Throwback Tuesday
Janet Jackson - Nasty (1986)
This is one of the great songs by one of the greatest artists of the past 40 years. And I suppose it should be full disclosure that Janet Jackson is my second favorite artist of all time, so I'm probably more than a little biased but I don't care! Up until the 1986 release of her third album, Control, most people knew her as the youngest sibling in the talented Jackson music family or maybe from her multiple-season recurring roles on the TV sitcoms, Good Times (as Penny, a neighbor girl and eventually the adopted daughter of Willona) and DIff'rent Strokes (as Willis' girlfriend, Charlene). Her first two albums didn't make much of an impact, but after ditching her controlling (if you'll pardon the pun) father, Joseph, as her manager and beginning a decades-long working relationship with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the sound that would be a hallmark of much of Jackson's career began to emerge with the Control album and fans responded!
Nasty was the second single from the album and its origins came from a real life event. The story goes that while Jackson was in Minneapolis with Jam & Lewis, recording the album, she was verbally accosted on the street by a group of guys. The usually shy Jackson stood up to the guys and backed them off herself rather than running to others for support. Audiences obviously enjoyed the liberated and empowered theme of the song because it ended up becoming a Top 10 hit in several countries around the world. In the U.S, it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, went all the way to #1 on the R&B chart, and got to #2 on the Dance chart.
On top of all of that, Nasty contains one of the all-time great lines in a song. "Privacy is my middle name. My last name is control. No, my first name ain't Baby. It's Janet...Miss Jackson if you're nasty!" It sounds much better in real time if you watch the above video rather than reading what I've typed. And yes, that IS a not-yet-famous-herself Paula Abdul you see in the above music video. Before launching her own singing career in late 1988, Abdul was a choreographer and Jackson was one of the artists she worked with. You can see her in the music videos for a few of Control's other singles as well.
