Songfacts®:

• Janet Jackson wrote "Alright" with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the duo that also produced the track. The song is about finding true love in someone who is also a friend.
• Charting at #4, "Alright" was the only single out of the first seven released off the Rhythm Nation 1814 album not to reach one of the top two positions on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the fourth consecutive single from the album to reach #1 on the US Dance chart, helping Janet Jackson break a record set by Madonna.
• The video is in the style of a 1930s musical. It features the dancer Cyd Charisse (1922 – 2008), and the Hi-De-Ho man Cab Calloway (1907 - 1994) in one of his last on-screen appearances. Musicals have always been special to Jackson; she used to watch them on TV every day after school.
• Janet Jackson won a Soul Train Music Award for Best Music Video for this song.
• Heavy D, who had a hit the following year with "Now That We Found Love," raps on various remixed versions of this song. This was the first appearance by a rapper on a Janet Jackson track. Heavy D would later appear on Michael Jackson's song "Jam," where he makes reference to his collaboration with Janet:
  
  Got with Janet
  Then with Guy
  Now with Michael...
  
  The Guy reference is to the R&B group whose song "Do Me Right" Heavy D rapped on.
• The hoots and hollers that play throughout the track were sampled from Lyn Collins' James Brown-produced 1972 single "Think (About It)," which was sampled far more liberally in the Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock hip-hop anthem "It Takes Two."