Today 20 years ago Janet released the best album eva!! A revoluntionary, timeless masterpiece.












Records

Rhythm Nation 1814 is the only album to produce a #1 single in three different calendar years

Rhythm Nation 1814 is the first and only album in music history to produce 7 Top 5 Singles on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.

Rhythm Nation 1814 made Janet the first black female artist to be nominated for the Producer of the Year Grammy

“Black Cat” made Janet the first artist to simultaneously hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Mainstream Rock singles charts, as well as going Top 10 on the R&B chart.

ETC.ETC. (Too much to list)
[Edited 9/12/09 12:17pm]

rhythm nation is a killer album

my favorite janet album!!!!!




Released: September 12, 1989
US Sales: 6x platinum+ (should be 8x platinum A&M )
Worldwide: 14 million+
Billboard 200: #1 (4 weeks) 104 weeks total
Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums: #1


Singles:

Miss You Much

The Billboard Hot 100: #1 (4 weeks)
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks: #1
Hot 100 Airplay: #1 (3 weeks)
Hot Dance Music/Club Play: #1

Rhythm Nation

The Billboard Hot 100: #2
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks: #1
Hot 100 Airplay: #2
Hot Dance Music/Club Play: #1

Escapade

The Billboard Hot 100: #1 (3 weeks)
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks: #1
Hot 100 Airplay: #1 (4 weeks)
Hot Dance Music/Club Play: #1

Alright

The Billboard Hot 100: #4
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks: #2
Hot 100 Airplay: #2
Hot Dance Music/Club Play: #1

Come Back To Me

The Billboard Hot 100: #2
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks: #2
Hot 100 Airplay: #1 (2 weeks)
Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales: #17
Hot Adult Contemporary: #1

Black Cat

The Billboard Hot 100: #1 (1 week)
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks: #10
Hot 100 Airplay: #2
Mainstream Rock Tracks: #1 (When our fave flop gonna do it?!!!)
Hot Dance Music/Club Play: #17

Love Will Never Do (Without You)

The Billboard Hot 100: #1 (1 week)
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks: #3
Hot 100 Airplay: #1 (3 weeks)
Hot Dance Music/Club Play: #4


Awards

American Music Awards

1990: Favorite Soul/R&B Single: Miss You Much
1990: Favorite Dance Single: Miss You Much
1991: Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist
1991: Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist
1991: Favorite Dance Artist

Billboard Music Awards

1990: Top Selling Album Of The Year: Rhythm Nation
1990: Top Selling R&B Album Of The Year: Rhythm Nation
1990: Top Selling R&B Album's Artist Of The Year
1990: Top Selling R&B Artist Of The Year
1990: Top R&B Singles Artist
1990: Top Hot 100 Singles Artist Of The Year
1990: Top Hot 100 Singles Artist Of The Year - Female
1990: Top Dance Club Play Artist
1990: Top Hot Dance 12" Singles Sales Artist
1990: Top R&B Female Artist Of The Year
1990: Best Female Artist, Black/Rap
1990: Best Female Artist, Dance
1990: Director's Award (Black/Rap): Rhythm Nation"
1990: Director's Award (Dance): Alright:
1990: Billboard/Tanqueray Sterling Music Video Award for Artistic Achievement: Rhythm Nation

Soul Train Music Awards

1990: Best Female Single: Miss You Much
1990: Best Music Video: Rhythm Nation
1990: MTV Video Vanguard Award
1990: Soul Train Award for R&B/Urban Contemporary Album Of The Year
1992: Soul Train Award for Entertainer Of The Year

Grammy Awards

1990: Best Longform Music Video: Rhythm Nation 1814

MTV Video Music Awards

1990: Best Choreography in a Video: Rhythm Nation
1990: Video Vanguard
1991: Best Female Video: Love Will Never Do (Without You)

BMI Pop Awards

1990: Songwriter Of The Year
1990: Most Played Song: Alright
1990: Most Played Song: Come Back To Me
1990: Most Played Song: Escapade
1990: Most Played Song: Rhythm Nation
1991: Most Played Song: Black Cat
1991: Most Played Song: Come Back To Me
1992: Most Played Song: State Of The World


Hollywood Walk Of Fame

1990: Hollywood Walk of Fame Star
1990: State of California Named Janet Jackson Day

NAACP Image Awards

1990: Greater Hartford - Musical and Civil Rights Efforts Award
1992: 24th Annual NAACP Awards - "Chairman's Award"

Starlight Foundation Award

1991: Humanitarian of the Year

Center for Population Options

1990: Nancy Susan Reynolds Award

L.E.A.P. Awards

1991: Humanitarian Youth Advocacy Award

Swiss Sales Awards

1991: Gold sales award for "Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814" (Album)

