Songfacts®:

• Janet Jackson was going to do a remake of the Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' 1965 hit "Nowhere to Run," but Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, her and producers and co-writers, suggested they do an original song with a similar beat, which meant they would earn songwriting royalties. Jam and Lewis pulled the word "Escapade" from a notebook they kept of song title ideas and came up with the track while Jackson wrote the lyrics.
• Johnny Gill contributed the finger snaps on this one. Born on May 22, 1966, he's six days younger than Janet. They got to know each other when they were teenagers; both released their debut albums when they were 16 and were stars a few years later, Gill as a member of New Edition (he replaced Bobby Brown) and Janet with her 1986 breakthrough album Control. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had worked with Gill before - they produced the 1988 New Edition album Heart Break. Soon after the Rhythm Nation 1814 album was released, Gill had a solo hit with "Rub You the Right Way."
• The Rhythm Nation 1814 album proved that Jackson's previous release, the breakthrough Control, was not a fluke. "Escapade," along with "Miss You Much," "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" and "Black Cat," was one of four #1 hits from the album. Seven of the songs were Top 5 singles, an unheard-of number for one album. This even bested her brother Michael, whose album Thriller charted seven songs in the Top 10, but only five in the Top 5.
• "Escapade" hit #1 in the US on March 3, 1990, two days after Janet Jackson embarked on her very first headlining concert tour - "The Rhythm Nation World Tour 1990" - with a show in Miami. The song stayed at the top for three weeks.
• Jimmy Jam remembered how the song came together: "While [Janet] was sitting in one room coming up with lyrics, I put it on the 24-track. We hooked the drum machine up. On my left hand I played the bass, on the right hand I played the chord. And it was just enough for her to sing to, which we do a lot. Because we like to let her sing to as minimum of a track as we can do, then fill in the track around her so that her part is the main part of the song. With 'Escapade,' she sang it and we kept saying we'll go back and redo the track... we never redid the track."
• "Escapade" is a very carefree song about leaving your troubles behind, but there's some heavy stuff on the Rhythm Nation 1814 album. The song "Livin' In A World (They Didn't Make)" was inspired by a school shooting, and songs like "The Knowledge" and "Rhythm Nation" are calls to action, pushing young people to stand up strong and fight for change. Many of the other songs from the album deal with matters of the heart, including "Miss You Much" and "Someday Is Tonight."
• The music video for "Escapade" looks like it takes place at Carnival, but it was filmed on the backlot of Universal Studios Hollywood. It was directed by Peter Smillie, best known for his work on commercials.
  
  The video has a vibrant look with free-flowing dance that's a stark contrast to the monochrome videos for "Miss You Much," "The Knowledge" and "Rhythm Nation," which have precision choreography and economical costumes. Those three videos have a unified look because they're part of a 30-minute film called Rhythm Nation 1814 that was released on home video to accompany the album. It earned Jackson her first Grammy when it won Best Long Form Music Video.
• That part in the breakdown where Janet yells something like "candy apple red" is actually "Minneapolis," a shout-out to where she recorded the album at the studio owned by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.