La Toya Jackson Addresses Janet Jackson, Jermaine Jackson Feud Rumors
Janet Jackson called Rhythm Nation an "ongoing force" that is "simply too strong" to be stopped.
And her groundbreaking 1989 album—which was inducted into the Grammys Hall of Fame in January—certainly is, but the same can be said about the artist herself.
Over the course of her five-decade career, Janet —who turns 60 on May 16—has faced personal challenges, family tragedy and puritanical scolds who've threatened her livelihood. But just when fans start missing her too much, time and again she has re-emerged in all her pop icon glory.
"I don’t think about it," Janet told The Guardian in 2024, referring to setbacks beyond her control. "I just do what I do and I enjoy what I do. And if they want to say this and that, and give me those accolades, the acclaim you say, then so be it. And if they don’t, then so be it.”
But she didn't call her 2015 studio album Unbreakable for nothing. And the scuttled-due-to-COVID Black Diamond Tour she was supposed to embark on in 2020 was named as such because, as she explained on The Tonight Show, that stone is "hard to destroy."
"In my recent years," she said, "I've come to realize I'm incredibly strong. I see myself as this rock."
While she resumed touring as soon as she could—and will be heading to Japan in June for several special performances—she's only piled on the proverbial armor, not least to protect the privacy of her 9-year-old son Eissa, who she shares with ex-husband Wissam Al Mana.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
And she was already ultra-wary of the spotlight, the aftermath of her 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show wardrobe malfunction and the death of her brother Michael Jackson in 2009 making her relationship with fame even more complicated.
As she said in the four-part 2022 docuseries Janet Jackson, "There's a great deal of scrutiny that comes with having that last name."
She subsequently preferred to be removed from the Michael narrative completely, which is why the early-years biopic about her younger brother's rise to superstardom that came out in April doesn't feature Janet as a character.
“I wish everybody was in the movie,” sister LaToya Jackson told Variety at the film's April 20 L.A. premiere. But Janet "was asked and she kindly declined so you have to respect her wishes.”
Meanwhile, Janet has been shoring up her own legacy, raising $4 million from a 2021 auction of more than 800 items of clothing, accessories and memorabilia—Kim Kardashian paid $25,000 for the ensemble Janet wore in her 1993 "If" music video—and selling the New York apartment she'd owned for 25 years in 2022.
"It’s an era of legacy-building but it’s about release,” she explained to The Guardian. “Because when you’re talking about all of this, it’s been me releasing the apartment, I’ve released through the auction, wanting to share those things, letting go.”
Still among her possessions is a London address, having been co-parenting in the U.K. with Wissa since they split up not long after Eissa was born in January 2017.
Because, at the end of the day, it's all for her son.
“The most important thing I’ve done, the biggest thing I’ve done, is become a mother, and it’s had a beautiful impact on my life,” Janet told The Guardian. “I wanted to have three children, but thought, ‘I should stop there, that’s probably all I can handle.’ Because you have to give all of yourself, you have to spread the love, and I wouldn’t want any of them to feel left out if I had three."
At the same time, Janet still loved to work, noting on ITV's Loose Women in 2024, "I enjoy what I do so much, I'm not ready to give it up. And then I want to be with my baby, so I do that too."
She also had zero designs on Eissa dipping his young toes into show business, explaining that, while his life was certainly privileged, “I want him to experience being a child, because you don’t get to do this over.”
The boy can't help being musically inclined, however, with Janet sharing on The Tonight Show in February 2020 that then-3-year-old Eissa was taking cello lessons, having already toted a violin to school.
And if he does want to follow in his mom's (and uncles', aunt's and cousins') footsteps, she'll support him once he's 18. "I would say he has to wait till he's of age and still make sure that's something he wants to do," she said on Loose Women. "Whatever you do is very difficult, but the industry is very tough, it's brutal."
Robin L Marshall/Getty Images
As for what else was going on in her life behind the velvet rope, Janet hoped she had learned from previous entanglements on from previous entanglements what to avoid in the future as far as love goes.
"I pray to God that I might have different lenses on these eyes than I did before,” she told The Guardian. “I know that if someone were to come along…even if I didn’t recognize it, I guarantee you my friends would shake the s--t out of me and say, ‘What are you doing?!’”