ARIA Awards (Australian Sales Awards)

Gold:

1989 - Miss You Much (Single)
1989 - Rhythm Nation 1814 (Album)
1990 - Escapade (Single)
1990 - Black Cat (Single)
1991 - Love Will Never Do (Without You) (Single)

Platinum:

1990 - Miss You Much (Single)
1990 - Black Cat (Single)
1990 - Rhythm Nation 1814 (Album)
1991 - Love Will Never Do (Without You) (Single)

Multi-Platinum:

1991 - Rhythm Nation 1814 (Album) 2p

BPI Sales Award (UK)

Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814:

1989: Silver Award
1989: Gold Award
1990: Platinum Award
Records
Rhythm Nation 1814 made Janet the first female artist to have the #1 Selling Album Of The Year.

Rhythm Nation 1814 is the only album to produce a #1 single in three different calendar years

Rhythm Nation 1814 is the first and only album in music history to produce 7 Top 5 Singles on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.

Rhythm Nation 1814 is the only album to produce 4 #1 hits on the Dance chart, a record unmatched.

Rhythm Nation 1814 made Janet the first black female artist to be nominated for the Producer of the Year Grammy

Rhythm Nation 1814 made Janet the first female artist to sweep an awards show

Rhythm Nation 1814 made Janet the youngest artist, and first black female, to win BMI’s Songwriter of the Year

Rhythm Nation 1814 also won the most Billboard Awards in history, in one year it won an amazing 14 Billboard/
Billboard/Tanqueray Sterling Music Video Awards

Every single was #1 on one or another Billboard chart for a total of 7 #1 Billboard Singles. A record that remains unmatched.

“Miss You Much” became the first single to simultaneously top the Hot 100, R&B, and Dance charts.

Rhythm Nation 1814 made Janet the first artist to win Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist and Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist at the American Music Awards. (both major categories)

“Black Cat” made Janet the first artist to simultaneously hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Mainstream Rock singles charts, as well as going Top 10 on the R&B chart.

The Rhythm Nation 1814 World Tour
The Rhythm Nation 1814 Tour remains the most successful premiere tour of any artist, male or female selling out on 4 continents.

The tour holds the record for the fastest sellout in the history of the Tokyo Dome. Janet sold out the 48,000 seat dome with 4 dates in a record 7 minutes (192,000 tickets total). Roughly 27,428 tickets sold per minute, and roughly 457 tickets sold per second.

Other Noted Achievements

Rhythm Nation 1814 is ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, coming in at #275

Rolling Stone Magazine: 50 Essential 'Woman In Rock' Albums includes Rhythm Nation 1814 at # 27

Rhythm Nation 1814 is listed as one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

Rhythm Nation 1814 is ranked by Entertainment Weekly as one of the Top 100 Best Albums of the past 25 years, coming in at #54.

"Miss You Much" is the longest running #1 single of 1989 with 4 weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

"Rhythm Nation" (video) was named by TV Guide and MTV as the #44 Greatest Music Video Ever Made, and the #37 Greatest Video Ever Made
on the VH1 Top 100 Videos Of All Time countdown.

"Love Will Never Do (Without You)," was named by MTV as the Sexiest Music Video ever made in 1998. "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" also made the TV Guide/MTV list of the greatest videos ever made (#88) and the VH1 Top 100 Greatest Videos Ever Made (#72).

“Come Back To Me," received a BMI Million Play Award for over 1 million spins on the radio.

Rhythm Nation 1814 is one of BMG Music Club’s 1 million sellers.

1990: The Rhythm Nation Compilation (video compilation from 1989-1990): RIAA certificate: Multi-Platinum

Copy and paste

I'm watching the RN1814 movie now

MTV VMA should have been today

It could have a been 20 year anniversary of RN1814 and Janet performing to her old school hits would have been cool.

Then again who knows what Janet has planned for the show. Maybe she is planning to do some sort of medley from Rhythm Nation.
[Edited 9/12/09 12:42pm]

suga10 said:

it's always on sundays, isn't it? and it's not about janet

You beat me to it!

One of the best album ever!! Happy 20th Rhythm Nation!



!!

Better quality of RN tour:

mimi07 said:

Yeah it is, but today was the perfect day to celebrate the anniversary.

suga10 said:

It's not about Janet on Sunday. It's about MJ
But she probably could perform "The Knowledge" since MJ said that was one of his fav. songs from Janet.

midiscover, why you wearin the whole RN1814 gear with all the badges!?!

For all the people here that are too young to remember, this album was a monster. It dominated!

