Tiffany - Just Me Review
Posted by Mitch Michaels on 06.14.2007
Twenty years after “I Think We’re Alone Now”, Tiffany returns with an interesting set of adult pop…
My Story
When I was a kid, I really hated the popular music on the radio. You could call me a dork or un-hip, but my cassette collection was built on the likes of people like The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley and country star Randy Travis. Other than a somehow-acquired copy of Cooleyhighharmony and a single version of Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract”, I didn’t have too much interest in pop music. New Kids On The Block? Yeah, no thanks. Debbie Gibson? You know, to this day, I can’t name one Debbie Gibson song. “I Think We’re Alone Now”? Hold up…I actually liked that one.
Maybe it was because it was originally a Shondells hit, which spoke to my subconscious retro ways. Maybe it was because it was so irresistibly catchy. Or maybe it was just ‘cause Tiffany’s red hair was hot. But I can honestly say that, even now, if “I Think We’re Alone Now” were to come on the radio, I would probably turn it up. Of course, its singer has since gone on to other things (though the red hair has thankfully gone unaffected). Let’s see what her latest project brings us.
Her Story
Tiffany Darwish was raised in Norwalk, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, during the 70’s and early 80’s. She first began singing professionally at the tender age of 11 when she performed with a country band and earned over $200 in tips. She was soon discovered by country legend Hoyt Axton, whose wife took Tiffany to Nashville to shop her around. During Tiffany’s early country years, she performed on the popular “Ralph Emery Show” and opened for veterans like George Jones and Jerry Lee Lewis.
In 1985, Tiffany got even more television exposure, competing on the legendary “Star Search”. Though she would only come in second place, the turn helped launch her star. Her manager at the time, George Tobin, parlayed the appearance into a recording contract with MCA Records. At the age of 16, Tiffany went into the recording studio to record her first album.
Tiffany hit shelves in May of 1987 and the artist went on a now legendary tour of shopping malls to promote it. The “Beautiful You: Celebrating The Good Life Shopping Mall Tour ‘87” (what a name!) started out slow, as did Tiffany’s first single, “Danny”. It wasn’t until stations caught on to another of the album’s tracks, a cover of Tommy James & The Shondells’ “I Think We’re Alone Now”, that things really started to take off. The song was quickly released as a single, which went #1 and propelled the album to the same (back when a #1 album meant more than a lot of hype before it came out).
By 1988, Tiffany had been certified 4x platinum and had yielded another #1 hit in “Could’ve Been” and a Top 10 cover of The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There”. Even those associated with Tiffany were becoming stars, as was the case with an unknown boy band named New Kids On The Block, who opened for Tiffany on her second major tour.
Tiffany returned to the studio for her highly anticipated sophomore album in 1988, but controversy erupted around her. Tiffany’s parents and manager Tobin became embroiled in a legal battle over the rights to Tiffany’s career (and her earnings). The courtroom drama became so hectic for the 17 year old starlet that she eventually petitioned to be emancipated from her parents’ guardianship. This wasn’t granted, but she did have her grandmother take over legal caretaker.
In November of ’88, Tiffany’s second album was finally released. Hold An Old Friend’s Hand received generally better critical reviews than Tiffany’s first album, but pop radio was changing rapidly at the time, making Tiffany’s mall pop take on a significantly shorter shelf life. Old Friend’s Hand still managed to move over 2 million units, but it stalled out at #17 on the Billboard charts. Another Top 10 hit, “All This Time”, garnered significant radio play, but future singles, “Radio Romance” and “We’re Both Thinking Of Her”, barely made the Top 40.
For her part, Tiffany was keeping busy. Her tour was still drawing plenty of fans, and she’d made an inroad into Hollywood by playing the voice of Judy Jetson in 1990’s Jetsons: The Movie. The singer’s third album hit shelves that year, but it wasn’t well received critically or commercially. New Inside marked several new changes for Tiffany. She’d turned 18, broken with Tobin as her manager and consciously tried to stay relevant by injecting some urban flavor into her signature dance pop. Sadly, New Inside failed to benefit. It charted no singles and failed to enter the album charts. It’s most notable accomplishment is that it was one of the last CDs released in one of those long cardboard boxes.
The 90’s were quiet publicly for Tiffany, though the singer was far from lying dormant. She was married for the first time in 1992 and also gave birth to her first child. In 1993, she reteamed with George Tobin for a fourth album. Dreams Never Die was a return to the shiny pop of her first albums. It was released in Asia, where bubblegum pop was still en vogue, with the intent of releasing an altered version domestically. The relationship with Tobin blew up again though, and by 1995, Dreams was still unreleased in the US and Tiffany had moved to Nashville to try to break into country music. In 1996, Hip-O Records quietly released Tiffany’s US Greatest Hits album.
After failing to make any inroads in country, Tiffany returned to pop with 2000’s The Color Of Silence on Eureka Records. Though the record failed to chart or really get the former pop princess’s name back out there (thanks in part to the ineptitude of now-defunct Eureka), critics hailed it as a major accomplishment. Tiffany, now 13 years removed from her debut, had made some major steps in maturity and had crafted a shining set of pop music. A tour of college campuses was similarly well received.
In 2002, Tiffany was the subject of an episode of the popular “E! True Hollywood Story”. With renewed public interest (thanks in part to a national nostalgia kick fueled by VH1), Tiffany stepped outside of her image and posed naked for “Playboy” magazine later that year.
