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Tiffany Talks 'Playboy' And What Could Still Be
02/23/2002 7:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Billy Altman
(2/23/02, 7 a.m. ET) - Former '80s teen pop superstar Tiffany (Tiffany Renee Darwisch) will appear in April's "Sex & Music" issue of Playboy magazine, which hits newsstands on March 4. The bold move by the singer, who is now a 30-year-old wife and mother, is part of an ongoing self-makeover campaign to prove to her fans and the music industry that she's come a long way from her "mall queen" image of 15 years ago.
Tiffany rose to fame in 1987 after performing a tour of U.S. shopping malls, while at the same time her self-titled debut album quickly climbed to Number One on the chart. Her first two singles were the chart-topping hits "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Could've Been." She also cracked the top 10 with "I Saw Him Standing There," which peaked at Number Seven. Her moment in the spotlight faded quickly, however, and her career as a teen idol stalled after her third album release.
Fast forward to 2001, when Tiffany released her critically acclaimed Eureka Records album, The Color Of Silence. She told LAUNCH last week that she's spent the last few years touring and promoting the album. "I put my heart and soul into it and I got great reviews," she said. "I went and did a college tour, which I was completely nervous about because I didn't think the college audience would relate to me, but I knew they would relate to the music."
"I kind of just said to myself, 'Don't be a chicken. Get out there and have fun with it,' and it worked," Tiffany admitted. But while the college crowd enjoyed Tiffany's triumphant return to the stage, she just couldn't muster the much-needed support from her record label, or from radio. "Unfortunately the record label had a hard time believing in it, and kind of put minimal effort into it," she told us. "And radio--I couldn't break into radio, and that was the hardest thing--to find out there still was this whole stigma against me even though I had this credible album."
Tiffany was eventually was forced to take matters into her own hands: "I tried calling to get booked on Leno, or MTV, and frankly nobody would book me, so it was really hard to promote my album when I couldn't even get it out there."
One day Tiffany received a phone call from Playboy magazine, but she told us that she didn't accept the magazine's initial offer for several reasons: "Playboy came to me and wanted me to do a layout and I said no. I didn't see the connection with music. I was worried that people would see it as a publicity stunt, or a lot of different things. Finally, after the third phone call, the frustration was so high on my part I said, 'Sure.'"
The singer added that, while she admired the magazine, the thought of appearing naked in a worldwide publication made her understandably apprehensive: "I never had reservations about the magazine, or what they would make me look like. I knew that everyone looks great in the magazine. I talked to them, so I knew what was expected of me and I knew the layout would look beautiful. It wasn't going to be, in my opinion, 'cheesy' or anything like that. I mean, they were going to do a very great pictorial on me--that was not my reservation. My reservation was just that this is so different. I mean, I'm gonna be naked, frankly, and that's a lot."
Tiffany is now getting those high-profile bookings that eluded her just a year ago. She's scheduled to appear on Howard Stern's syndicated radio program Monday morning (February 25), followed by an afternoon visit to ABC's The View.
And while she does not currently have a record label deal or a distribution deal, Tiffany is now more optimistic about her music career than she has ever been, saying, "You know, it's exciting to see that I'm gaining totally different walks of people as fans--from all different walks of life. I know Playboy is going to open other doors for me, which is exciting. I'm just going to keep rolling and keep being creative."
We, of course, had to ask Tiffany if--looking back at her career--she regrets her mall tour, or her bittersweet days as a teen pop idol. "I don't regret it. I think I have to be thankful for it. I just wanted to sing and I'm lucky that my dream came true." She concluded, "I really don't look back now. I just look forward to the future."
--Jason Gelman, New York For more news at LAUNCH, click here.
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