the cops over and over again or seeing the child get shot by the law enforcement.

And we have to keep seeing it over and over again. It does two things. It, one, grinds it into your brain, but it also can be numbing, right? But in either case, it's almost like, why? Why is this violent moment, this being shown to us over and over and over again? And also, of course, the main question then is, why did it do so much damage to Janet's reputation without doing similar damage to Justin's?

It was as if that piece of fabric that was ripped from her clothing was replaced with some big scarlet letter. It was just as if the world said, we're done with you now because of this. This was a moment that lasted all but a second. And yet it essentially stopped a 30 plus year career in its tracks. After that halftime show, Janet was blacklisted. MTV refused to play her music videos, stations stopped playing her songs, and Janet didn't appear at the Grammy Awards just a few days later. Her invitation was conditional on her apology. But Justin went and apologized,

and he took home two awards that night, one for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and another for Best Pop Vocal Album. Listen, I know it's been a rough week on everybody, and what occurred was unintentional, completely regrettable, and I apologize if you guys are offended. This has been a dream of mine.

Don't. I already got enough. Don't. In 2006, Janet sat down with Oprah Winfrey for what she said at the time was the final word on the issue. Do you think in any way that Justin Timberlake left you hanging out there? I am speaking to Ms. Jackson. Do you? Well, all the emphasis was put on me, not on Justin. That same year, Justin told MTV that if you considered what happened back then, 50-50,

he only got 10% of the blame. I think that says something about society. You know, I think that America's harsher on women. And I think that America's, you know, unfairly harsh on ethnic people. We reached out to Janet's publicity team and we were told that she has no comment. Justin Timberlake also had no comment. But earlier this year, Justin did post an apology on Instagram

to both Janet and Britney Spears. He said, quote, I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn or did not speak up for what was right. The fact is, after the halftime show, Janet's career suffered while Justin's thrived. So much so that in 2018, Justin was invited back to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show. This time, solo.

I use the word criminal a lot when I talk about Black people in music, and specifically, you know, me always talking about Black women in music, not receiving the credit that they're due. I really think that it's criminal that we, as you started this conversation, that we forget the impact that Janet Jackson has had on music. It's bloody and it's criminal. What do you think is the biggest lesson or takeaway about the music industry, about American celebrity culture, about the way black women are treated in music. What's the biggest takeaway for any of those things from the Super Bowl incident?

I mean, the biggest takeaway from Janet not receiving the credit that is due to her in this world of culture that we all live in is, to me, how little has changed since the days when Ma Rainey and stuff were making music. The days when people like Leontyne Price were having to fight, you know, to be on stage at some of the best opera houses around the world, when Marian Anderson can't sleep in hotels, you know, in the cities where she's playing to pack houses of Black and non-Black audiences. When you think about how hard Motown had to fight to get black music played on pop stations, the same battle that artists like Whitney Houston,

Gladys Knight, Toni Braxton, the fights they still had to fight to get played on pop radio. And this is when pop radio mattered in the pre-streaming era. These were real fights. And then we have to be in a situation where Janet is to me victimized on Super Bowl Sunday yeah and she takes the blame for it

yeah like yeah the takeaway is wow it hasn't changed that much that's the takeaway that times change and maybe there's more magazine covers and maybe there's more sales and more streaming but but it hasn't changed that much yeah yeah you know in the last year there has been a new kind of conversation around the way women in pop music are treated. And a lot of that conversation was started by what's happening with Britney Spears. You know, she's been in this conservatorship for years. She's had very public mental health issues. And as she has been arguing to get out of that conservatorship, there's a new conversation about whether or not our society is nice enough to women like Britney or Janet or Beyonce and whether the machine of celebrity chews them up and then spits them out.

And when those conversations began, I said, okay, this is good. But I began to notice over time that the conversation seems to focus, and correct me here if I'm wrong, it seemed to focus more on white women in pop than on black women in pop. Because you think about Janet and Britney, there's a direct through line there. You know, Janet did so much of what we see in Brittany's work first. And both of them were connected for a while to Justin Timberlake. And yet this conversation around the way we treated Brittany and the way that Justin treated Brittany, it felt like it didn't extend to the way that Justin treated Janet or the way that the industry treated Janet. One, do you think that's correct to say? And two, what's up with that? I mean, yeah, I mean, it's like a thing about being a black woman of which I am one, you know, I think that people so often think that whatever it is,

we can manage it. That somehow, you know, we're just like stronger in particular than white ladies, white girls, That we just can take it emotionally. We can take it physically. We can just plow through because we're strong. We're a strong black woman as the saying goes. We're so strong. We can just push it, pull it, lift it, deal with it, management. Well, you know what?

That's lies. I think that is the important conversation that's come out of it for our part, is that, no, I don't think that black women are being extended as much grace, you know, as is being extended to Britney. And I think it should all be extended to Brittany but that black girls need that same generosity of spirit coming from people yeah

let me go on ahead and quote um Karen White she said I'm not your superwoman. I'm not your superwoman. I'm not the kind of girl that you can let down and think that everything is okay. Boy, I am only human. I mean, let's go. Let's go. Let's let that be. Let's bring that anthem back. Can we? Thanks again to journalist and podcaster Danielle Smith.

All of you, right now, go check out her podcast. It's called Black Girl Songbook. And thanks, of course, to the legendary producing and songwriting duo, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. This episode was produced by Danae West, with help from Liam McBain And Sam Yellow Horse Kessler Thanks also to Kimberly Sullivan and Sarah Knight Our editor for this one

Was Jordana Hochman Who, fun fact, revealed to me In the taping of this episode That at one point She learned some choreography To the Dana Jackson song If Alright listeners, there is one more episode

in this special music series all about crossover. Next week, we examine the so-called Latin explosion of the late 90s. You know, Ricky Martin and Shakira and J-Lo and Marc Anthony and Enrique Iglesias. We'll ask whether it worked, who it was for, and why, if you look back on it now, 20 years later, it all feels kind of offensive.

All right, till next time, I'm Sam Sanders. Be good to yourselves. Go play some Janet. Dance it out. We'll talk soon. Well, I hope that all of us give Janet her flowers and keep doing so. Because the body of work, it just keeps on giving. It just keeps on giving.

So to anyone listening. And doesn't it feel good, though, to be like a Janet Jackson fan? Like, it just feels good. It does. Listeners, if you aren't already on board get on board get on this janet bandwagon it's not too late she's still here the music is still here forever