If one were going to make the claim of who the Queen of Pop was, the obvious answer is Madonna. It’s not a subjectivity or “stan” thing, it just is. Madonna has the greater pop cultural influence and the chart figures to back it up. To boot, Black musicians ranging from Rihanna to M.I.A. cite her impact far more than Janet’s. Yet, for whatever reason, every few years or so, a new debate is sparked about Janet Jackson being the true Queen of Pop—the one with “real” talent. This time, Lizzo, randomly enough, was the one to light the match by tweeting her take on music royalty the day of Michael Jackson’s birth, August 29th.
Strangely, she also seemed to think there was a distinction between “Princess of Pop” and “Pop Princess,” dubbing Britney Spears the former and Rihanna the latter. “Queen of Music” went to Beyonce, while “Prince of Pop” went to Justin Bieber (much to the other Justin’s chagrin). Expectedly, Michael was listed by her as the “King.” But then she threw in the curveball of his sister being the Queen (which makes for a bit of incestuousness, don’t you think?). Despite the fact that the title has belonged to M for quite some time now, referred to repeatedly as such whenever she’s made mention of. And no one was going to let that comment slide without a fight (except maybe M herself, who is too rich to care).
But it adds more drama and contention into the fray of late because, increasingly, the argument about each woman’s race and how it provided a certain advantage or disadvantage becomes a major point of “justifying” Janet as the “queen.” That, had she been a “privileged” white woman like Madonna, she probably could have even more easily outshone her competition. And yet, we’re leaving out one very key component of what it means to be an icon: having a distinctive look and personality. Both of which Madonna had (and has) far more of in spades. While, instead, Janet sits over there whispering a lot of God nonsense and acting as though she invented wearing a crop top.
Despite their vocal talent, “They can’t do what I do,” Madonna once said of Janet, Mariah and Whitney in a 1996 interview with Bryant Gumbel. This was after being told she still held the record for best-selling female artist. She said she didn’t realize that, but it didn’t matter anyway. Because they couldn’t do what she did, which was beyond just numbers, shift the entire culture and how people acted, dressed, viewed the world. Her influence so insidious that the masses weren’t even aware of it. That was true power. True “queendom.” And yes, one supposes that made Michael the “King.” That much being made visually clear at the 1991 Oscars, when Madonna famously took Michael along as her date. The photos that emerged from the evening would become the stuff of lore. And why? Because the two were pop royalty, and to see them come together in such a way finally solidified the titles. Whereas seeing a picture of Michael and Janet together (in later years, this was almost as rare as seeing one of him and Madonna) evoked no such reaction.
Rather than applaud her, of course, Janet was quick to find a disparaging way to separate her music from being compared to Madonna’s in a now infamous 90s interview. “I think what I do has class to it, I’ll say that,” she remarked of the difference between her and Madonna. In contrast, Madonna was one of the few to defend Janet after 2004’s Nipplegate, telling the press, “There’s a lot of hypocrisy about beating up on Janet Jackson and not a lot of other things that children have access to.”
While the two shared the same timeline, their journeys to the top could not have been more divergent. It’s easy in the landscape of now to write Madonna off as being a “privileged” white woman, but it was Janet who had all the privilege of getting a record deal arranged for her by her oppressor father. Like Madonna’s debut, the record was self-titled, and met with little success (especially compared to Madonna). And that’s because, well, the music wasn’t very good and it was clear Janet had no distinct identity. Maybe that was to be expected of someone who was still only sixteen. Yet even Britney Spears, sixteen when she recorded …Baby One More Time, seemed able to achieve icon status around that age by creating lasting imagery and a specific sound right out the gate. With Janet Jackson being released in 1982 and Madonna in 1983, it was the latter who began to capture radio attention. Even (gasp!) despite listeners assuming she was Black, which, if we’re going by the racial argument regarding these two women, should have put Madonna at an even further disadvantage than she already was for not having an extremely successful relative in the music business.
