6 Fascinating Details About The Making of Janet Jackson’s “Control”
On March 3rd I published an article in my Micro-Chop publication about the making of Janet Jackson’s Control. There was no special anniversary or reason for doing so, I just felt like writing about the album because I love it so much. Much to my surprise, “Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and The Making of ‘Control’” ended up becoming my most read article on Medium in a matter of days, with over 5,300 people reading it since it went live less than a month ago. While I was working on the article, I couldn’t get over how interesting the backstory was. Here are six of my favorite tidbits that I learned during my research.
- Janet Jackson spent five or six days hanging out with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis before they recorded a single song.
- Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’s engineer quit on them before recording began so they recorded Control themselves.
- Many of the songs were distorted because of their inexperience, which contributed to the album’s unique sonic quality.
- Several of controls tracks were submitted to ex-Atlantic Starr lead singer Sharon Bryan for her upcoming solo album. She rejected all of them.
- Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis credit their time spent working with Prince for helping them think outside the box while working on Control.
- Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis thought of Janet Jackson’s voice as one of their instruments.
You can read the entire article by clicking the link below.
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