Watch: La Toya Jackson Addresses Janet Jackson, Jermaine Jackson Feud Rumors
Janet Jackson called Rhythm Nation an “ongoing force” that is “simply too strong” to be stopped.
And her groundbreaking 1989 album—which was inducted into the Grammys Hall of Fame in January—certainly is, but the same can be said about the artist herself.
Over the course of her five-decade career, Janet —who turns 60 on May 16—has faced personal challenges, family tragedy and puritanical scolds who’ve threatened her livelihood. But just when fans start missing her too much, time and again she has re-emerged in all her pop icon glory.
“I don’t think about it,” Janet told The Guardianin 2024, referring to setbacks beyond her control. “I just do what I do and I enjoy what I do. And if they want to say this and that, and give me those accolades, the acclaim you say, then so be it. And if they don’t, then so be it.”
But she didn’t call her 2015 studio album Unbreakable for nothing. And the scuttled-due-to-COVID Black Diamond Tour she was supposed to embark on in 2020 was named as such because, as she explained on The Tonight Show, that stone is “hard to destroy.”
“In my recent years,” she said, “I’ve come to realize I’m incredibly strong. I see myself as this rock.”
While she resumed touring as soon as she could—and will be heading to Japan in June for several special performances—she’s only piled on the proverbial armor, not least to protect the privacy of her 9-year-old son Eissa, who she shares with ex-husband Wissam Al Mana.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
And she was already ultra-wary of the spotlight, the aftermath of her 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show wardrobe malfunction and the death of her brother Michael Jackson in 2009 making her relationship with fame even more complicated.
As she said in the four-part 2022 docuseries Janet Jackson, “There’s a great deal of scrutiny that comes with having that last name.”
She subsequently preferred to be removed from the Michael narrative completely, which is why the early-years biopic about her younger brother’s rise to superstardom that came out in April doesn’t feature Janet as a character.
“I wish everybody was in the movie,” sister LaToya Jackson told Variety at the film’s April 20 L.A. premiere. But Janet “was asked and she kindly declined so you have to respect her wishes.”
Meanwhile, Janet has been shoring up her own legacy, raising $4 million from a 2021 auction of more than 800 items of clothing, accessories and memorabilia—Kim Kardashian paid $25,000 for the ensemble Janet wore in her 1993 “If” music video—and selling the New York apartment she’d owned for 25 years in 2022.
“It’s an era of legacy-building but it’s about release,” she explained to The Guardian. “Because when you’re talking about all of this, it’s been me releasing the apartment, I’ve released through the auction, wanting to share those things, letting go.”
Still among her possessions is a London address, having been co-parenting in the U.K. with Wissa since they split up not long after Eissa was born in January 2017.
Because, at the end of the day, it’s all for her son.
“The most important thing I’ve done, the biggest thing I’ve done, is become a mother, and it’s had a beautiful impact on my life,” Janet told The Guardian. “I wanted to have three children, but thought, ‘I should stop there, that’s probably all I can handle.’ Because you have to give all of yourself, you have to spread the love, and I wouldn’t want any of them to feel left out if I had three.”
At the same time, Janet still loved to work, noting on ITV’s Loose Women in 2024, “I enjoy what I do so much, I’m not ready to give it up. And then I want to be with my baby, so I do that too.”
She also had zero designs on Eissa dipping his young toes into show business, explaining that, while his life was certainly privileged, “I want him to experience being a child, because you don’t get to do this over.”
The boy can’t help being musically inclined, however, with Janet sharing on The Tonight Show in February 2020 that then-3-year-old Eissa was taking cello lessons, having already toted a violin to school.
And if he does want to follow in his mom’s (and uncles’, aunt’s and cousins’) footsteps, she’ll support him once he’s 18. “I would say he has to wait till he’s of age and still make sure that’s something he wants to do,” she said on Loose Women. “Whatever you do is very difficult, but the industry is very tough, it’s brutal.”
Robin L Marshall/Getty Images
As for what else was going on in her life behind the velvet rope, Janet hoped she had learned from previous entanglements on from previous entanglements what to avoid in the future as far as love goes.
“I pray to God that I might have different lenses on these eyes than I did before,” she told The Guardian. “I know that if someone were to come along…even if I didn’t recognize it, I guarantee you my friends would shake the s–t out of me and say, ‘What are you doing?!’”
“But,” she added, “I think I’m seeing it through different lenses now. I think I am breaking that pattern.”
While she plots out the design of her next decade, let us take you on an escape to the many times Janet made history:
A&M Records
Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage
Shutterstock
REX USA/Eugene Adebari
Bill Nation/Sygma via Getty Images
Virgin Records
A&M Records
John Barrett/Shutterstock
KMazur/WireImage
AP Photo/David Phillip, file
Christopher Polk/Getty Images
Michel Dufour/WireImage
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
