"When I Think of You" is the third single from Janet Jackson's third studio album, Control(1986). The song—written by Jackson and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and produced by Jam and Lewis—is about a person who finds relief and fun in a lover. It is Jackson's first number-one hit on the Hot 100, and also became a top ten hit (peaking at #10) in the United Kingdom.

The song was resurrected in 1995 when released on two limited-edition CD single formats in the United Kingdom, one containing remixes by Deep Dish and Heller & Farley, and the other containing remixes by David Morales. That same year the remixes were included on certain releases of "Runaway".

The song has been performed on all of Jackson's tours.

The single became Jackson's first number-one hit on the Hot 100 chart. After "When I Think of You" reached number one, it made Jackson and her brother Michael Jackson the first, and so far, only siblings to both have solo number-one hits on the Hot 100. At the time she was twenty years old, making Jackson the youngest artist since Stevie Wonder to top the BillboardHot 100. It also reached number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and number one on the Hot Dance Club Play in 1986. "When I Think of You" was the thirty-second biggest Hot 100 single of 1986, as well as the forty-seventh biggest Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs single of 1986 and the twenty-second biggest Hot Dance Club Play single of 1986.

Jackson has performed the song on the Rhythm Nation 1814 Tour, janet. Tour, The Velvet Rope Tour, All for You Tour, and Rock Witchu Tour.

The music video finds Jackson going around a neighborhood. Each location she visits has the same mysterious man in different costumes saying a brief statement to her and then vanishing as she turns around. The director of "When I Think of You", Julien Temple, would later direct Jackson's "Alright" video, and both videos have a similar style. "When I Think of You" has only five cuts. The video is quite similar to the opening segment of Temple's 1986 film Absolute Beginners, which stars David Bowie and Sade Adu. The style is that the video is assumed to be one long take, but in fact it is five smaller takes. Although fluid in nature, obvious mistakes can be seen in the edits, especially when she comes out of the back door of the club, and a photographer takes her picture. The flash acts as an edit, but the people in the background are in quite different positions before and after the flash. Two of Jackson's nephews, TJ and Taryll Jackson make an cameo in the video.

The Dance Remix was used for the video. The video was made available on the iTunes Store on February 1, 2007. Jackson would later repeat the same type of format for her video "Rock with U" from 2008's Discipline.