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If
Written and produced by Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, this explicit fantasy narrative was released as the second single from the singer's janet. album in July 1993. It peaked at #4 on the Hot 100 and also topped the Hot Dance Club Play chart. The song also reached the #3 position on the Canadian singles chart.
Jackson told Q magazine the song is "about a girl who goes to a club and fantasizes about this guy: serious fantasies about the things she'd do to him if she was his girl - the positions and things like that. But she's not, so she can't, so she gets pretty frustrated in the second verse - without it being too much. It's still within good taste."
The song is built on a heavy metal guitar riff that is heard throughout and contains a sample of Diana Ross & The Supremes' "Someday We'll Be Together."
The song's music video was directed by Dominic Sena, who previously worked with Jackson on visuals for Rhythm Nation 1814. The clip was staged as a futuristic Asian nightclub. The spy cameras monitoring the intimate interactions of patrons within their private boudoirs acted as a metaphor for the single's message of sexual fantasy, desire and voyeurism. It was choreographed by Tina Landon, who previously danced for the singer during the Control and Rhythm Nation era. Looking back at the video in a 2013 interview with Billboard magazine, she said: "I don't think people really realize what we were showing in that video that wasn't available with technology then. The video featured futuristic technology, specifically high definition touch screens. I wanted the actors in the video to use these screens to communicate, and relate with each other in the clubs. Similar to what we all do with our smart phones and tablets today. As I look at our lives now, it seems that life is imitating art. I have seen different elements from all of these videos in lots of artists work and it's a great feeling to know that you have inspired them in such a way."
Jackson also made her big screen acting debut in 1993 in John Singleton's Poetic Justice. She credits the role with giving her the confidence to embrace her sexier side on the janet album, particularly on this song. "I knew that I wanted for the album to be about love and all of that, but I don't think I would've taken it to this extent except for the film," she told Us Weekly. "Like the song 'If' - I probably would have never talked about it before the film." (Jackson also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Again," which was used in the closing credits of the movie.)
Miss You Much
This song was written by the production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They had a lot of success on Jackson's previous album, Control, in 1986 - the breakthrough album that helped Jackson break the pop mold and become a sex icon with a funky edge.
This was inspired by a breakup letter Jimmy Jam received from one of his old girlfriends, who signed it with what would become this song title. He thought it would be perfect for Jackson.
In the album title Rhythm Nation 1814, the "1814" was the project number assigned to the album on the A&M Records record label; that it shared the same number as the year the US national anthem was written was a coincidence realized and acknowledged by Jackson and producers later on.
This was one of seven Top 5 singles from the album. It was the first time any album produced so many hits, although Michael Jackson (Janet's brother) had seven Top 10 hits from his 1983 Thriller album.
TIME magazine named this song the second best-selling single of the year (it sold over four million copies), between Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise" at number one and Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" at number three.
Although Jackson didn't receive a songwriting credit for this track, she had some worthwhile ideas, according to Jimmy Jam. He told Idolator: "When we got to Rhythm Nation, I had done the [instrumental] track to 'Miss You Much' and I just pointed at a note on one of the keyboards and she just walked in and hit the key and that became the string part on the song. She had lyric ideas walking into the studio."
This song was featured in the movie Ghost Dad, a 1990 comedy starring Bill Cosby.
Because her previous album, Control, was released three years earlier, Janet's vocals were a little rusty from the lengthy break, so Jam and Lewis didn't want her to record the lead for this song right away. Jam remembered: "The idea was to do the backgrounds first to get her voice back in tip-top singing shape, because she hadn't sung for probably two years."
Someone to Call My Lover
This uses the guitar riff from the 1972 America song "Ventura Highway." Jackson wrote it with her producers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Lifting a soft-rock hit from the '70s doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for a dance-pop act like Jackson, but Jimmy Jam told us that Janet loves many kinds of music and was always willing to try different ideas.
Describing the construction of this song, he said, "For 'Someone to Call My Lover,' she hadn't heard the 'Ventura Highway' sample before. She hadn't heard those songs. So it's kind of fun to come up with stuff like that and play it for her. And she hasn't heard of it, but she still really likes it. So you have something that's going to appeal to people that haven't heard it before, it's going to catch them, but it's also going to catch the people who are nostalgic about it." (Check out our full interview with Jimmy Jam.)