Quick to distinguish herself and her look with the video for “Borderline” (released after videos for “Everybody” and “Lucky Star”), Madonna had America by the balls pretty quickly. And with her second album, Like A Virgin, in 1984, the world over would be quite familiar with the Queen. The same year, when Janet’s sophomore album, Dream Street, was also released, it fared even worse than the first record. Because, well, again, the songs were a lot of meaningless filler imbued with no personality. In this sense, having her father make it so “effortless” for her to secure a recording contract actually backfired, as she had no control over anything. Hence, the title of her 1986 album, Control. A much bigger success than the previous two, it was still no match for what Madonna put out in ’86: True Blue. An album that remains one of the best-selling of all-time. Moving twenty-five million copies to Control’s ten million. Here again, it bears noting that the numbers do speak for themselves as well, with Madonna constantly pushing and working her hardest not only to put out the best possible product but to market it in the best possible way, something Janet never seemed to learn. Nor her brother, for that matter—content to rest on the laurels of his 80s success for the rest of his career if we’re going by how little his aesthetic or sound changed.
The current cry of how Janet has been robbed of her “true” title because she was racistly deemed a “crossover” artist from “Black music” doesn’t ring true either. If anything, it should have opened the door further for her to take the crown by dominating two genres. But the problem was, as previously stated, she didn’t have enough personality to adopt the role of pop culture icon in the same way as Madonna. Beyond her dancing and body positivity, Jackson was associated with little else. Yes, she spoke about racial injustice and inequality, but so, too, did M. Indeed, that’s been far more the crux of her work (in terms of music videos and lyrics) than Janet’s—regardless of skin tone. What’s more, the visuals for one of Janet’s most political songs, “Rhythm Nation,” reeks of “Express Yourself” (the video being released on May 17, 1989, while “Rhythm Nation” was released September 16, 1989). The industrial backdrop, the choreography-heavy visuals complete with plenty of backup dancers—it was already present in Madonna’s David Fincher-directed ode to Metropolis.
In 1990, Madonna would alter the music world forever by embarking on the Blond Ambition Tour, already building up to it with 1985’s The Virgin Tour (during which, yes, she interpolated “Billie Jean” into her performance of “Like A Virgin”) and 1987’s Who’s That Girl Tour. Janet, on the other hand, hadn’t even embarked on a tour until Rhythm Nation 1814, a testament to her lack of marked relevance until that moment. Lending Blond Ambition a full-fledged theatrical tinge—including the many costume changes—Madonna essentially invented what we now view as the modern version of a tour (well, before corona went and devolved it). What we now expect from a tour (well, before corona made concert-going sound even less pleasant).
1990 was also the year of one of Madonna’s biggest hits, “Vogue,” that would see her crossing paths with Janet at the MTV Video Music Awards. And no, Janet’s 1990 VMAs performance would never go down in the same history as Madonna’s, who famously upstaged everyone as Marie Antoinette during her rendition of “Vogue.” Janet, instead, delivered a “modern” interpretation of “Black Cat,” set against the backdrop of a Metropolis-looking set that, again, Madonna had already used in her “Express Yourself” video.
After shying away from new music for a full four years, relying on promoting Rhythm Nation 1814 instead, Janet reemerged in 1993 under contract with a new record label to bring us Janet. ’93, conveniently, happened to be the year Madonna didn’t put out a record, and was licking some serious wounds from her media lashing in the wake of ‘92’s Erotica album and Sex book release. Incidentally, one of Janet’s lead singles, “If,” provided a video that smacked of Erotica’s “Bye Bye Baby” choreography (delivered with cabaret-inspired glory on The Girlie Show Tour).
Throughout this era, while Janet “exuded” sexuality, she never expressly promoted or discussed it as freely in quite the same way as Madonna. As usual, her lack of political gumption perhaps led her to waffle in the mid-90s, releasing a remix and greatest hits album in 1995 before finally returning with 1997’s The Velvet Rope, featuring a photoshoot that looked an awful lot like a tamer version of what Madonna showed us in Sex. After touring the record, Jackson then went into hibernation for the rest of the 90s, while Madonna kept the hits coming on albums like Bedtime Stories, Ray of Light and even the Evita Soundtrack (“Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” being among her greatest hits).
Janet then resurfaced in 2001—after Madonna already showed us the potential of the new millennium with 2000’s Music—with All For You. It’s after this point that the mainstream public loses track of what, exactly, Janet released, with each subsequent album generating fewer and fewer recognizable singles and an even less recognizable Janet (who actually seems even more gung-ho about plastic surgery procedures than Madonna). There was 2004’s Damita Jo, 2006’s 20 Y.O., 2008’s Discipline (which sounds like an alternate universe Control). Another couple of greatest hits albums thrown in during 2009 and 2010. And then her last album to date, 2015’s Unbreakable (though she’s supposed to have a new one out this year called Black Diamond). She seemed to suffer from, in many ways, the Mariah Carey Syndrome of post-90s/early 00s musical output: much of it was unmemorable save for a few errant singles. Madonna, meanwhile, continued to distinguish herself by evolving at a speed quicker than a ray of light. From glamorous cowgirl (a look of hers that also influenced fashion trends) on Music to freedom fighting militant on American Life to 70s dancing queen on Confessions on a Dance Floor to Madame X on the album of the same name, Madonna remained relevant in the new century in a manner that none of her peers did. Least of all Janet, increasingly coked out of her damn mind (and rightly so), so to speak.
