Janet Jackson - Black Cat

What this video is

Released August 28, 1990 as the sixth single from Janet Jackson's landmark album Rhythm Nation 1814, 'Black Cat' was a genre-defying hard rock statement at the apex of her commercial dominance. Written entirely by Jackson herself — the only song on the album she solely authored — it represented a deliberate and startling departure from the Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis industrial-dance-pop template that defined her…

Why it matters

'Black Cat' is a landmark document of Black artists expanding rock genre boundaries in the mainstream. It preceded and arguably enabled subsequent rock crossovers by artists across genres. Its arena-rock live video aesthetic — dark, kinetic, saturated — became a reference point for how hard rock…

The director

Wayne Isham (born December 2, 1958, Vinita, Oklahoma) is an American film and music video director with over 200 directing credits. A UC Santa Barbara alumnus, he was inspired by David Bowie's 'Ashes to Ashes' to pursue music video directing. By the early…