This song was used in the animated series Neighbors From Hell on the episode "Country Club Hell" in 2010.
Jackson really was looking for someone to call her lover: she had just ended her 10-year marriage to Rene Elizondo Jr. while recording this album.
The loop played throughout the chorus was borrowed from the Classical piece "Gymnopédie No. 1" by French composer Erik Satie. Jackson first heard it on a TV commercial when she was a child and never forgot it.
Jackson first worked with So So Def producer Jermaine Dupri, who would become her longtime boyfriend, on a remix of this song. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2002, but lost to Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like A Bird."
No Sleep
Janet Jackson's first single in seven years is a steamy tune that lyrically depicts the singer waiting longingly to engage in intimacy with her lover. The release of the song on June 22, 2015 was accompanied by a tweet, "I dedicate this to My Love," referring Jackson's husband, Wissam Al.
The song was produced by longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the pair responsible for the definitive Janet Jackson sound since 1986's Control.
This was released under Jackson's own record label, Rhythm Nation Records, distributed by BMG Rights Management. The launch of Rhythm Nation made history with the singer becoming the first female African-American recording artist to form her own label.
The song was Janet Jackson's 40th Hot 100 hit and her first since "Feedback" peaked at #19 in 2008.
A remixed version featuring J. Cole was sent to radio on July 23, 2015. Jackson and the rapper recorded the new tune in a Los Angeles recording studio earlier in the month. Cole gives Janet's late big brother a shout out during his verse when he raps about having "Butterflies like MJ."
Control
In the title song of her breakthrough album, Janet proclaims her independence for the first time in her life. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to figure out the whole album represents a break from her famous family, including superstar brother Michael and father, Joe, who was primarily interested in being a manager rather than a dad. "'Control' came from the heart," she told the Los Angeles Times. "It was all about stepping out, taking control of your life... a certain point in your life when you ask yourself who you are and what you want to do."
The album hooked her up with producers/songwriters Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who helped her create a sexy and funky image. Jam and Lewis went on to write and produce most of her hits, including this one (Janet also has a writing credit on the track).
Although Janet wanted a fresh start, she didn't want to forget about her past or her old friends. Ja'net Dubois, her former co-star from the '70s sitcom Good Times (and co-writer of The Jeffersons theme), played her mother in the music video for this song, which opens with a vignette where Janet tells her parents she's moving out.
The unique break in this song came about by accident during the production of "Nasty," another hit from the album. Jimmy Jam explained: "When you program drum machines, you program a lot of different patterns in. But the way we do it, we never put the programs in a sequence. We play and change the sequences by hand. So at one point in 'Nasty,' I changed to the wrong sequence and it made this weird drum break. A lot of times when that happens, we leave it and figure out what to do with it musically later. That's what happened on 'Control.' There are two or three breaks where it stops and there's a little 'do-do-do-do-do,' and that was the creation of hitting the wrong drum program at the wrong time. But it worked."
Producing the music video for this song was one of the worst experiences in Sharon Oreck's career. Behind the scenes, Janet's soon-to-be-fired manager Joe Jackson was trying to sabotage the project by making wild demands (which were last-ditch efforts to control his daughter). He angrily insisted Janet be insured for $1 million before she was allowed to be lowered onstage via trapeze. Meanwhile, the live footage was being recorded at the Grand Olympics Auditorium in Los Angeles in front of an audience who expected a free Janet Jackson concert, not "50 takes of Janet lip-synching," Oreck remembered. The crowd was disgruntled over that, but nearly rioted when white members of the audience, who had been scattered throughout, were slowly moved to the front. An A&M label representative was able to calm everyone down when he explained the migration wasn't an act of segregation but a trick to make it look like the audience was more diverse. The video later won a Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B/Soul or Rap Video, but Oreck called it her "worst nightmare."
Glee's Dianna Agron, Darren Criss and Kevin McHale covered this song on the season 3 episode "Hold On to Sixteen."