Still, with all the publicity, Tiffany had yet to return to radio in force. In 2005, fresh off the heels of a second marriage, she appeared on the popular UK show “Hit Me Baby One More Time”, a program that showcased former pop stars covering more recent fare. She proved to be so popular that she was asked back for the US version. Tiffany made it to the finals on both shows, but lost to Arrested Development on the US finale.
In spring of ’05, Tiffany released her sixth album, Dust Off And Dance independently. The set was a departure from her normal pop fare, heavier on dance beats and electronica. Though it didn’t receive much mainstream press, Dust Off became a huge hit in the dance community (as well as with Tiffany’s large gay fanbase). The record got some decent underground airplay and even won some minor awards. Tiffany took this opportunity to start touring again. George Tobin took the opportunity to finally release her 1993 set, Dreams Never Die, in the United States.
In 2007, Tiffany hit reality show pay dirt a second time, when she signed on to appear in the fifth season of “Celebrity Fit Club”, a program that features minor celebrities working to lose weight and tone up. Tiffany currently appears weekly with actors like Dustin Diamond (“Saved By The Bell”) and Maureen McCormick (“The Brady Bunch”) and fellow singers like Warren G and Da Brat.
In April of this year, Tiffany released a compilation album of her hits, all newly recorded. She also recently signed a deal with burgeoning 10 Spot Records. The first single, “Feels Like Love”, was released in early May. You can download the video here (or watch streaming here).
The Album
On June 5, 2007, 10 Spot Records released Just Me, the seventh studio album by Tiffany and the follow-up to 2005’s Dust Off And Dance. It is available in both CD version and through iTunes. It contains a bonus track called “I Will Not Breakdown”.
The Band: 6.5
Tiffany: vocals
It’s hard to believe it was 20 years ago that Tiffany released her mega-hit “I Think We’re Alone Now”. Thankfully, Tiffany realizes that too, and does little to pander to the teeny bopper crowd on her seventh album. At 36 years old, Tiffany has lived a life of ups and downs that few people could relate to, if not in emotion then at least in magnitude. Luckily, she’s survived to tell about it. And while her penchant for dance music and reality TV shows may indicate otherwise, Tiffany isn’t trying to capitalize on past successes here. Rather, she’s capitalizing on the journey.
Tiffany herself sounds great on this record. Her vocals are sweet and perfect for pop, and she’s taken her experiences in gospel and country and injected that here. It’s no doubt an album of maturity and sung with an assured levity that few former teen queens could muster.
The album’s arrangements are nice, too, with moments of acoustic fun, moments of gospel sing-a-longs and even sparse, heartbreaking ballads. Just Me’s biggest drawback, though, is production. Handled by an array of producers, most of the time they seem content to keep Tiffany’s vocals out front and the backing instruments become maddeningly muted. It’s a major flaw and it only rarely disappears. It makes this album sound just a little too demo-ish, hardly an aura appropriate to a seventh studio album.
Still, with a great vocal performance, this can be remedied by a set of nice songs.
The Songs: 7.0
1. Feels Like Love
2. Just Me
3. Be Alright
4. Hiding Behind The Face
5. Calling Out Your Name
6. Mind Candy
7. Anyone But Me
8. Streets Of Gold
9. This Love
10. Winter’s Over
At its worst, Just Me sounds like a decent female singer/songwriter album (think Nina Gordon), but it’s a series of moments that help it stand above that pack. The opening track, and the disc’s first single, “Feels Like Love” is a great song to kick things off, a fun bit of new love excitement that will no doubt appeal to the 20- and 30-something demographic here. If it weren’t for the underwhelming production, I could see this making some waves on video countdowns. The title-track continues in that vein: assured, mid-tempo and ready to break into the next stratosphere if not for that mixing problem. Still, the writing is so good here, with direct but never hokey lyrics of positivity and encouragement, that it destroys any image of teased hair, denim and mall shopping bags that you may have brought into this album.
Though the first two tracks are probably the best pop ballads, the album features some other nice moments. “Hiding Behind The Face” incorporates that gospel influence I was talking about, and it DOES manage to rise above its production, thanks to some awesome choral backing vocals. “Streets Of Gold” is the flipside of that, a country tune about a street corner preacher akin to Garth Brooks’ excellent “Fit For A King”. “Calling Out Your Name” is an adorably goofy acoustic number that will have you tapping your toe.
Still, there are a few missteps that don’t sit as well. “Mind Candy” is just plain odd. “This Love” is sexy but falters thanks to a lack of atmosphere. And a couple others are just forgettable. Thankfully, the album ends on a major high note with “Winter’s Over”, a heart wrenching piano driven number that is possibly the greatest ballad of Tiffany’s career.
The 411: Just Me is not the album you expect from Tiffany. It’s eclectic, it’s mature and it’s very well-written, hardly the pandering, nostalgia soaked pop trash that her contemporaries have labeled as comeback albums. But then again, this is hardly a comeback. It’s an amalgamation of all the places Tiffany has been since she first learned the words to “Delta Dawn” in the early 80’s. The singing is fun and appropriately weighty in spots, the arrangements are interesting and the songs are heartfelt and relatable. Sadly, the low budget and at times just plain inept production drag this album down below the radio-ready radar. Still, the talent is there, and Tiffany has proven that she just keeps getting better.
