5 Times Janet Jackson Had Us Talking About Her Over the Last 50 Years
Janet Jackson (Photo: A&M Records/YouTube)
As Janet Jackson marks her 50th birthday (and we all wonder where the time went), we’re still digesting the news that the pop star is pregnant with her first child. But that’s hardly the first time she’s dominated the headlines. Here are a few of the top times she’s had us all talking.
Good Times, from left: Bob Delegall, Janet Jackson, Ja'net DuBois, in “The Evans Get Involved: Part 1 & 2.” (Photo: Everett Collection)
1. A young Janet joined the cast of Good Times for the four-part season opener in 1977 in an arc on child abuse that continued the Norman Lear show’s history of taking on social ills. Her perky Penny with the Band-Aid on her forehead and the image of her mother coming at her with a hot iron are striking memories of that time.
Control album cover and “Rhythm Nation” video. (Photo: A&M Records/YouTube)
2. With 1986’s Control, her third album, a grown-up Janet broke away from her baby-faced image and established a persona that was all about independence and sexiness. Her fourth album, Rhythm Nation 1814, in 1989 had a decidedly more militant/sociopolitical bent and had a generation trying to copy those moves from the title track’s video.
Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake perform during the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. (Photo: Donald Miralle/Getty Images)
3. The singer’s killer Super Bowl halftime show performance with Justin Timberlake in 2004 came to a stunning end when Timberlake ripped the leather cup off her bustier and exposed her right breast instead of the red lace bra that reps said was planned. What was soon dubbed Nipplegate led to fines for just about everyone involved, protests from concerned groups, and apologies from both the artists. But it was always Jackson who bore the brunt of that backlash, and in a 2006 Oprah Winfrey Show interview, when asked if she felt Timberlake had not stuck up for her enough, she said, “To a certain degree, yeah.”
Wissam Al Mana and Janet Jackson. (Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
4. In 2012, Jackson and Wissam Al Mana were married in “a quiet, private, and beautiful ceremony,” according to reps, but no one knew about it at all until the following year. It is the third marriage for Jackson, who was previously wed to James DeBarge and René Elizondo Jr.
Jackson performs in Miami in September 2015 during her Unbreakable world tour. (Photo: Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images)
5. Fans were excited when the singer announced a world tour in May 2015, and she received critical praise for early concerts, but in December she announced she was postponing the North American leg due to surgery. More postponements followed for the European leg, and finally Jackson announced in March that “due to family planning” she was postponing all remaining concert dates. A month later, news broke that she was expecting her first child.