"But," she added, "I think I’m seeing it through different lenses now. I think I am breaking that pattern.”
While she plots out the design of her next decade, let us take you on an escape to the many times Janet made history:
A&M Records
With the release of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814, her fourth studio album, on September 19, 1989, Janet delivered the only album in history to ever produce No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in three separate calendar years, beginning with "Miss You Much" that year. In 1990, both "Escapade" and "Black Cat" topped the chart, followed by "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" in 1991.
Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage
Despite being released in 1989, Rhythm Nation would go on to become the best-selling album of 1990. Since it's release, it has been estimate to have sold over 12 million copies worldwide.
Shutterstock
To this day, Rhythm Nation also remains the only album to have seven commercial singles peak within the top five of the Hot 100. The only one.
REX USA/Eugene Adebari
When Janet embarked on the Rhythm Nation World Tour 1990, her first headlining tour, it became the most successful debut tour by any recording artist, a title it still holds. Grossing $28.1 million in the U.S. alone, it ranked No. 5 of the best-selling tours that year, making her the only female to place in the top 10.
Bill Nation/Sygma via Getty Images
Having fulfilled her initial recording contract with A&M Records in 1991, she signed a multi-million dollar deal with Virgin Records, estimated to be between $32 and $50 million dollars, making her the highest paid recording artist at the time.
Virgin Records
When Janet, her fifth studio album, was released in May 1993, it opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, making her the first female artist in the Nielsen SoundScan era to do so.
Teaming with her brother Michael Jackson for "Scream," the lead single from his 1995 album HIStory, the siblings delivered the first song to ever debut within the top five on the Hot 100. (It debuted at No. 5.) The music video, directed by Mark Romanek, cost $7 million to make and was listed in the Guinness World Records as the most expensive music video ever made.
A&M Records
With the release of "Runaway," a new track recorded for her first greatest hits album, Design of a Decade: 1986-1996, the same year as "Scream," she became the first female artist in Billboard's history to debut in the top 10 of the Hot 100, entering at No. 6.
John Barrett/Shutterstock
In 1996, Janet renewed her contract with Virgin Records for a reported $80 million, making her the then-highest-paid recording artist in history, surpassing her brother Michael and Madonna's then-unparalleled $60 million contracts.
KMazur/WireImage
When "I Get Lonely," the third single off her sixth studio album The Velvet Rope, debuted at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in February 1998, it became her 18th consecutive top-10 hit on the chart, setting a record as the only female artist to have done such a thing. To this day, she is surpassed only by Elvis Presley and The Beatles.
AP Photo/David Phillip, file
While her wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in 2004 nearly derailed her career completely (and rather unfairly, we might add), the incident in question became the most recorded and replayed moment in TiVo history and went on to inspire the creation of YouTube.
Christopher Polk/Getty Images
Despite the Super Bowl debacle, she wasn't done making history just yet. With the release of "Make Me," the lead single from her second greatest hits compilation Number Ones, in September 2009, she became the first artist to have No. 1 singles in four separate decades. (It became her 19th No. 1 on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart in 2010.)
Michel Dufour/WireImage
With a performance under the iconic I.M Pei glass pyramid at the Louvre Museum in Paris in 2011, part of the museum's biannual fundraiser, Liasons au Louvre, she became the first female pop star to ever do so. "Janet Jackson is one of the world's greatest artistic treasures," Louvre President-Director Henri Loyrette said in a statement at the time. "Accordingly, we are profoundly honored, and believe it most fitting, that her performance in the Louvre Museum will be yet another masterpiece captured under our glorious glass pyramid."
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
14.
In 2018, Jackson became the first Black woman to receive the Billboard Icon Award, seen here with Bruno Mars doing the presenting honors.
“I’m deeply humbled and grateful for this award,” she said in her acceptance speech. “I believe for all our challenges, we live at a glorious moment history. It’s a moment when, at long last, women have made it clear that we will no longer be controlled, manipulated or abused. I stand with those women and with those men equally outraged who support us in heart and mind. This is also a moment when our public discourse is loud and harsh.”
Plus, she added, "everything we lack, God has in abundance.”
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