Songfacts®:

• "Miss You Much" was written by the production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They had a lot of success on Janet Jackson's previous album, Control, in 1986 - the breakthrough album that helped Jackson break the pop mold and become a sex icon with a funky edge.
  
  The title was inspired by a breakup letter Jimmy received from one of his old girlfriends, who signed it, "miss you much."
• "Miss You Much" was released as a single in August 1989 a month before it appeared on Rhythm Nation 1814, an ambitious concept album. Many of the songs, particularly the title track, deal with finding ways to bring people together for positive change, but this one is a fun dance banger where Jackson plays the part of a girl who is over the moon for a guy.
  
  It was a can't-miss hit, climbing to #1 in October and staying there for four weeks. This made it easier to sell an album full of message songs, as fans knew they'd be getting at least one song that's pure fun.
• Some of the songs on Rhythm Nation 1814 have spoken introductions. "Miss You Much" follows a heavier song on the album called "The Knowledge," so the intro, titled "Let's Dance," serves as a transition:
  
  Get the point?
  Good, let's dance
• This was one of seven Top 5 singles from the album. Here's the breakdown:
  
  "Miss You Much" - #1
  "Rhythm Nation" - #2
  "Escapade" - #1
  "Alright" - #4
  "Come Back to Me" - #2
  "Black Cat" - #1
  "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" - #1
  
  It was the first time any album produced so many hits, although Michael Jackson (Janet's brother) had seven Top 10 hits from his 1983 Thriller album.
• TIME magazine named "Miss You Much" the second best-selling single of the year (it sold over four million copies), between Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise" at #1 and Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" at #3.
• Although Jackson didn't receive a songwriting credit for this track, she had some worthwhile ideas, according to Jimmy Jam. He told Idolator: "When we got to Rhythm Nation, I had done the [instrumental] track to 'Miss You Much' and I just pointed at a note on one of the keyboards and she just walked in and hit the key and that became the string part on the song. She had lyric ideas walking into the studio."
• This song was features in the movie Ghost Dad, a 1990 comedy starring Bill Cosby. It also shows up in the 2018 movie Nobody's Fool and the 2019 film Hustlers, where Jennifer Lopez dances to it in the closing scene. Lopez was a backup dancer in the video for Jackson's 1993 song "That's The Way Love Goes."
• Because her previous album, Control, was released three years earlier, Janet's vocals were a little rusty from the lengthy break, so Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis didn't want her to record the lead for this song right away. Jam remembered: "The idea was to do the backgrounds first to get her voice back in tip-top singing shape, because she hadn't sung for probably two years."
• The music video is part of a larger project: a 30-minute black-and-white film called Rhythm Nation 1814 directed by Dominic Sena that follows two young boys who are looking to make music. "Miss You Much" shows up early in the film, introducing the warehouse where Janet Jackson trains with the singers and dancers of her Rhythm Nation. It's a striking dance number with the crisp military-formation dance moves that would become Jackson's calling card.
  
  The film gets rather stark from there, with one of the kids getting shot. The music video for "The Knowledge" follows, with the video for "Rhythm Nation" the centerpiece. The film debuted on MTV and was released on home video, selling over 200,000 copies.
• The song closes with Janet Jackson asking, "That's the end?"
  
  Well, in the Rhythm Nation 1814 film it's not. The reply is "no," and it's followed by a captivating chair dance with Jackson and two of her dancers.
• In the album title Rhythm Nation 1814, the "1814" was the project number assigned to the album on the A&M Records record label; that it shared the same number as the year the US national anthem was written was a coincidence realized and acknowledged by Jackson and producers later on.