“Gimme a Beat!”

Abstract

In 1986, Janet Jackson forever changed the direction of pop music and its music videos with the release of her third and breakthrough album, Control. Working with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, choreographer Paula Abdul, and director Mary Lambert, Jackson created songs and videos that conveyed a new kind of feminist affect that intertwined individual stories of endurance, the forcefulness of relatively new digital music technology, and Black and female collectivity. In this article, I chart how Jackson transmitted this feminist affect through what I call hyperaurality, or sounds and vibrations that work in excess of the limitations of visual representation. Through tracing the affective excesses of Jackson’s visuals, sounds, and movements, I unpack how hyperaurality both intensifies and reintegrates the senses of sight, hearing, and feeling. In the process, I posit that vibration, or sound’s materially felt oscillations, works as a point of connection across these three aspects of hyperaurality. By demonstrating its connective power, I assert that vibration is a source of affective politics within popular music, one with the power of repurposing capitalism's excesses.