What a time that era was. That tape changed my life. Janet and Black Box got me through the early 1990s. I don't think I would have made it through without them. My only regret is not having gone to see the RN tour...'cause it's all been downhill from there.

This album dominated '89,'90 and '91! IMO- One of the best albums ever. It solidified Janet as an artist and put her up there with the greats (Michael Jackson and Prince). It still touches me today. This album changed my life. Thank you, Janet! PS- I had the chance to see her during the tour as a youngin and she killed it!

I was five years old and the songs and the videos of the era were my first real good memory of experiencing an icon.

This album is a masterpiece. Definitely Janet's finest hour.

Don't forget about "State of the World," which was a radio-only single in most of the world. It still managed to reach the top 5 in airplay 2 years after the album was released.

"Catch a falling star that shines, make a wish clap three times (*clap clap clap*). Dreams come true that's in the mind, that alright with me.

trueiopian said:

"It's getting funk in here y'all"

I love her

One of my fav. songs off the album!

Doesn't the album have 8 top 5 singles!?!

From on online magazine celebrating the fact that RN is 20 Y.O.:

Prejudice? No! Ignorance? No! Bigotry? No! Illiteracy? A tad. Okay, the last thing Janet Jackson should be expected to do is live down the socio-political stances at which she arrived after watching marathon sessions of CNN as an impressionable 22-year-old. So it's mordantly lucky for her that she's never had to, and that, in fact, the best thing she ever did for her career was pay lip service to weighty concepts her thin voice and naked Minneapolis sound could only barely support. So even as Janet's four most recent albums have all fallen against at least one or two of the aforementioned vices she railed against in "The Knowledge" (one extra if you ascribe to the bigotry of soft expectations), somehow her gutsy argument that gunning down children in a school playground is, you know, bad news manages to resonate as a rich, complex truism thanks to the fresh ebullience of its delivery. Call it the nature of the genre, or simply credit Miss-Jackson-If-You're-Nasty, producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and MTV for all hitting their stride at precisely the same moment, but the perfect storm that is her 1989 masterpiece, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall), proves that, in the youth-oriented world of pop, it's both more enduring and more endearing for a kid to play older than their years than for the middle-aged to act like they're still 20 Y.O.

When Control ruled the radio, new jack swing was still in its infancy; of that album's singles, only "Nasty" really helped draw up the new jack blueprint. By the time Rhythm Nation dropped, the genre was unavoidable. Jam and Lewis responded by subtly refining their signature, Grammy-anointed sound. They filled out their bottom end, swapping the popping funk basslines of "Nasty" and "What Have You Done for Me Lately" with neo-One Nation Under a Groove thwomp-and-wiggle maneuvers on "Rhythm Nation" and "Miss You Much." They loosened their rigid backbeats in acquiescence with new jack's standard three-on-one swing, most notably on "State of the World" and "Alright." They added actual weapons to their already volatile artillery, hardening the percussive textures with gunshots and breaking glass. They bought samples, most notably injecting Larry Graham into the foundation of the title track and looping Lyn Collins all over "Alright."

And in a move that truly turned their production for Janet into a genre unto itself, they souped up the synth-assisted, New Edition-style background vocal harmonizing. They essentially turned Janet into a one-woman boy band. (Her opening "five, four, three, two, one" is nothing if not an assisted pubescent plunge.) Jam and Lewis's work on Rhythm Nation expanded Janet's range in every conceivable direction. She was more credibly feminine, more crucially masculine, more viably adult, more believably childlike. This was, of course, critical to a project in which Janet assumed the role of mouthpiece for a nationless, multicultural utopia. Jam and Lewis helped sell Janet's notion of a consciousness raised.

And did we ever buy it. Rhythm Nation's brawniness was greeted with similarly strapping sales, uniting product and commerce in that best-of-both-worlds way only pop can. Including the radio-only release "State of the World," no less than eight of the album's 12 songs were turned into singles; only one of the remaining four tracks was uptempo ("The Knowledge"), and the remaining castoffs were predictably ballads. All of the charting singles went at least Top 5, and most hit the bull's-eye outright. "Love Will Never Do (Without You)," the album's record-setting seventh single to land in the Top 5, managed to top the charts as a single nearly a year and a half after the album was initially released. The Control-eclipsing success of Rhythm Nation paved the way for Janet's blockbuster multi-album deal with Virgin, which resulted in the understandably plush and lusty follow-up, janet., the orgasmic nature of which led to both Janet's best-ever sales and, not coincidentally, a sharp and steady post-coital decline ever since.

