One of the main criticisms leveled against Abdul after her album’s release was about her voice.
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If she can sing, she could be a star.” But the story of how Abdul found her bearings as a professional singer, and learned to work with producers, is not quite so straightforward. “Here's someone with a personality and she's gorgeous, and she can dance. I want to do an album,’” Ayeroff recalled later. After helping craft Janet Jackson’s moves for the “Nasty” and “Control” music videos, she was signed to the then-new label Virgin Records by Jeff Ayeroff, who had worked in marketing at A&M Records with Janet. And for a brief moment, Abdul choreographed them into something unforgettable.Ībdul famously transitioned into the music industry when her work choreographing the Laker Girls led to her discovery by the Jacksons. Abdul did win one Grammy for a music video and two Emmys for her still-influential choreography, but ultimately, as Rolling Stone writer David Wild put it around the time of her rise, she was seen as proof that “an uncanny grasp of style and image can compensate for a lack of innate musical talent.” Taken all together, Abdul’s discography is often corny in a so-bad-it’s-good way, but cheesy pop has its own rules and inspirations. But that wasn’t necessarily the case in the early ’90s. In a post-poptimism era, most people accept that an artist who isn’t a songwriter, or who doesn’t have a powerful voice, can still matter culturally the New Yorker covers Britney Spears. Abdul landed somewhere between those two extremes, maybe in part because, as she sang in her last original song (which she performed on American Idol in 2009), she was “just here for the music.” Unlike Jackson or Madonna, she was never interested in generating controversy or using her songs as a form of autobiography, and female pop stars historically haven’t been taken seriously when they just want to sing and dance. Pop stars tend to be best remembered for being either transgressive, era-defining stars or nostalgic one-hit wonders. “It was Gemma saying, ‘Do you have a third song?’ and me making up a half-assed chorus over the phone.” 1’s, a little more bluntly: “It’s not like it was Clive Davis with an amazing ear that said, ‘That’s a hit for Whitney,’” he says. But when you haven’t had any, you don’t know any better.” Leiber describes the process of selecting “Opposites Attract,” one of the album’s No. “Once you have success, then you’re trying to always beat the success.
“It was a confluence of innocence and being unafraid that brought it all together,” says Corfield. And it serves as a reminder that record companies and producers can’t manufacture big stars from the top down. The story behind the making and release of the big hits off the album, written by producers Oliver Leiber and Elliot Wolff, reveals the alchemy that resulted in its particular sound, in many ways a reflection of Abdul’s quirky humor and perspective. In fact, Forever Your Girl became a slow-burning success only after it had almost been written off as an irredeemable flop.
But while there are entire cultural studies syllabi devoted to Madonna, and reclaiming Janet Jackson’s legacy has become its own genre of criticism, Abdul’s brief pop reign has largely been lost to history. “She was like Miss America in people’s hearts, when she was at the height of her success,” former Virgin Records A&R vice president Gemma Corfield, who worked closely with Abdul her entire career, tells BuzzFeed News. They turned Abdul into a Diet Coke-endorsing superstar, and throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s her commercial success rivaled Madonna and Janet Jackson. Those hits demonstrate the range of her pop persona, from the sweetheart appeal of the title track to the iconic David Fincher-directed video for “Straight Up” to the deep cheese of a duet with the rapping animated “skat cat” in “Opposites Attract,” which Abdul recently reenacted with connoisseur of corniness James Corden. But long before that, she was the original “ pop princess” - an avant-la-lettre Britney Spears - initially launched to stardom 30 years ago today, with the release of her 1988 debut album, Forever Your Girl.Ībdul’s crisp dance moves and coy, girlish attitude eventually helped propel the album to record-setting success, garnering the first four of her six No.
Paula Abdul exists in today’s culture largely through her reality television stints: as the zany (and nice) judge on American Idol, and the tearful, memeworthy diva - mocked by Kathy Griffin - from her 2007 reality show Hey Paula.
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