Janet Jackson's key earring came from cleaning Michael's animal cages
At the 1983 American Music Awards, Janet Jackson wore a hoop earring with a key dangling from it. The key opened the cages of the exotic animals her brother Michael kept at the family home; cleaning them was her chore, and she never carried a keychain. A later version of that earring now sits in a Smithsonian museum.
The last of ten siblings, she was born on May 16, 1966, and grew up in a two-bedroom house on Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana. Her father Joe, a former boxer, ran a crane at U.S. Steel and played guitar in a local R&B band; her mother Katherine had dreamed of singing country music. Once the Jackson 5 signed with Motown in March 1969, the family moved to Encino in Los Angeles. Janet wanted to be a jockey or an entertainment lawyer, but at seven she was on stage with her brothers in Las Vegas, and by 1977 she was playing Penny on the sitcom Good Times.
Her father arranged an A&M contract when she was fifteen. The first two albums, mostly bubblegum pop, stalled at number 63 and number 147 on the Billboard 200. Jackson then broke from the family's management, later describing escape from her father's control as one of the hardest things she ever did. With producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis she recorded Control in about six weeks. Released in February 1986, it went to number one and sold more than ten million copies.
Rhythm Nation 1814 followed in 1989, and it remains the only album to yield seven singles that reached the top five. Her dance-heavy videos helped drive MTV's growth and influenced new jack swing. In the 1990s two Virgin Records contracts ranked among the largest music deals ever signed, and she starred in the 1993 film Poetic Justice.
After the controversy over her 2004 Super Bowl halftime appearance, radio play and television promotion shrank under pressure associated with CBS chief Les Moonves, hurting the album Damita Jo. She kept recording and touring, and her Together Again Tour of 2023 and 2024 became the highest-grossing of her career. Estimated sales exceed 100 million records, and she holds the female benchmark for consecutive Hot 100 top-ten hits, at 18.
Source: Janet Jackson