Which is not to say sex was absent from either Control or Rhythm Nation. Perhaps she just couched it better early on. Like every other significant album she ever made, Rhythm Nation closes by stretching what seems to be baby-making longueurs across multiple songs. Certainly I remember myself 20 years ago perpetually losing all interest in the album once it reached "Black Cat" (not being much for rock stomps, I will say Janet did the electric guitar much more favor when she applied it liberally to the bridge of 1993's "If"). It was shocking to return to the album in my lovelorn 20s and 30s and come upon "Lonely," much ado about steamy, and perhaps the second sexiest song about not getting any—or, at any rate, not getting any outside of pity sex—I've ever heard, the first being Juicy's "Sugar Free," from which Jam and Lewis obviously ripped the template for "Lonely." "Come Back to Me" smartly obscures Janet's nondescript pillow-talk delivery within luscious folds upon folds of gut-wrenching chord changes, topping the tragic, plunging bridge with a soaring, cinematic outro that leaves Janet speechless, admitting, "I don't know what else to say." It's the quintessential song in the key of heartbreak, but its despair leaves listeners properly stripped and ready to receive the pornography of "Someday Is Tonight," which I'm still not sure I'm old enough to listen to.

If sex stops the album in its tracks, it's appropriate that the rest of the album dances without any overt eroticism (especially apparent in the music video clips for the militant "Rhythm Nation" and the playfully chaste "Escapade"). Still awaiting the breakthrough orally-fixated choreography of "If," Janet's Rhythm Nation project saw dance as a movement in both senses of the word: an athletic extension of ones own socio-political force of will and a great uniter…no, make that obliterator of races, genders, creeds, even—as when she dances with Cyd Charisse in the video for "Alright"—eras. The first half of the album's side one keeps the BPM at an aerobic pace without even once cracking a smile or putting four on the floor. Uptight begets upright, and there ain't no acid in this house. Ain't even no house in this house. "Get the point? Good" isn't exactly a punchline, but the drollness with which Janet punctuates her three-song State of the Nation address is almost unknowingly irreverent. How could it not seem so in comparison to the title track's completely stone-faced intentions? Janet's dance nation is a hard, angular, geometric battle plan, and as the title track's stunning, monochromatic video clip confirms, the schematic first calls for an almost Zen-like transcendence of self.

Pretty out there for a pop divette, but having said her piece, she quickly snatches back her control, her name, her still flowering iconography, and her perceptibly hardening abs in time enough to fill out the remarkably tight midsection of her album with the most winningly good times of her recording career. "Miss You Much," the album's kickoff single, is the appropriately sweet-and-sour bridge from efficacy to escapadery. Speaking of which, the Minneapolis-citing "Escapade" is as much a worthy successor to the almost cloyingly cute "When I Think of You" as "Love Will Never Do" is a monumental forerunner to Janet's impending tease epics "That's the Way Love Goes" and "Go Deep."

And then there's "Alright," a warm, relentless surge of synthesized ecstasy that brings those nine-foot stacks of background vocals front and center. Having only managed to scrape its way to fourth place on the Hot 100, "Alright" may have been the record's comparative flop single but comes as close as anything Jam and Lewis ever had a hand in (outside of the Time) to defining their pop-softened brand of the Minneapolis sound. It's also the sunny antithesis to the bleakness of the album's opening misery suite and the definition of pre-sexual bliss that resonates even as the album inexorably winds up giving it up in the final stretch. Given that Janet's pop narrative achieved true Cinderella dimensions with the coronation of Rhythm Nation, it stands to reason that clock chimes open and close the album. But Janet's journey from political outrage to blossoming womanhood to pop nostalgia to shivering post-coital withdrawal is no fairy tale. If she begins the album reveling in the triumph of her will, she ends it in complete darkness, considering the notion that the world would be better if everyone were blind. Sounds like maturity to me.

Technically 8 but "State of the World" was a promo single not official.

love it! except for Livin' In A World (They Didn't Make)

Timmy84 said:

i was 8

There's not one bad song on it. It's truly a perfect album. I loved the segues, the songs, the layout. Side 1 was more "statement" oriented overall, but side 2 was more personal overall.

mimi07 said:

she was truly ripped with just one win. Like A Prayer got none I think. WTF were the grammy people smoking that year?!

LightOfArt said:

she got one the next year for Blonde Ambition on laser disc.

but the 1814 movie was great.

The album was hot.

The tour was hot.

She was hot.

The videos were hot.

She made Michael seem silly imho.

Oh, and the Heavy D remix of Alright and Love Will Never Do are perfect.

Remember in Truth or Dare when the dancer said Mads jacket was RN and she says "Bite your tongue!lol"

xlr8r said:

yup