The ever-defunct King of Pop had also already been on life support long since the start of the 00s. And yet, in his prime, during an Australian Q&A in 1984, the interviewer told Madonna, “They describe you as ‘the new Michael Jackson. The female Michael Jackson.’ Have you read that?” (side note: they damn sure never said that to Janet). Giggling, she seems pleased to no end by the comparison. After all, she had only recently seen Jackson’s Victory Tour at Madison Square Garden and enlisted his manager, Freddy DeMann, solely because, in her opinion, he was managing the most successful musical act and that’s what she wanted to be deemed as soon as possible.
Ironically, as Madonna’s (and even Janet’s) star ascended, Michael seemed to lose touch with the “magic,” refusing to change his look or say anything more daring with his music. Accordingly, he asked Madonna to collaborate on a potential single from his 1991 album, Dangerous, in an ostensible bid to “shake things up.” The track was “In the Closet.” Briefly titillated at the potential for playing with concepts for a title like that, Madonna presented such video ideas to Jackson as appearing in drag together. Obviously, Michael was turned off by that (or perhaps too turned on), and chose to play it as straight as he could in a video with Naomi Campbell (who also appeared in Madonna’s Sex book).
Michael once said of Madonna, “Let’s face it: she can’t sing and she’s just an okay dancer. What does she know how to do best? She knows how to market herself. That’s it!” If that’s the case, then 1) Michael might have benefitted from learning something from her and 2) Madonna foresaw the future before anyone else did anyway. Saw that “great art” would always be secondary to great marketing. Then again, Andy Warhol saw that before her as well. Madonna simply took it to a new level. One that Michael might have done well to take a page from—especially if he wanted to “rebrand” the accurate notion of him being a pedo.
Both Jacksons have never been shy about shitting on Madonna, with Michael calling, in taped recordings with Shmuley Boteach (his rabbi/spiritual advisor—before such things were so chic in the world of celebrity), her a “nasty witch” and accusing her of being nothing more than jealous of his talent when he said, “They admire you and know you’re wonderful and great, but they’re jealous. ‘Cause they wish they were in your place, wish they were in your shoes. And ‘M’ is one of them. Madonna. She’s not a nice… she hasn’t been kind. She’s a woman, and I think that’s what bothers her. Women don’t scream for other women [uh, not true, but okay]. And men are too cool to scream for women. And I get that. I get the fainting and the adulation.” Oh Lawd. God complex much? He continues, “But she doesn’t. She can’t get that.” Bish please. Look at any video footage from her eleven world tours and you’ll see quite the contrary. So no, actually Michael was projecting his own jealousies about wanting to be a white woman (which he essentially became over decades of surgery).
Jackson further derides Madonna for cock blocking him by shooing away a child from their dinner together in 1991, describing to Boteach, “We were at the table eating, and some little kid came up, saying, ‘Oh my god, Michael Jackson and Madonna!’ And she goes, ‘Get out of here, leave us alone.’ I said, ‘Don’t you ever talk to children like this.’ She said, ‘Shut up.’ I said, ‘You shut up!’” Sick burn, right?
Where once Madonna was willing to talk openly about Michael’s foibles in an attempt to get him to loosen up, it seemed she, like everyone, could only deify him after his death. During her tribute speech at the 2009 VMAs (the very same where Janet performed “Scream” as part of a musical tribute), Madonna was quick to “debunk” the “rumors” about Michael as being nothing more than a “witch hunt.” Madonna’s often cringeworthy glorification of Michael, it has to be said, is a product of her own form of (rightful) narcissism. Because she knows that was her counterpart. The “King” to her “Queen.” Janet, not so much. Even though, by this “crossover” logic about how limiting categorizations hemmed Janet in from taking that moniker, Michael shouldn’t have made the cut because his music was “too Black.” If that was the case, the white folks didn’t get the memo. And what Lizzo didn’t get the memo on was: Madonna is, yes, the Queen of Pop.
