Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Album--It Really Got Her Career Started, May 23, 2001
Not many people realize this, but Control was Janet Jackson's 3rd album, not her first. Her first 2 albums, Janet Jackson and Dreamstreet, had forgettable sales totals and both are sorta rare to find these days.... This album only has 9 tracks but there's no filler here. This was Janet's first album with what would become her partners in writing and producing in former Time members, James "Jimmy Jam" Harris III & Terry Lewis. They do a great job in reshaping her image into a funky pop princess. This album had 6 top 20 songs with 5 of those songs hitting the top 5 and each one of those 5 landing in a different position. All the songs are good but the highlights have to be Nasty, When I Think of You (the only #1 on the album), Let's Wait Awhile, He Doesn't Know That I'm Alive, and You Can Be Mine. The last 2 songs I named weren't even hits, but they were still ... brilliant plus you had great slammin' tracks like The Pleasure Principle, What Have You Done For Me Lately, and of course, the title track. Only Rhythm Nation was better--it still sounds electric today, just like it did 15 years ago. If you don't have this album, you need to do yourself a favor and go buy it right away.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Janet's Statement, December 6, 2000
Prior to the release of Control in 1986, Janet Jackson was best known as an actress and the youngest member of the Jackson family as opposed to a singer. Few people probably even knew that she had released two albums as they both were flops. That all changed when Control hit the scene. By employing the Minneapolis production team of Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, she released an album of mature songs that as the title suggests, her wrestling control of her life and career. The songs had a hard edge and a defiance to them that showed she no longer was a little girl and somebody's puppet. The title track, "What Have You Done For Me Lately?", "Nasty", "The Pleasure Principle", "You Can Be Mine" are all statements for sexual control. Even in the sweet "Let's Wait Awhile", Ms. Jackson is calling the shots on how the relationship is moving. The album shot up to number one, contained 5 top ten singles (including the number one hit "When It Think Of You" which ironically doesn't fit into the demand for control theme) and brought Janet Jackson out of the Jackson family shadow and made her a major star in her own right.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Janet breaks out of the eggshell to become a musical goddess, January 27, 2003
It was 1985, her two previous albums were commercial duds, and showed little hope of Ms. Jackson making it big and emerging from her brother Michael's shadow. However in January of the following year, that was all dispelled. Going from a goody-two-shoes girl, into a tough, mature woman with attitude, Janet came blasting into the music world with her first essential masterpiece "Control" and also began a streak of music that would continue for 11 years until after 1998 when she sold out to the masses. This whole album has breathtaking sonic punch and maturity that holds up to this very day. Oh how I wish that music would set the clock back to 1986. Of course most of already know this, but this album spawned five top 10 singles, all of which deserved the success they got. True, more than half of the songs on here have been yanked off onto the Design Of A Decade collection but the ones that weren't though are still great enough to make this album a must-have. One of the shining reasons for this is the title track. Where as the version on there sounds exactly like the original on this album, the narrating ambient intro and doing that robbed the track of a good portion of it's power. For me, I prefer this version on "Control" because the declaration of independence that Janet expresses makes the original so much more fun, meaningful, and enjoyable. "Nasty" and "What Have You Done for Me Lately" I must admit, can be quite campy and adolescent for my taste but even these two marvelous tracks are far, FAR more mature and sophisticated than anything on the joke known as "All For You" (Bleh). "The Pleasure Principle" is a classic 80s jam with light industrial beats with an awesome video to accompany it with her dancing alone in the warehouse. Like I said with the title track, I like the full version of this track with the pause in the middle instead of the DOAD version without the bridge. "When I Think of You" was a well deserved hit with its colorful mood and atmosphere. "He Doesn't Even Know I'm Alive" and "You Can Be Mine" are the other non-hit songs. "While the whole album is great these two tracks don't quite stack up to the others in my opinion. "Let's Wait Awhile" pretty much sums up to be the opposite to what Janet became known for in the 90s. The song is a gorgeous ballad with gorgeous keyboards, and 12 string guitars. The song preaches refraining from sexual activity. Personally, I wish Janet would somewhat go back to this instead of going into cheap "Erotica" throwaways like the awful "Would You Mind". My favorite song though, on this album isn't any of the hit singles but it's the final track "Funny How Time Flies". It's the one `sex song' on this CD but I don't think that it's graphic enough to be considered that but however, it's haunting, hazy, cloudy evening mood and it's lack of laughably graphic lyrics though make this track one of the sexiest and most beautiful songs that Ms. Jackson has ever made in her entire career and it still holds up as one of her best ballads to date. I just love it's dark, ambient, pink sunset ending as it's the perfect song to end the album. The song has aged very well. Personally, I prefer haunting, and eerie melody and attitude over sex talk any day of the week! She only got better and more mature with the following release "Rhythm Nation", her masterpiece to this very day. Ms. Jackson's gradual descent into factory-manufactured R&B dross after the Velvet Rope is probably one of the biggest musical tragedies of the past 25 years. To this day, I still find it hard to fathom seeing one of my favorite female singers on the planet, tumble from the dizzying heights of "Control" and "Rhythm Nation", down to Destiny's Child-level R&B-dross. While I have little against her going into more sexual territory in the 90s, I personally think that she was almost perfect as the `clad in black tomboy' with attitude. I know that I might be hated for this but for me, give me attitude, good songwriting, and musicianship any day over moaning, or sex talk! Buy this now!
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~ Janet
~ Michael Jackson
~ Michael Jackson
~ Janet Jackson
~ Michael Jackson
by Janet Jackson 
