Choreographer turned dance-pop singer who achieved strong commercial success in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the wake of Madonna’s success, many dance-pop divas filled the charts, but out of them all, Paula Abdul was the only one who sustained a career. The former L.A. Lakers cheerleader and choreographer scored her first hit in 1989, when “Straight Up” shot to Billboard’s number one spot, becoming the first of four U.S. chart-toppers from her 1988 debut, Forever Your Girl; the others were “Forever Your Girl,” “Cold Hearted,” and “Opposites Attract,” each earning a gold certification from the RIAA. This success laid the groundwork for her second act as a judge on American Idol, the televised singing competition that began in 2002 and kept Abdul in the spotlight throughout the decade.
Abdul began to make inroads in pop music when she was hired as an assistant dance director on the Jacksons’ Victory tour, which led to a job choreographing Janet Jackson’s videos for “Control.” Abdul’s work on Jackson’s videos helped make the album a hit, making her a sought-after choreographer. After working on The Tracy Ullman Show and videos for ZZ Top, Duran Duran, and the Pointer Sisters, Abdul began a recording career, releasing her debut album, Forever Your Girl, in 1988. The first two singles drawn from the record – “Knocked Out” and “The Way That You Love Me” – didn’t crack the Top 40, but the release of “Straight Up” at the end of the year made her a superstar. Staying at the top of the charts for three weeks, “Straight Up” began a string of six number one singles (with “The Way That You Love Me” re-charting at number three in 1989) that ran through the summer of 1991. The last two of those singles, “Rush Rush” and “The Promise of a New Day,” both came from her second album, Spellbound. Released in the summer of 1991, Spellbound wound up going triple platinum and it racked up three additional hits: “Blowing Kisses in the Wind,” which peaked at number six, “Vibeology,” and “Will You Marry Me?”
After a three-year hiatus, Abdul released her third album, Head Over Heels, in the summer of 1995. Although it wound up going gold, its only Top 40 hit was “My Love Is for Real,” and Abdul quietly retreated from singing, working in television and film; notably, she choreographed the cheerleading sequences in Sam Mendes’ Acadamy Award-winning 1999 film, American Beauty. Abdul returned to music in 2000 as the co-author of “Spinning Around,” a hit for Kylie Minogue.
Abdul was honored with her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is the first entertainer to be honored with the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards’ Hall of Fame Award. Below is a collection of 20 wonderful photos of Paula Abdul in the 1990s:
0 comments:
Post a Comment