Portal:Pop music/Selected albums/2

Control is the third studio album by American recording artist Janet Jackson, released on February 4, 1986 by A&M Records. Her collaborations with songwriters and record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis resulted in an unconventional sound: a fusion of rhythm and blues, funk, disco, rap vocals, and synthesized percussion that established Jackson, Jam and Lewis as the leading innovators of contemporary R&B. It enabled Jackson to transition into the popular music market, becoming one of the defining albums of the 1980s and contemporary music. Containing autobiographical themes, a majority of the album's lyrics came as the result of a series of changes in her life: a recent annulment of her marriage to R&B singer James DeBarge, severing her business affairs from her father and manager Joseph and the rest of the Jackson family, hiring A&M executive John McClain as her new management, and her subsequent introduction to Jam and Lewis. The album has been praised by critics as both an artistic feat and as a personal testament of self-actualization.