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Rhythm Nation: How a School Shooting on CNN Turned Janet Jackson Into Pop’s Conscience
Rhythm Nation: How a School Shooting on CNN Turned Janet Jackson Into Pop’s Conscience On January 17, 1989, Janet Jackson was watching CNN when the news broke. In Stockton, California, a drifter named Patrick Purdy had walked onto the playground of Cleveland Elementary School with a semi-automatic rifle and opened fire on children — mostly…
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Janet Jackson: The Private Heart Behind the Spotlight
For four decades, Janet Jackson has been one of the most watched women on earth, and one of the least known. She grew up on television, became a pop revolutionary, survived a career-threatening public shaming, and did it all while keeping her inner life locked away from the cameras. The 2022 documentary that finally bore…
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How Janet Jackson Made “The Velvet Rope”: The Bravest Album of Her Life
By 1996, Janet Jackson had everything a pop star could want and almost nothing she actually needed. She had just renegotiated her Virgin Records contract for a reported $80 million, the largest recording deal in history at the time, making her the highest-paid musician in the world on paper. She was coming off a world…
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The Untold Story of Janet Jackson: How She Took Control and Changed Pop Forever
It is hard to imagine a tougher act to follow than the Jackson family. By the time Janet Damita Jo Jackson was born on May 16, 1966, in Gary, Indiana — the youngest of ten children — her older brothers were already becoming the Jackson 5, one of the most famous groups on earth. She…