Dis Cover: Janet Jackson - Control

Control turned 40 last week on February 4th, so I really wanted to talk about its album cover. Because it’s quite the album cover. Janet Jackson is an artist with a couple of great album covers. But I think Control is one of her best. And I know this word I’m about to use gets thrown around a lot, but I do think it applies here — Control’s album cover is truly iconic. There have been riffs and homages paid to this over the years, by comic book illustrator Cliff Chiang and the problematic homosexual Todrick Hall — and as soon as you see them, you know the reference is Control. It’s THAT distinct of an album cover.

Janet Jackson - Control | A&M Records

🎨📷 Creative director & photographer: Tony Viramontes 

The album cover for Control was shot and designed by illustrator and photographer Tony Viramontes. Born in the 50s and prominent in fashion publications throughout the 70s and 80s — Tony was well known. And the Control album cover was done in his signature style — a subject on a solid colour backdrop, drawn over with a marker. And he would use this style again for an album cover a year later for Donna Summer’s All Systems Go — although it was nowhere near as striking as Control.

The fusion of fashion and music was in the fullest of swings in the 80s. Many fashion photographers were called to shoot album covers. And there was an abundance of really cool, striking album covers which incorporated mixed media techniques. So as bold as Control looks in isolation, it probably didn’t stand out too much at the time of its release. But maybe it did. I’d really like to know if there was a huge reaction or response to the Control album cover and the shift in image for Janet.

Janet Jackson seeking out Tony Viramontes makes so much sense in the context of what Janet sought out to do with Control. She wanted to make a statement. To reintroduce herself. To shift the image of her last 2 albums, which were based on images everybody identified her with via her stint on the TV show, Diff'rent Strokes. And what better way to do that than to relinquish creative [turns and looks into the camera] control to a fashion photographer who had shot for Vogue, Tatler and I-D Magazine.

Janet’s first two albums featured covers which were very girly, coy, kinda whatever and said absolutely nothing about Janet herself. They felt like cheap attempts to cash in on her acting career, her acting career of which was Janet’s primary career and her focus at the time. The music and Janet’s image were not being taken seriously. But then there’s Control. Hyper feminine, but also masculine — something we’d see Janet play around with a lot for her next album Rhythm Nation 1814 and further down the line with The Velvet Rope. An album cover which actually made a statement and said something about Janet. She wasn’t that girl who acted any more. She was Janet the pop star.

Despite Janet being only 19 years old at the time, Janet doesn’t look it. She’s in a sharp Mugler suit. Looking like a grown woman who owns the majority share of a company and has a big ass office with a mirrored ceiling, a wall of windows and a mahogany desk which was shipped from Japan and was so big that they had to use a crane and put it into the office through the window. And I also think there’s something really cool about the album being titled Control, but Janet’s hair being kinda out of control — which is in stark contrast to her first two album covers, where Janet just had her natural hair slicked back and had a cute perm. And retrospectively it’s really interesting that Janet’s hair would be out, curly and a big focus on the album cover for The Velvet Rope — where Janet’s emotional state was all over the place, but she was trying to exercise control in compartmentalising them. At a time when silk presses and perms were all the rage for Black girls, Janet saying ‘FUCK IT’ and having her hair be big out and curly was such a power move.

And Janet’s name and the album title above and below that rectangular shape which looks kinda like an exclamation point?

Yes bitch. Zero notes for this album cover.