Janet Jackson's Throb

The elephant in the room is that the little sister of Michael Jackson was pushing more boundaries than the king of pop in many ways, and at certain points in time her achievements were comparable to his, if not uniquely greater. She is a vanguard of pop in her own right, unnecessarily overshadowed by her sibling. In 2008, she told The Guardian: “I've finished talking about Michael. I've done it all my career.”

As a teenager, everything I didn’t already know about adulthood I learned through listening to the albums of Janet Jackson. I was raised primarily on baby formula, Live & Kicking (‘90s British TV reference) and Michael, but Michael Jackson is a whole book for me and I don’t know if anyone’s ready for that kind of artist/art separation in the age of morality so… Let’s not. And in truth, Janet held a far more intimate place for me. Michael belonged to everyone. Janet felt like mine.

In the evolution of Janet, there are endless high points to gorge over, but today I’m listening to “Throb”, and I’m going to write about “Throb”. It’s entirely possible nobody has focused this much energy on “Throb” before, so let me be the first. When Janet, self-titled, came out in 1993 (her first album of the ‘90s), she ushered in a brand new style. A brand new everything. The Janet of the ‘80s was militant on the cover of Rhythm Nation 1814, and its predecessor Control. She had created a resistance in sound that was built from a searching desire to locate her independent power and to emancipate herself from authority. She had just fired her father Joe as her manager. She found two new father figures: producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They redefined her sound and vision.

“When I was seventeen I did what people told me.
Did what my father said and let me mother mold me.
But that was long ago… I’m in control.”

Control, 1986

It was dominant and hard. It sounded like Linda Hamilton looks in Terminator 2. Muscle, and tight jeans, and aviator shades. The choruses were like sheets of steel. Even when she bent to more soulful genres, flirting with the en vogue new jack swing era on “Alright”, the rhythym was still tough. It was wham bam. It was kowabunga.

What it wasn’t yet was sexy. A new decade got underway and Janet took her own albums’ advice and liberated herself for real this time, completely doing away with the hallmark sounds of the Jackson family. Sensuality was the core. She was shot topless for the album cover. Hands up over her head. Her breasts covered by then husband Rene Elizondo’s hands. At the time Elizondo was hidden from public view. The shot was about trust and sexual autonomy, not ownership. Whoever’s hands those were was for Janet to know and for you to find out. Go head and look, it said. But only on her terms. Janet had asserted full creative control.

She told David Ritz of Rolling Stone:

“It began with Control. But it wasn’t easy. I come from a sheltered background. And then suddenly I’m off to Minneapolis, and these guys, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, are running around cursing like crazy. That made me so uncomfortable I wanted to go home – until I saw that they meant no harm or offense. They were merely talking the way they talk. They were being funny. They were being real. The problem was with my perception, not with their hearts. It’s taken me a while to realize – and rap has really helped educate me – that language is not an absolute. No word is absolutely wrong or dirty or insulting. It all depends upon context and intention. I was this little prude. I was uptight. I knew I wanted control – I still believe in creative control – but I soon saw that I’d have to give in order to get: give myself over to a creative environment that was different and even a little dangerous from anything I’d ever known.”

When Janet was released, the day after her 27th birthday, the pop star had signed with Virgin records for $40 million, making her the highest paid man or woman in music at the time. (The feat was short-lived; Michael eclipsed her when he re-inked his Sony deal not even a week later). The new sound of Janet trickles in like sultry morning light after an all-night party; like a moth to a flame burned by the fire… “That’s The Way Love Goes” sounds as fresh and inviting today, whispering the listener to crawl into her lap before she contrasts that ease and flow. Soon after, Janet the punisher hits out with the gnarly guitar of “If”, denying the fantasy she’s decided to leave to the target’s imagination: “But I'm not, so I can't, then I won't, but… if I was your girl.”

Yet, hold please. In comes “Throb”. Janet had never done anything like this. Nobody had. It was groundbreaking. She became one of the first pop stars to embrace the pulse and pleasure of underground house music; the queer clubs, the warehouses, and the dirty dance floors. (At the time Madonna also played and provoked with sexuality on Erotica, but it was strictly ballroom; Janet embodied something of her own). “Throb” is in thrall to acid house and four-to-the-floor beats – it’s all C+C Music Factory and Crystal Waters. She didn’t borrow the sound, however. She embraced it. She gave it physicality at a time when it was unheard of for larger-than-life female pop stars to moan over tracks. Janet did. She orgasmed all over it.

“Come for me.”

A command to perform, or a threat to try to diminsh her? It could be both. A former child female star groaning on a track is a radical act of sonic liberation. It’s not about eroticism. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about self-governance. A Black woman from a hyper-controlled and surveilled uber famous family fully commanding her pleasure in a medium that lives and dies on reducing women’s joy as either taboo or a toy for the male gaze? Her desire is folded into the rhythm; it’s for her. It’s self-possession. Janet doesn’t need to persuade you on “Throb”, she’s already got hers. And she has no shame about it. Sweat that shit out, girl.

Janet defined the theme of the album thus:

“A woman who finally feels good enough about her sexuality to demand a man’s respect. It’s insulting to be seen as some object; he must call her by name. It’s not a brazen demand – I didn’t want to be obnoxious – but I wanted to be clear. Women want satisfaction. And so do men. But to get it, you must ask for it. Know what you need. Say what you want. Sexual communication is the name of the game. Intimacy.”

Her mission is most apparent on “Throb”. The track doesn’t need verses or choruses. It doesn’t contain any safe pop hooks. It’s all body; breath, stroke, rhythm. And she didn’t do it alone. “Throb” was ushered in by the gays. Especially Black and Latino spaces where house music breathed its first life. It wasn’t appropriation, but collaboration. Chaotic, ecstatic, and ready for the mainstream. It was a refusal to be poised, or polite; to be under the thumb, to be shurnk. It said: I move how I want. Janet didn’t free herself alone. She found safety and affirmation through queer people who she felt seen and honored by. Together with them, she thumped towards her own unshackling.

Her performance of “Throb” on SNL is often cited as one of the show’s most iconic. Check out the guy in the kilt.

I didn’t see “Throb” live until 2015 at the LA Forum during her tour for her only 2010s album Unbreakable. The show was so breathtaking, it was practically asthmatic.

Post-Janet, Jackson would release her - in my opinion - career best with The Velvet Rope. I always think of that album’s “Free Xone” as the big sister to “Throb”. On it, Janet continued to be an MC for the gays and lesbians and bis, protecting us against bigotry and judgment. She delivers the spoken verses with a cheeky giggle:

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl
Boy gets cute girl back
Girl meets boy, girl loses boy
Girl gets cute girl back

To me, without Janet’s embrace of house, there’d be no Robyn and La Bagetelle Magique on “Love Is Free”. Without “Throb”, Rihanna would not have found love with Calvin Harris (sorry). Janet jacked before they could bounce.

“Throb” wasn’t just an album track. It was a permission slip. The sound of what a woman’s body knows before her mind can rationalize it. Movement without constraint. Ecstasy without stigma. Satisfaction without contempt. Every beat felt like a secret: you are allowed to feel this good, you are allowed to want this much. It doesn’t ask you for a performance. It dares you to come alive. Fuck control. Release it.