Janet Jackson: It's All for You

I’ve written about Janet Jackson’s case for the Hall of Fame before, here and here, and there’s not a whole lot more to say about it. She’s had more hit singles than nearly everyone who’s already enshrined, and is an icon to many, many contemporary singers, not just women or people of color. So rather than go into that, I thought I’d tackle the question of whether Nipplegate really torpedoed her career, as the legend now has it.

The incident in question took place on February 1, 2004, two months before the release of Damita Jo, Jackson’s eighth solo album. In the interim, CBS forbade Jackson to appear at the Grammys, where she had been scheduled to present an award. But Justin Timberlake, her partner in malfunction, was still allowed to appear, although he was the one who instigated the incident.

Damita Jo sold just over a million copies in the U.S., although Jackson’s two previous albums had both sold over 3 million. None of its three singles even reached the Top Forty, despite the fact that she had had two Top Fives from her previous album, 2001’s All for You.

That all looks pretty bad, but I’m not quite convinced. There’s a line on Wikipedia about the singles from Damita Jo being blackballed by pop radio, but the reference links to an article that doesn’t say anything of the sort. It can be hard to tell the difference between blacklisting and just not liking a record. Her subsequent two albums sold even more poorly than Damita Jo, suggesting that either her career had completely run out of steam, or the blackballing was more persistent than anyone cared to admit.

More to the point, Miss Jackson had been placing songs in the Top Five for 20 years up to that time, and people don’t do that. Elvis didn’t do that, Stevie Wonder didn’t do that, Elton John didn’t do that (aside from his late-career Lion King and Princess Di flukes). Only a very small handful of acts have stayed on the charts significantly longer than 20 years. You don’t have to ask why someone didn’t continue to have hits after 20 years – you have to ask why they did.

Jackson was only 37 at the time of Nipplegate, not particularly old for a pop star. She had been on the charts forever, but she was only 18 when Control came out. Nevertheless, I suspect she was nearing the end of her chart run anyway by the mid-aughts, bare breast or no. But really, that’s neither here nor there: Janet Jackson had done more than enough by Super Bowl XXXVIII to warrant induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The Matched Set Madonna is one of the few pop stars whose chart run lasted longer than Janet Jackson’s, although it was only by a few years. And of course, Madonna made a huge cultural impact, with way too many articles written about her containing the word “gaze.” 

On the other hand, Nipplegate still pops up in the occasional discussion, while Madonna’s Sex book has been basically forgotten. (Maybe featuring Vanilla Ice in it was not such a hot idea.) When MTV chose its first MTV Icon, in 2001, the selection was not Madonna or Janet’s brother but Miss Jackson herself. And try though she might, Madonna's acting career has never launched a character as memorable as Penny on Good Times.

So you have someone with 90 percent of the chart impact of Madonna, and maybe 80 percent of the zeitgeist impact. Yet Madonna sails in on the first ballot, while Janet Jackson has lingered outside for years.

The Verdict An obvious Yes. Janet Jackson is overqualified for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.