“Escapade” is the third single from Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 and topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, becoming the second #1 pop single from the album along with the lead single “Miss You Much”. “Escapade” achieved gold status and also topped both the Billboard Dance Club Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts. The upbeat track won a BMI Pop Award as the Most Played Song of 1990.

The song was partially inspired by the 1965 hit “Nowhere To Run” by Martha & the Vandellas, which Janet considered covering for the album, but producer Jimmy Jam recalls how hearing the word “escapade” in a conversation led to the song’s composition:

We usually come up with the music first, then we try to think of a title that fits the way the music sounds. And ‘Escapade’ we thought was a cool word. It is kind of old fashioned — people don’t really say ‘Let’s go on an escapade’ anymore, but it really worked with that track.

Jimmy Jam also described the song’s production and recording process at the Flyte Tyme Studio in Minneapolis:

While she was sitting in one room coming up with the 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. There’s a keyboard bass and another thing, and that was it. All we added were the overdubs, little bells … because we’d gotten so used to the feel of the track, the mistakes and all, we ended up leaving it the way it was.